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Brands Leverage ‘Better Call Saul’ Premiere

Cinnabon, Dram­buie, Maker’s Mark, Miller Lite, and Mer­cedes-Benz try to cap­i­tal­ize on the hype of the new AMC series “Bet­ter Call Saul”.

Lisa Lacy By Lisa Lacy. Join the discussion » 0 comments

Con­sumer excite­ment sur­round­ing AMC’s “Break­ing Bad” pre­quel “Bet­ter Call Saul” hasn’t gone unno­ticed. Brands with legit ties to the series, such as those with cameos in the pilot, and brands with no ties to the series what­so­ev­er tried to cap­i­tal­ize on the #Bet­ter­Call­Saul hash­tag dur­ing the two-night pre­miere.

“Break­ing Bad” cre­ator Vince Gilli­gan and star Bob Odenkirk are back on screens for the first time since Sep­tem­ber 29, 2013 and audi­ences – and brands – couldn’t be more thrilled.

In fact, accord­ing to a press release, the Feb­ru­ary 8 pre­miere of AMC’s hot­ly antic­i­pat­ed “Break­ing Bad” pre­quel, “Bet­ter Call Saul”, was the biggest series pre­miere in cable his­to­ry, attract­ing 4.4 mil­lion view­ers ages 18 to 49 and 4 mil­lion view­ers ages 25 to 54.

In addi­tion, accord­ing to social ana­lyt­ics firm Top­sy, the hash­tag #Bet­ter­Call­Saul gen­er­at­ed more than 60,000 tweets in the 24-hour peri­od from Feb­ru­ary 8 to 9, which is when the sec­ond episode aired on AMC.

Here’s are five brands that tried to lever­age the “Bet­ter Call Saul” pre­miere.

Cinnabon

Bak­ery chain Cinnabon has part­nered with cable net­work AMC to exploit its new­found rel­e­vance after promi­nent place­ment in the open­ing scene of the pre­miere thanks in part to an Odenkirk line from Break­ing Bad: “If I’m lucky, in a month from now, best-case sce­nario, I’m man­ag­ing a Cinnabon in Oma­ha.”

As a result, the cin­na­mon roll chain host­ed a prod­uct give­away on Feb­ru­ary 9 and is ask­ing fans to sub­mit images tagged with #Saul­Selfie on Twit­ter. Per Top­sy, the lat­ter effort has result­ed in about 270 men­tions to date.

But the Amer­i­can mall sta­ple was also busy tweet­ing to its 78,000 fol­low­ers, tout­ing its rela­tion­ship to Odenkirk and the new series:


Despite the ref­er­ence to Kanye West’s preter­nat­u­ral­ly famous bet­ter half, it was the first tweet that was most suc­cess­ful for the brand, gen­er­at­ing about 800 retweets.

But the prod­uct place­ment didn’t stop there.

Dram­buie

Scotch whiskey brand Dram­buie also got some screen time in the pre­miere and proud­ly tweet­ed:

It, how­ev­er, only gen­er­at­ed a hand­ful of retweets among the brand’s 3,000 fol­low­ers.

But that didn’t stop oth­er alco­hol brands from try­ing to play on the show’s pop­u­lar­i­ty as well with their own real-time efforts. Maker’s Mark Bour­bon brand Maker’s Mark, for exam­ple, tweet­ed:


Mak­er’s Mark also post­ed:

Miller Lite

Beer brand Miller Lite sent no less than 10 tweets over the course of AMC’s two-night pre­miere event to its 217,000 fol­low­ers, includ­ing:

Mer­cedes-Benz

Even Ger­man auto man­u­fac­tur­er Mer­cedes-Benz got caught up in the Saul Good­man excite­ment, tweet­ing from its @MBUSA account:

Lisa Lacy

Written by Lisa Lacy

Lisa is a senior features writer for Inked. She also previously covered digital marketing for Incisive Media. Her background includes editorial positions at Dow Jones, the Financial Times, the Huffington Post, AOL, Amazon, Hearst, Martha Stewart Living and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

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