Bank of America Scores with Super Bowl Sponsorship of U2 Song’s Premier

Bank of America Corp.‘s sponsorship of U2’s premier yesterday of its new song during the Super Bowl to promote (RED), the AIDS charity, scored green.

While there are conflicting reports as to how much Bank of America spent to be the sole sponsor of the unveiling of “Invisible” during the Super Bowl, the bank has gotten huge mileage from the ad. Rolling Stone reported that Bank of America spent a minimum of $8 million and up to $10 million to facilitate the free downloads of “Invisible” from iTunes until 11:59 am today. Bank of America, however, indicated that it spent a minimum of $1 million and up to $2 million for the free downloads.

Regardless, Bank of America appears to have gotten its money’s worth. Despite the 43-8 score in the most lopsided contest since 1993, yesterday’s Super Bowl was the fifth-highest rating in the big game’s history, according to FOX Sports. The game brought in a 47.6 rating and 70 share. U2‘s song premiered during the first half, before the game became a laugher.

Bank of America is still promoting its sponsorship today. The bank is running a Google advertising campaign to drive consumers to download the song, promoting it, in some instances, as “(Bank of America)RED.” According to hashtag monitoring data, #newU2song, the hashtag for “Invisible,” has appeared in nearly 11.2 million Twitter timelines. The video of the song, under the title “U2 ‘Invisible’ – Bank of America in support of (RED),” has already been viewed about 1.2 million times on YouTube as of 10:20 am ET today. Both data points reflect well on Bank of America’s investment. Further, the fact that BofA was the only — yes, the only — bank with any advertising presence during the Super Bowl, the granddaddy of advertising moments, gave the Charlotte, N.C., bank a clear marketing win. (My family’s response to the U2 promo: “Cool.”)

Oddly, the U2 spot is not being viewed as an “advertisement” by the ad industry media. Neither Adweek, Advertising Age, nor The New York Times, among other media outlets, included the spot in its rankings of the best and worst ads of the Super Bowl, and that certainly hurts Bank of America’s ROI. But the bank will get another ad boost from its “final numbers” on downloads of the song and its contributions to (RED). Call it two marketing benefits for the price of one.

See here for why Bank of America decided to do the promotion. 

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