The $2 million 30-second University of Wyoming Super Bowl ad touting former Cowboys quarterback and National Football League MVP Josh Allen caught a lot of eyeballs Sunday.
Just how successful the ad has been for promoting Wyoming’s only public four-year university is too early to tell, said UW spokesman Chad Baldwin. But it definitely was noticed. He estimates about 10 million viewers were projected to see the ad in the markets where it ran.
Whether UW scored a touchdown remains to be seen.
“To put it in football terms, Josh Allen-type terms, we took a shot downfield here,” Baldwin said. “This was not a Hail Mary. We weren’t just throwing something up and hoping someone would catch it.”
A record audience of 127.7 million viewers are estimated to have watched the game between television and streaming, the NFL reports.
Baldwin said the ad buy in markets where the university has seen past success recruiting students may have been similar to Allen throwing into coverage, but he believes the final result will show some “good yardage gained.”
Website Traffic
On Sunday, Baldwin said the university had 10,000 visitors to its website with 7,700 of those new.
That was a bump of 1,500 people compared with the same period last year. A map showing where the visitors were coming from revealed people from markets where the ad ran, including Denver, Seattle, Phoenix, Chicago and Dallas.
“Interestingly, there were some quite good numbers coming from Alabama, South Carolina, Florida, where we did not advertise,” he said.
Baldwin said the idea was for the TV ad to spur other potential eyeballs as the university put it out on social media, YouTube, the university’s Cowboy Joe Club for alumni Facebook page, and other places.
He estimates another half-million people saw the ad via those platforms while stories on the ad in Sports Illustrated, Cowboy State Daily and other media outlets added at least a few more thousand eyes.
“There were two objectives here: one was brand awareness and one was enrollment,” Baldwin said. “On the brand awareness side, I think it was very much successful — early indications are anyway. Enrollment is too early to say.”
Baldwin said enrollment figures aren’t known until May when the number of those admitted to the university for the fall becomes more clear.
In addition to the TV ad and media coverage, Allen also did his part by posting the ad on his social media, Baldwin said.
Cowboy Joe Club Take
On the university’s official Cowboy Joe Club Facebook page for alumni and donors, the reaction was positive while a few comments questioned the amount of money spent.
“Great ad, worth $2M? That’s a lot of scholarship money that could be used,” Dustin Braisted posted. “How many kids could have benefited from the Josh Allen fund instead?”
Paul Hubbard posted that he was not able to see the ad in Casper, while others posted they were not able to see it in cities such as Cheyenne and Detroit.
Requests for comment from University of Wyoming Board of Trustees Chairman Kermit Brown and Trustee Dave True were not immediately returned.
Baldwin said an analysis of the ad’s success will determine whether the university attempts a similar strategy in the future if Allen finds himself leading the Buffalo Bills to a Super Bowl.
The Underdog
The ad was produced in-house by the university’s Institutional Marketing Department in collaboration with the Athletic Department.
It depicts Allen, passed over by major Division I schools, doing what he does best on the football field, passing and running through players to dive into the end zone.
"At the University of Wyoming, we're the team that believes you can do anything. This is where underdogs come to shine and where real MVPs are made," a voice says over the highlights of Allen’s UW and high school days.
Baldwin emphasized the ad was primarily about promoting the university — though they were happy to celebrate their most famous graduate’s success.
“I think the university will continue to look for opportunities to celebrate the success of our most famous alum and promote the university,” he said. “Whether that’s (another) Super Bowl ad, it’s too early to say.”
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
