How Beyoncé won the Super Bowl

14 February 2024 - Editorial

Nicola Murray, Managing Partner at M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment

  

She may not have been the half-time performer this year, but Queen Bey used one of the world’s biggest stages to prove, once again, that her only competition is herself. Eclipsing her previous surprise music drops and leveraging the unrivalled cultural buzz around the highly anticipated Super Bowl ads was, like her music, orchestrated to perfection. 

After weeks of anticipation from Swifties, Usher’s generation-defying fanbase hypothesising his set-list while admiring his Skims campaign, and sports fans debating the prowess of the SF 49ers or KC Chiefs, Beyonce strutted in (in custom D&G thigh-high cowboy stilettos) and stole the show. Her Super Bowl ad shifted the global conversation and refocused the world’s attention on her three-part project that is consciously reclaiming black-created music genres and solidifying her legacy as an artist who truly transcends. She came to win. And she did. (Sorry Usher). 

While pop and RnB swept the music narrative for Super Bowl LVIII, Beyoncé hit us up with some Country. Magic. Like Act 1, it’s likely to be an education on the legacy of the genre, whilst at the same time enabling fans to reuse their sequin cowboy hats from the Renaissance World Tour! (We can put those costs towards flights to Vegas for her sure-to-be-announced Sphere residency... assuming the nod to the world’s newest entertainment mecca is intentional as with Beyonce, it always is) It’s the red thread we never knew we needed. 

Playing it back, we can see the meticulous planning behind the supercharged tease of Renaissance Act II. From the impeccable Pharrell designed Louis Vuitton cowboy outfit at the GRAMMYS (perfectly captured in images catapulted across the globe as Beyonce looked up towards her husband stealing the show in his own way, while advocating against her Album of the Year snubs) to fans sleuthing on socials (shout out to DeuxMoi) to the ad partnership and the global radio play. The new material landed with a force. One minute we are floored by a TV ad in a sports game, the next the track is blasting out on Radio1. And that’s how you do it. 

It’s inspirational stuff, resetting the bar for music artists to aspire to her level of success through making their marketing machine just as much of an artform as their music. To take a line from her Netflix Released Coachella film, “If my country ass can do it, they can do it!”.

Like her strategies, her brand partnerships are long-term and this partnership has provided a relationship of trust which all parties benefit from. Verizon, a partner of the RWT and likely to be sponsor of (fingers crossed) a residency at The Sphere, have managed to provide a peak behind the curtain of a global icon who is famously protective of her brand. The advert perfectly nods to her ‘break the internet’ moment of 2013’s ‘Beyonce’ album (a whole year before Kim K’s Paper magazine cover for anyone in doubt!) while providing a dollop of the Beyonce dichotomy-awareness; an icon of our times, but humble enough to keep working as if she still has something to prove. The production is slick, the script is on point, showing a side to her we don’t often get to see, but the ending of the ad is the mic drop, an as always with Beyonce, the mic is ON.

Never mind the final score, this will be the touchdown we’ll be referencing for years to come.