That one was Arby's. Singer Pharrell Williams showed up at the awards show wearing an oversized, puffy brown fedora. It quickly got its own parody Twitter account (with more than 18,000 followers), not to mention all the Twitter mentions. The fast-food chain known for its big cowboy hat logo quickly tweeted "Hey (at)Pharrell, can we have our hat back? (hash)GRAMMYs."
It went over well. Arby's tweet got more than 83,000 retweets and a response from Williams himself: "Y'all tryna start a roast beef?"
"Brands need to have the perfect storm of the right opportunity, the right message and most critically, a relationship between your brand and whatever it is that you are trying to connect about," analyst Williamson said. "If it's forced or if (it looks) planned, it's going to come across negatively."
Admitting that the right moment may never come up, some brands are taking a different approach.
M&M's marketers plan to use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and the video-sharing app Vine to distribute short animated videos made from peanut M&M's. The clips will include commentary from the legendary retired quarterback Joe Montana.
Seth Klugherz, senior director for Mars Inc.'s M&M's brand, said in a statement that the brand is "not simply hoping to `win the night' with a single post or tweet" but add to viewers' experience throughout the night.
Elsewhere in candy land, Butterfinger plans to riff off its brand name, which is slang for someone who tends to drop stuff - such as a football.
"The idea of a Butterfinger moment, organically, the name of our brand will come up," Butterfinger brand manager Jeremy Vandervoet said. "We can't predict it but we're going to be ready to respond. We don't know how it will happen."
Even without a blackout, Sunday's game is likely to be the most tweeted, Facebooked and Instagrammed-about Super Bowl, simply because more people - and brands - are tweeting, Facebooking and Instagramming than a year ago. There were 2.8 million tweets about the 2011 Super Bowl. That grew to nearly 14 million in 2012 and more than 24 million in 2013.
Not wanting to be left out when it comes to public chatter about big events, Facebook recently introduced its own take on trending topics. The feature is starting to come to users in the U.S., U.K. and elsewhere. It lets users see what topics others are talking about, whether that's the Super Bowl or their favorite commercial.
Still, Williamson said it's still unproven how effective all this real-time marketing is. People might be tweeting about Oreo and Arby's, but are they eating their cookies and roast beef sandwiches?
