Digital industry executive Dave Ray is the winner of Initiative's Super Bowl competition using its marketing-multi betting platform.
The platform allowed industry pundits to try their hands at predicting the biggest, the best, and the most outrageous ads of the Super Bowl.
“I’m a huge NFL fan - for both on field action and as an industry," says winner Ray.
"The competition let me match those two fandoms and was great fun. Like any punter I’d followed the hype leading into the Super Bowl which guided my answers…not to mention a large amount of dumb luck.
"I’m looking forward to introducing myself at all future professional and personal meetings as Initiative 2023 Marketing Multi champion.”
Chris Colter, Initiative chief strategy and product officer, said: “After little evidence of this across the past couple of years, advertisers have gone back to delivering an integrated, interactive and social-first brand experience, reinforcing media’s role as a cultural accelerant in these major brand moments."
Ryan Haeusler, Initiative head of communications design Sydney, said: “This year we had some spot-on predictions, along with a few unexpected absences. Jennifer Coolidge’s appearance in Elf Cosmetics’ spot was one of the most expected outcomes with odds of only $1.23.
"From a category perspective, as predicted by our punters, we had a high volume of Betting app and EV manufacturer spots.
"We also had a lot of people expecting to see appearances from Chat GPT AI (81% of punters) and Ryan Reynolds (92% of punters), that didn’t come to life in the broadcast, but made an appearance across social channels for a fraction of the price.
“Unfortunately, we didn’t see any Jenna Ortega Wednesday Dances or Spit-gate references to give the ad-spectacular that extra buzz.
"While we had a lot of celebrity appearances, there has been a general consensus across agency and social media that the creative ideas were all pretty safe, which isn’t to say they weren’t effective in driving consumers, just left us wanting a bit more."
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