Nobody Ever Left the Super Bowl to Buy a Coke

Picture Steve.

It's a Sunday in February. Steve is on the couch in Loveland with a plate of wings, three friends, and a game that's tied going into the fourth quarter. Somewhere between a field goal and a fumble, a Coca-Cola ad comes on.

A bottle sweating on a table. A few smiling faces. Thirty seconds, and it's gone.

Here is what does not happen. Steve does not put down his wings, grab his keys, and drive to King Soopers for a Coke. Neither do his friends. Nobody in America does.

Coca-Cola paid millions of dollars for those thirty seconds. Measured by the Cokes sold during the game, they got almost nothing back. So why do they do it every single year?

Because three weeks later, Steve is standing in a gas station on Eisenhower, thirsty, staring into a cooler. Coke on the left. Pepsi on the right. He doesn't think about it. He doesn't remember the ad. His hand just goes left.

Why is social media marketing important for businesses?

Social media marketing is important because people rarely buy the first time they see a business. They buy later, from whoever is already familiar. Coke isn't paying to make Steve thirsty. They're paying to be the answer already sitting in his head the moment he is. Consistent content builds that familiarity at a scale no handshake can.

Your next seller is Steve

Now swap the cooler for a house. Somewhere in Northern Colorado tonight, a homeowner is scrolling Instagram on the couch. They aren't selling. They might not sell for two years.

They watch fifteen seconds of a local agent walking through a bright Windsor kitchen. They laugh at a reel about the strangest thing she's ever found in a crawl space. Then they keep scrolling. No call. No message. Nothing the agent can measure.

Then life happens. A job offer in Denver. A baby on the way. The last kid leaves for college. One night at the dinner table, somebody says it out loud: "Maybe it's time to sell."

And the very next sentence is a name.

It's almost never the agent with the slickest listing presentation or the lowest fee. It's the agent they've been watching for months without realizing it. The one whose face they know and whose voice they've heard, who already feels like someone they trust.

That agent gets the call before anyone else gets the chance to compete.

Most agents think they have a sales problem. What they really have is a visibility problem.

Why doesn't "post and pray" work?

This is where most agents get it wrong. They post a Just Listed graphic, wait for the phone to ring, and when it doesn't, they decide social media doesn't work. Then they go quiet until the next listing.

That's Coke running one ad, checking the register at halftime, and canceling the campaign.

The point of social media was never the next morning. It's the next eighteen months. A ten dollar product can sell the first time someone sees it. A home sale, the biggest financial decision most families ever make, never does. It takes trust, and trust takes repetition.

What is the main purpose of social marketing?

The main purpose of social marketing is to capture attention and then hold it until the person on the other side is ready to make a decision. For a realtor, that means staying visible and trusted between transactions, so when someone in your market decides to buy or sell, your name is already in their head.

What that means for what you post

If the goal is to be remembered, listings alone won't get you there, because almost nobody scrolling is buying a house this month. The agents who own their markets run four kinds of content at once:

• Listings. The obvious one, and the weakest on its own.
• Themselves. Their face, their opinions, their personality.
• Entertainment. Content their ideal client genuinely enjoys, like the home with an ice cream parlor in the basement.
• Proof. Real clients, on camera, happy with the result.

Look closely at the biggest names in real estate on social media and you'll notice it. Almost none of their content is about a house you can buy. It's about them.

Are views the point?

One agent posts a reel that does 40,000 views and celebrates. Another does 900 and feels like a failure.

But if those 40,000 views came from people three states away who will never buy or sell here, they're worth close to nothing. If the 900 came from homeowners in Fort Collins, Loveland, and Windsor, that's 900 future dinner tables where your name might come up.

Fifty of the right people beat fifty thousand of the wrong ones every time. The number that matters isn't how many people saw it. It's who saw it, and whether they stayed long enough to remember you.

So what is social media actually for?

It isn't for selling a house this week. It's for making sure that when someone in your market decides to sell, your name is already in their head.

Steve never knew the ad worked. That's exactly how you know it did.