To mark the 2016 Super Bowl, Coke teamed up with Marvel to create a fun super- hero mash-up- pitching Ant Man against the Hulk.
The commercial starts inside Dr. Bruce Banner’s lab where a shrunken Ant-Man runs off with the last Coke from the office fridge. Banner is not happy and and goes busting out of the building in Hulk form, chasing after Ant-Man throughout the streets trying to get his soda back.
The comic-themed Coke ad came as a bit of a surprise. Before the Super Bowl itself, many thought that Coca-Cola’s Game Day spot would be in line with the new “Taste the Feeling” campaign that the brand announced recently at an event in Paris.
Instead, the brand took a fun approach to a movie franchise, tying in its latest product launch – Coke Mini.
Coca-Cola & Marvel#CocaCola #Marvel pic.twitter.com/CyCrETUdXl
— Berik Akkozov (@Akkozov_B) February 4, 2016
According to agency Carat, which analyses social media buzz around the commercial, men made up nearly 70% of social buzz around Hulk vs AntMan, advertising #CokeMini. Generating over 20,000 tweets and almost 1.2 million YouTube views, this Marvel character commercial was named both as “best coke ad ever” and also a “big fail”, with an overall net sentiment of 5%.
The official hashtag, #tastethefeeling, only generated 256 mentions. However, #antman and #hulk were much more widely used (1,686 mentions combined). A large proportion of conversation (73%) derived from retweets.