At a time when the world’s biggest brands fight for attention in the Super Bowl’s crowded advertising space, Intel took a different route. We used our technology to create a form of entertainment on the biggest stage in America. During Lady Gaga’s Super Bowl Halftime Show, we launched over 300 custom drones over Houston’s NRG Stadium in a custom light show that seamlessly integrated our technology with the show. It was the first drone integration on television.

It lasted only a few minutes, but it gave millions of people around the world their first experience of seeing a drone perform and demonstrated an entirely new function for the technology that many had never considered.

On February 5, 2017, the drone light show aired on live television with 150 million viewers watching. Moments after the show, we launched a broadcast spot to provide brand attribution. We also launched real-time content on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, which kept fans engaged after the event.

In the week following the event, the drone performance gained significant media coverage in a variety of news, sports, technology, and music publications. With the drones capturing the world’s attention, we launched an additional film on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, which gave viewers a peek behind the scenes and showed how the show came to life.

An estimated 150 million people watched the Super Bowl Halftime Show live, and the performance has gained almost 30 million views on YouTube. Within the Super Bowl broadcast, the drone light show generated the highest aided-awareness ad recall at 53%. The show garnered 4.9 billion potential impressions through article and broadcast clip mentions, including over 950 feature articles and over 1,200 media hits.