Advertiser Gluttony at the Super Bowl

 

The Super Bowl is a feeding frenzy in more ways than one

This Super Bowl Sunday (Feb 7, 2010), US fans in will devour nearly 15 000 tons of potato chips - most of these dipped in 8 million pounds of guacamole sauce.  On Monday morning antacid sales will soar by 20% and 6% of the workforce will call in sick. 

“So the yanks are a bunch of revolting gluttons”, you might say, “...tell me something I don’t know!”

OK!

With the largest TV audience in the US, the advertising feeding frenzy is even bigger.  As one superbowl-info.com points out:

“Super Bowl commercials have become an entity unto themselves....the commercials are half the fun of watching the Super Bowl. Millions upon millions of dollars are spent by companies to promote their product during this great sporting event. They spare no cost to make their commercials as memorable as possible”

In 2009, companies spent at staggering $2.6m on a 30 second spot, a massively inflated cost on the $1.2m for the same slot in 2007.  But, as Branding Strategy Insider points out...

“the high price of a Super Bowl ad leads many brands to explore how they can maximize their association with the Super Bowl well beyond their 30-second spot”.

To maximise this association, many advertisers are spending as much time agonising about pre-game buzz for their ads as they do about the ads themselves.  Companies like GoDaddy.com, well known for its controversial ads, is promising fans another wave of saucy ads on match day.

Some questions must be asked however:

·         When does the performance anxiety associated with the event and its massive audience become so large for advertisers that it’s simply not enough to advertise on match day? 

·         Why has the buzz become as, if not more important, than the match day slot itself? 

 

There’s a vicious circle at work here.   

If you’ve made the call to go after the granddaddy of all audiences – and convinced your CFO that the slot is worth paying for... why not make sure you’re ad can stand on its own two feet?  Pursuing the strategy of pre-bowl “invitation” is almost like saying... “Our ad may not be good enough, we need to spend even more”.

Here are three advertisers that I admire for their decisiveness and risk taking.  They’re happy to sit back and “simply advertise”.  Here’s why:

1.      Pepsi – the Godfather of Super Bowl advertising.  Turned its back on the spectacle after 23 consecutive years to pursue a $20m cause related campaign (“Pepsi Refresh”) using Social Media.  The move is so outrageous as to be gratuitously buzz worthy in its own right...and I wish Pepsi every success in this bold new adventure.  For an excellent analysis of this move read the Forrester’s analysis here.

 

2.      Focus on the Family, a Christian non-profit group who raised the $3m to air a 30 sec pro-life ad.  CBS, (broadcaster of the Super Bowl), has been heavily criticised by pro-choice groups for selling the slot but will flight it regardless.  No need for paid-for pre-game buzz here – whenever traditional and liberal America collide you are guaranteed oodles free publicity.  On 2 Feb, Mashable said the ad was the second most buzzworthy superbowl ad on Twitter.

 

3.      Apple – 1984 Commercial – arguably the greatest commercial ever made and certainly one of the most expensive.  The ad, aired only during the Super Bowl and never again publicly was so ahead of its time that it created between 50 and 60 times more value in free publicity than it did from the paid spots that it ran. – for those who never saw it, here it is...