Bucking the trend

Minneapolis, US – Pizza brand Totino’s is using gaming site Twitch to reach audiences for this year’s Super Bowl.

• In a one-day competition, professional gamer iijeriichoii will take on three amateur gamers 
• The players will try to keep their concentration while being thrown around by an audience-controlled couch

On Sunday 7 February, Amazon-owned Twitch will host Totino’s Bucking Couch Bowl, an interactive viewing experience in which professional and amateur gamers will be pitted against each other while being spun and buffeted by a mechanical sofa.

Viewers can control the couch by posting commands in the comments section of Totino’s Twitch channel, seeing the effects of their engagement with the brand in real time. The broadcast will begin at 12:00pm PST on Super Bowl Sunday, part of the Twitch Plays programme that invites advertisers to run interactive campaigns.

‘We’re getting interest from bigger consumer packaged goods brands who are willing to take risks these days,’ says Andrea Garabedian, sales marketing director at Twitch. Through Twitch, the advert becomes playable and more multifaceted, and is likely to keep viewers attentive and increase the number of impressions.