Brands prep­ping for their 2015 real-time Oreo moment in the Super Bowl got an ear­ly treat in the form of #Deflate­gate, the hash­tag spurred by the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the New Eng­land Patri­ots using under­in­flat­ed foot­balls in their vic­to­ry over the Indi­anapo­lis Colts in the AFC Cham­pi­onship game on Jan­u­ary 18.

While the pre-Super-Bowl con­ver­sa­tion typ­i­cal­ly sur­rounds game and broad­cast ele­ments like play­ers, trash talk, odds in Las Vegas, and ad cam­paigns, the #Deflate­gate hash­tag has snuck into pre-game pub­lic­i­ty this year, which is note­wor­thy because real-time mar­ket­ing for the Super Bowl has now pre­ced­ed the game itself.

#Deflate­gate has essen­tial­ly become a dry run for mar­keters gear­ing them­selves and their social media war rooms up for the game so they can respond in the moment to what­ev­er comes to pass when the New Eng­land Patri­ots face the Seat­tle Sea­hawks in Super Bowl XLIX in Glen­dale, Ari­zona.

“It’s called agile mar­ket­ing, respon­sive mar­ket­ing, real-time mar­ket­ing. They are a school [of mar­keters] that say, ‘We want to do what Oreo did,’ and the thing that’s trend­ing is #Deflate­gate,” said Greg Jar­boe, pres­i­dent of inter­net mar­ket­ing ser­vices firm SEO-PR. “All these guys are get­ting ready for what­ev­er it is and have jumped on the same band­wag­on. They’re not just sell­ing in Boston, but the rest of the coun­try. And that’s what’s trending…I’ve been watch­ing Super Bowl com­mer­cials for a lot of years and I don’t remem­ber any lead-up to the big game where there has been an issue like this before.”

The most mem­o­rable moments of Super Bowl XLIX remain to be seen, but the #Deflate­gate buzz remains and the hash­tag con­tin­ued to trend through­out the week­end, thanks in part to addi­tion­al atten­tion in the form of an SNL sketch and relat­ed dig­i­tal assets.

You can’t han­dle the truth. #deflate­gate #SNL pic.twitter.com/NYmEO3avMR — Sat­ur­day Night Live (@nbcsnl) Jan­u­ary 25, 2015

And this inter­est cer­tain­ly hasn’t gone unno­ticed by mar­keters – includ­ing plen­ty that aren’t pay­ing big bucks to adver­tise in the game itself.

Brands React To #Deflategate

Mul­ti­ple brands sim­ply look­ing to pig­gy­back have jumped on the #Deflate­gate band­wag­on to cap­i­tal­ize on the excite­ment tied to both the scan­dal and the Super Bowl. These brands include whiskey brand Maker’s Mark, which scored per­haps the biggest win with its “Always start the game ful­ly filled” tweet that result­ed in 3,800 retweets and 5,600 favorites. 

Always start the game ful­ly filled. #Deflate­Gate pic.twitter.com/NN00dynwmh — Mak­er’s Mark (@MakersMark) Jan­u­ary 23, 2015

Dough­nut brand Krispy Kreme, too, received about 3,500 retweets thanks to its “Ours are ful­ly filled!” tweet.

Ful­ly filled #Deflate­Gate pic.twitter.com/CRKA3G9ZcQ — krispykreme (@krispykreme) Jan­u­ary 21, 2015

Tire brand Miche­lin tweet­ed, “Infla­tion mat­ters!” to its 60,000 fol­low­ers and received 571 retweets, while gas brand 76 showed who it is root­ing for on Feb­ru­ary 1 in a tweet that said, “Don’t think deflat­ed is a good look for us. Or any­one. #GoSea­hawks.”

Home goods retail­er Bed, Bath & Beyond also chimed in with a link to a recharge­able air pump that spurred about 170 retweets. And the Stat­en Island Yan­kees weighed in with the size of their own balls, gen­er­at­ing 343 retweets.

Mean­while, fab­ric soft­en­er brand Downy and toi­let paper brand Charmin also report­ed­ly had their own #Deflate­gate tweets, but they appeared to have been pulled by Jan­u­ary 25. Jar­boe hypoth­e­sizes the polar­iz­ing issue of #Deflate­gate might have been enough to con­vince these lat­ter two brands to rethink their tweets.

“Peo­ple in New Eng­land are offend­ed, but the rest of the coun­try is lov­ing it,” Jar­boe said. “So maybe Charmin and Downy have decid­ed there was no rea­son to hurt their sales in New Eng­land in order to boost them in the rest of the coun­try.”

Past Super Bowl Real-Time Winners

Oreo’s 2013 Super Bowl black­out tweet has become some­thing of the gold stan­dard in real-time mar­ket­ing, gen­er­at­ing more than 15,000 retweets and plen­ty of copy­cat efforts dur­ing big events since.

Pow­er out? No prob­lem. pic.twitter.com/dnQ7pOgC — Oreo Cook­ie (@Oreo) Feb­ru­ary 4, 2013

JCPen­ney had per­haps the most mem­o­rable real-time cam­paign of 2014’s Super Bowl XLVIII with its #Tweet­ing­with­Mit­tens effort that, at least for a lit­tle while, gen­er­at­ed spec­u­la­tion the retail­er was drunk tweet­ing. That spec­u­la­tion in and of itself prompt­ed addi­tion­al real-time efforts from oth­er brands before JCPenney’s big reveal that it was hav­ing trou­ble typ­ing because it was wear­ing Team USA mit­tens.

Oops…Sorry for the typos. We were #Tweet­ing­With­Mit­tens. Was­n’t it sup­posed to be cold­er? Enjoy the game! #GoTea­mUSA pic.twitter.com/e8GvnTiEGl — JCPen­ney (@jcpenney) Feb­ru­ary 3, 2014

But despite atten­tion from brands like Dori­tos and Kia, JCPenney’s #Tweet­ing­with­Mit­tens post still only gen­er­at­ed about 3700 retweets, which is a far cry from Oreo’s 2013 suc­cess.

What do you think of #Deflate­gate? Will it be big­ger for real-time mar­keters than any actu­al moments dur­ing the Super Bowl?