Small Business Big Game: A Super Bowl “Little Engine That Could” Story

It seems almost impossible for small, community-based businesses to advertise on such a large stage and with such a huge bill. It doesn't seem relevant for our audience and it certainly doesn't fit into any ad budget that I've managed recently (or ever).

However, today we are going to dive into a "Little Engine That Could" type of story and take a look at how a small business scored big by winning a Super Bowl ad that launched their brand to new heights.

Back in 2016, Death Wish Coffee was a small company that was founded in Saratoga Spring, New York. They reported a 6 million dollar revenue in 2015. If they were to purchase a 30-second Super Bowl ad at that time, they would have spent almost all of their revenue ($5.5 mil) on that ad and would have been advertising a bankrupt business. That’s where Intuit Quickbooks came into play. Apparently, being such a household name, their marketing team decided they didn’t need the ad space and instead, chose to hold a contest where they would pay for a small business to have 30 seconds during the most watched sporting event in the world. Genius branding plan for them too, by the way. Rest assured although they didn’t have the actual ad space, their name was all over Super Bowl L.

Death Wish won the online vote, and Intuit named them the winner of the contest. From there, Death Wish created a 30-second ad of Vikings rowing their vessel across a sea of coffee to certain death and destruction. You can check it out on YouTube. A week before Super Bowl L, Intuit posted the video on Youtube, and Death Wish saw an almost instant 22x increase in their sales the week before. They forecasted a 15 million dollar revenue that year due to the Super Bowl ad space they had won, and instead saw $20 million.

After the ad and that year of massive growth, Death Wish went from being sold online and in 7 stores to being sold in thousands of stores across the country. They’re still growing, recently unveiling their sponsorship of Anthony Alfredo, a Nascar driver, in his quest to qualify for the Daytona 500.

So there you have it, a small business launched to new heights by a Super Bowl ad they didn’t even have to pay for. The moral of the story - don’t overlook opportunity just because your brand is smaller and your budget is tight. Remember - just keep chugging along.