The num­ber of Super Bowl ads with hash­tags slipped to 50 per­cent in 2015, which is down from 57 per­cent in the pri­or year, accord­ing to Mar­ket­ing Land’s Hash­tag Bowl. That means Super Bowl XLIX had a total of 28 hash­tags. On such a huge night for the adver­tis­ing indus­try, does a luke­warm embrace of the one-time brand­ed Twit­ter sta­ple mean any­thing sig­nif­i­cant about how brands are talk­ing to con­sumers?

Hash­tag use was spo­radic among Super Bowl adver­tis­ers this year. In addi­tion, over­all men­tions of social net­works was down as a whole with both Twit­ter and Face­book each los­ing one men­tion this year, for a total of three and four, respec­tive­ly. But it was obvi­ous­ly still an active night for brands on both net­works. For its part, McDonald’s turned to Twit­ter for a Super Bowl give­away that report­ed­ly tweet­ed about oth­er ads dur­ing the game, asked fans to retweet it, and then gave away relat­ed prod­ucts. By Feb­ru­ary 3, the tweets had been removed from McDonald’s Twit­ter feed, but, per the afore­men­tioned report, these tweets did­n’t include hash­tags. Super Bowl XLIX also saw plen­ty of brand-brand inter­ac­tion on Twit­ter, with mar­keters at big game adver­tis­ers using the plat­form to com­ment on each other’s ads and/or oth­er­wise engage each oth­er. That includes brands like Dori­tos, Loc­tite, Nis­san, Bud Light and Coca-Cola.

Are Brands Rethinking Hashtags?

Accord­ing to Apu Gup­ta, CEO of visu­al mar­ket­ing plat­form Curalate, the hash­tag drop-off is not as inter­est­ing as the fact that only sev­en ads with hash­tags actu­al­ly used brand­ed hash­tags – and four of those hash­tags came from Dori­tos, which used #Dori­tos, and Lexus, which used hash­tags like #Lexus­NX and #Lexus­RC. “I think the hash­tag may have had its day when it comes to brands using them in the way they once did,” said Mike Gre­han, CMO of search mar­ket­ing agency Acronym Media. “There have been far too many inci­dents where brands get it wrong and, by and large, they’re total­ly mis­used any­way. I mean, if they’re fol­low­ing a thread of a con­ver­sa­tion or top­ic, fine. But in the main they’re used as self-pro­mo­tion­al punc­tu­a­tion more than any­thing else #iamtheza­ni­est­per­son­ev­er.” In addi­tion, Gre­han said con­sumers can’t always read hash­tags cor­rect­ly, point­ing to the #nowthatch­eris­dead hash­tag after the death of for­mer UK Prime Min­is­ter Mar­garet Thatch­er that caused con­cern for enter­tain­er Cher in the Twit­ter­sphere. “I don’t think there’s a de-empha­sis on social. Prob­a­bly more of a rethink,” Gre­han said.

Brands Focus On Engaging, Inspiring

Gup­ta agreed there has been a shift in that being social is “no longer about spoon-feed­ing con­sumers mar­ket­ing mes­sag­ing and urg­ing them to fol­low your brand. Rather, it’s about cre­at­ing con­tent that’s both inspi­ra­tional and action­able, and using that to start a con­ver­sa­tion that out­lives the Big Game.” McDon­ald’s, which had one of the top Super Bowl ads, had 634,310 men­tions dur­ing the game, accord­ing to Twit­ter. And McDonald’s did­n’t use a sin­gle hash­tag, Gup­ta said. Always, the sec­ond most men­tioned brand on Twit­ter, pulled in 455,695 men­tions for its #LikeA­Girl cam­paign, Twit­ter says. “In oth­er words, hash­tags don’t start a dia­logue, but they can chan­nel the con­ver­sa­tion and make it eas­i­er for con­sumers to par­tic­i­pate,” Gup­ta said. “At the end of the day, both McDon­ald’s and Always went after the heart, choos­ing emo­tion­al uplift over heavy brand­ing. And what they proved was that, when done right, this can be even more effec­tive.” Fur­ther, GoDad­dy says it saw more upside in Face­book. Like oth­er brands, the Inter­net domain reg­is­trar and web host­ing com­pa­ny had addi­tion­al con­tent sur­round­ing its Super Bowl ad, such as Coke’s online videos, the McDonald’s Twit­ter con­test, and Nation­wide’s web­site on child­hood safe­ty. “[That] meant it was less about a hash­tag on an ad and more about the engag­ing with peo­ple who went to social media nat­u­ral­ly,” accord­ing to a GoDad­dy rep.

What do you think the future holds for brand­ed hash­tags?