During the second quarter of last Sunday’s Super Bowl, Avocados from Mexico shared the limelight with Budweiser, Coca Cola, Doritos and several other of the world’s most famous brands as it aired a 30-second commercial touting the avocado and its use in guacamole.

Super Bowl advertising has become a cottage industry in itself.Alvaro Luque Monday morning quarterbacks are quick to rank the commercials picking out the winners and losers before the beer bottles and guacamole-stained chip bowls have been cleaned up.

This year, a cute dog commercial from the people who make Budweiser seemed to be the consensus favorite. An ad for a Fiat becoming more robust after a Viagra-like pill fell in its gas tank also was well liked.

And according to the Entertainment Weekly website, the Avocados from Mexico came in third place. Quite an accomplishment for the first produce ad to ever appear during what is always one of the most watched events — and most expensive ad buys — of the year.

Within 48 hours of the airing of the commercial, Alvaro Luque, president of Avocados from Mexico, answered questions for The Produce News about its impact, its success and its value. Following is an edited version of those responses.

(Editor’s note: Super Bowl advertisers are required to avoid the use of “Super Bowl” in discussing their advertising.)

The Produce News: How do you measure whether the Super Bowl ad was a success?

Luque: The whole Big Game experience was a success for us, not only the ad.

Brand building is a key component of our overall strategy. One of the key objectives is to “own” guacamole consumption in correlation to the football season. Football is the number one sport in the country, so it is a natural fit for Avocados from Mexico, the number one brand of avocados, to align its marketing program with the sport. We’ve been communicating this since last October in top sports platforms with two specific ads that reinforce “guac” consumption and fans’ love of it. The Big Game was the final integrated piece into this whole strategy for our first part of our fiscal year. We wanted to own guac and I think that we achieved this. When you see the numbers that we delivered and see our brand featured in top shows and news all around the country, that is when you realize that this was a big hit.

PN: The ad was well received and scored a good grade for creativity, but how do you know that equates to more sales and how do you measure that?

Luque: Mexico is the leading supplier of avocados in the United States, representing almost 70 percent of all avocado volume. Historically, January is our biggest month, which we attribute to guacamole consumption during the end of the football season including the Big Game. In that time period, Mexico represented more than 90 percent of the avocado market. We saw in this Big Game season a strong two-digit growth compared to last year.

Also this Big Game experience has opened doors for us to develop stronger promotional programs that reinforce our market growth objective. Our football promotion Guac Fiesta with Old El Paso was a complete success, and thanks to the great momentum we are building around this brand, our following promotion -- Fanwich -- is going to be our most successful promotion ever in terms of incremental display activity that will directly impact our sales at the store level.

Thanks to this great Big Game experience we also developed several strong foodservice programs and partnerships that will launch in the upcoming days with key national and regional players.

We are working on some post-game research studies to measure some additional results, but I am sure that this was a huge step in our brand-building platform. We have a long way to go in our plan, but this was a solid way to keep on building this leading national brand.

PN: Do you know how many people were watching when the ad ran?

Luque: We know from initial reports that 114.5 million viewers tuned in on Sunday to watch the Big Game. We know that this Big Game set new rating records based on NBC numbers, so we were in the right place at the right time.

In regards to our ad, media coverage and consumer engagement the past few days has been overwhelmingly positive. More than 750 million impressions in earned media in one week speaks volumes in terms of our performance.

PN: The Super Bowl ad was 30 seconds, but there is a one-minute version on the Internet. Will that be aired elsewhere? Was that a strategy consideration?

Luque: As of now, the extended version of the ad will only live mostly online. We released the 60-second spot to offer more content to consumers who enjoyed the ad. The spot was part of a larger creative campaign to engage the Big Game audience with dynamic online content and giveaways to promote the best of Mexico.

We developed a strategy plan that at the end worked very well. We released the teaser and the 60-second version three days before the Big Game and it delivered a lot of consumer engagement that made them fall in love with our concept. This was reinforced and expanded by our 30-second spot during the game. Now we will keep on pushing our 60-second version to give consumers the opportunity of enjoying a longer and richer version of our message.

PN: Some companies advertise on the Super Bowl every year creating anticipation for their ad. Is this a one-shot deal for AFM or might another ad debut next year?

Luque: Brand building is a key component of our overall strategy, and we will continue to look for exciting ways to tell the Avocados from Mexico story. We are going to review our results and think on our following steps. I think the Big Game suits us. It’s the highest consumption day of avocados in the country, where most of it comes from Mexico. When you have the advantage that only beer and snack brands could have, and that is knowing that a high percentage of the viewers will be enjoying your product in front of the screen, it delivers a double-whammy effect.

PN: How did the social media campaign launched during the game play out?

Luque: On game day, our approach was to dominate real-time social media engagement and promotion around the ad in order to extend the momentum while engaging with our fans. A full-fledged digital campaign launched following the spot premiere that included a site experience and featured seven online videos on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter around our #FirstDraftEver campaign and unfolded throughout the rest of the night and into this week. We awarded prizes to Twitter users who engaged with the videos and social content

Based on Adobe Marketing Cloud, we were the second brand in the country in social media performance. It cannot get better than that for a rising brand like us. Our digital plan worked great thanks to our team and agencies who really know how to think outside the box.

PN: Have you received good feedback from the trade?

Luque: We have received an overwhelming favorable response from the trade, partners and press. As the first fresh produce product to have an ad featured on the biggest TV watching event of the year, our success is a milestone for the industry and one that the fresh retail community appreciates.

PN: Finally, when you step back and judge it as objectively as you can, was advertising on the Super Bowl worth the cost

Luque: Guacamole is undoubtedly a popular snack for consumers on game day, and the TV ad represented the versatility, popularity and high quality of the fruit and brand. We are extremely happy with how it performed. Avocados from Mexico is thrilled to have joined the ranks of top advertisers during the Big Game. The ad continued the trend toward good-for-you choices advertised in a big way, and we’re thrilled to be a part of that important shift.

The Big Game buy was a media decision for us. We allocated part of our media campaign to it because we knew that in the aggregate the level of impressions and the [cost per thousand impressions] would pay off. Add to those good numbers brand building, national awareness and strong promotional programs, and it is a very positive investment for us.

Avocados From Mexico is now on a different level and this will also help drive growth for the category and bring new jobs and income to our great produce industry.