Who won the Super Bowl? It wasn’t the Seahawks, but women in Seattle, Denver and everywhere — as brands that demeaned females were called on the carpet as millions watched from the sidelines.

The magic bullet enabling this transformation? Twitter.

Nearly 30% of tweets sent during the game are about the ads. And women – who make up 46% of the Super Bowl viewing audience and are more prevalent and active on Twitter – are increasingly the consumers that brands are targeting with their $4 million spots.

I summarized my perspective in 140 characters by issuing this tweet in advance of Super Bowl:

Women watch equally, buy + share in greater #s than men on Super Bowl Sunday. Ads with female appeal = best return on $4 million price-tag. 

Then I sat back and watched those multi-million dollar ads roll in.

What did the women who make ads for a living think?

I’m an Advertising Creative Director. One of only 3% of Creative Directors who are women (shocking when you consider that 80% or more of consumer spending lies in the hands of women). I rallied my fellow female creatives and armed them with a Twitter hashtag — #3percentSB – and tasked them with sharing their real-time feedback on the ads.

Then I went one step further and invited 40 top ad women to gather in person at agencies in Boston (Hill Holliday) and San Francisco (The Hive) for a real-time Tweetup. Between the women who showed up at our live event and dozens of  others who chimed in from their living room couches, we sent a serious message.

All in all, 4,836 tweets carried our hashtag, with a reach of 2.5 million. 

What was the consensus of all that tweeting? That GoldieBox was a complete touchdown and that the ultimate fumble was SodaStream, whose spot with Scarlett Johansson quite literally “sucked.”

From a creative standpoint, Cheerios and Radio Shack earned points for fresh creative that was memorable and worthy of envy from the creative crowd.

Both Go Daddy and VW responded to our tweets, signaling that brands were indeed listening.

Did you watch? Did you pay attention to the ads? Super Bowl Sunday may be the ultimate cash-cow day of TV advertising, but the other 364 days of the year have a less noted, but still significant effect on us. All of us (our kids included) see 3,000 ad messages a day. When you like or dislike what you see, take a page from The 3% Conference’s playbook and tweet back. Brands are clearly listening.

Posted on 2/5/2014

Written by Kat Gordon

Kat Gordon is the founder and creative director of Maternal Instinct, an agency of creative problem solvers for marketing to moms, and founder of The 3% Conference, a ground-breaking event highlighting the business importance of female creative directors. She is also the mother to two boys, ages 11 and 15.

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