Super Bowl’s connection to TV advertising might well have started the age of brand storytelling.

Almost exactly 30 years ago, Apple aired one of the most memorable of Super Bowl ads, the classic “1984” spot. Since then, the hype and energy surrounding the Big Game’s advertising that airs between plays keeps getting bigger and bigger.

These ads are viewed as the pinnacle of the trade. Some of the best. And one thing you can notice is that a lot of these ads, at least some of the most memorable ones, are true examples of brand storytelling.

In this week’s article, Tessa Wegert from Contently makes her point around the fact that longer-form advertising that integrates strong brand storytelling has been closely tied to Super Bowl ads.

Some of the ads sometimes clock in at about 2 minutes (Chrysler’s “Born of fire” from 2011 is an example). Research shows the top 10 Super Bowl ads of last year averaged 89 seconds in length, more than double since 2010.

The ecosystem has changed.

Brands are now tying their Big Game ads in a larger set of collateral elements that includes audience participation (Coca Cola, last year), complementary content available online, etc.

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Storytelling, longer form content, migration to the web. All trends heavily set into today’s advertising and branding landscape. Is the Super Bowl partly responsible for this? As Wegert puts it :

“Without first seeing the effects of in-depth brand storytelling on Super Bowl audiences, would advertisers have been so quick to embrace it? Without knowing consumers would willingly watch several minutes of commercial content, would brands have extended the length of their videos online?”