As the Super Bowl prepares to celebrate its half century mark, sharing economy brands and the emotional benefits they provide, are as front and center as the Broncos and the Panthers.
Demonstrating the pervasiveness of the age of collaborative consumption on all walks of life, major sharing economy brands have been making noise as we lead up to Sunday’s big event in the way of live experiences that offer emotional reward, a signature of our new WE-Conomy world.
While traditionalists may be anxiously awaiting the annual ad creations of Budweiser and Hyundai on the big screen, WeConomy addicts are anticipating the benefits of collaborative consumption that can serve to enhance their Super Bowl experience. As Bowl festivities kick off in San Francisco, home to many of today’s greatest sharing economy disruptors, news has started to percolate on impending game time offerings.
Airbnb sees the weekend as a major opportunity to highlight the benefits of home rental, particularly as their company started when the founders rented out their home around a local conference when hotel rooms were at a premium. Highlighting everything from their many rooms in the area, to the special experiences their unique properties like a treetop bungalow can offer, the acclaimed brand has been making a lot of noise this week stating that 11,000 guests are already booked into 4,000 of their local properties. The estimated boon to the local economy for the weekend is $21 million.
Not to be left on the sidelines, Uber has announced a slew of new offerings around the big game, in line with their recent push to be all things to all people in our sharing world. Offering everything from shared puppies, a flag football game with Joe Montana, to an Uber POOLtrain designed to take groups of people back and forth from key areas, the ride share giant is using this weekend as a testing ground for future disruptive sharing models predicated on emotional reward.
Postmates has also thrown its hat into the ring with a Super Bowl Squares community football pool which promises collaborative fun and food delivery discounts for the winners.
While many of the benefits of the sharing economy will be felt off the big screen, the impact our new environment has had on increasingly emotional experiences will be felt in some of the top ads anticipated this year. With a push on emotional levers from tugging heartstrings (Pokemon “I can do that” ad) to empathy (Colgate’s “Every drop counts spot) to the much buzzed about humorous show stealer (Steve Harvey’s Miss Universe flub in a possible Snickers bit), it is clear that both traditional companies and sharing economy players are aiming to create deeply emotional experiences that transcend product and service to win with consumers.
While the winner of the big game is still in question, what is most clear is that empathy and emotion hold the key to victory for brands in our new passion charged WE-Conomy.
Photo by Jose Chavez
Billee Howard
