February 3, 2012
Super Bowl Ads Played Out By Game Time
The commercials used to be a big deal at the Super Bowl. People gathered around the television set would wait to see what new, funny creative was coming on during breaks in the game and then start their reviews. Water coolers on Monday were often as much talk about the spots as the game itself.
In recent years, however, some of the magic seems to have gone out of the Super Bowl commercial game. Now, companies start building a social media and public relations buzz about the great spot that’s coming. As with movies and television shows, the buildup can often lead to disappointment when spots don’t live up to the hype. In other instances, the pre-game promotion includes showing the actual commercials beforehand, leaving very little reason to stay in front of the set to watch the ads again on Sunday.
Brian Thomas, general manager of brand marketing at Volkswagen of America, told the Chicago Tribune, “The Super Bowl is really not a game on a Sunday afternoon anymore.”
Instead, Mr. Thomas, said it “is almost a three-week PR and social media campaign, and you have to think of it that way.” Volkswagen is an advertiser in this year’s game and is looking to top last year’s “Kid Vader” spot with a sequel, of sorts, this year.
Marketers contend that, with the cost of running a spot during the Super Bowl, they almost have to begin their pitch weeks in advance to help them get a better return on their advertising investment. According to The Wall Street Journal, the air time for a 30-second spot during the Giants-Patriots game will cost around $3.5 million.
There’s also the reality that there are a ton of commercials booked for the game. One way marketers think they can cut through the clutter is to get an early start.
BrainTrust
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Discussion Questions
Discussion Questions: What is your take on marketing Super Bowl commercials before the game? Does this give marketers a bigger bang or their advertising buck or just lessen the impact?
Poll
Super Bowl ads are a major investment for advertisers, so I think that getting the ads out early, and allowing for them to go viral, is a good business decision.
This should be an empirical question — research should be able to show the difference in sales impact for a commercial running pre-game versus during the game. You have to hold GRPs constant, but that shouldn’t be hard for someone like SymphonyIRI with their split-cable Behaviorscan panels.
Personally, I would expect to find that you dilute the impact of the ad by introducing it early.
The trend toward online advertising creates more viral interest in watching the commercials during the game, not less. This sort of “sneak preview” seems to be drawing larger audiences to the Super Bowl, regardless of interest in the actual game or teams involved. Last year’s Super Bowl was the most-watched ever, and we can expect this year’s game to surpass it. If the goal is to expose advertising to a broader audience, more power to the online commercials.
At a cost of $116,666 a second, Super Bowl advertisers are marketing their 30-second commercials at every opportunity before the game. This process further enlarges this Big Bucks phenomenon, but it might also be transferring the game itself into a parallel event, not a solo feature.
As this ever-increasing high-ticket marketing frenzy continues, don’t be surprised if the actual Super Bowl game in the future becomes a halftime event. Should that happen, one could then say that advertisers are getting a bigger bang for their bucks … but how will the players feel about that?
The economics along with the digital landscape have dictated that every channel — before, during, and after the actual game — must be utilized. When the TODAY show has to claim that they have an exclusive showing of the entire 60 second spot that will be shown during the Super Bowl, the anticipation of that surprise and delight that comes with that first broadcast is lost. The new, digitally empowered consumer landscape now dictates that this must be an orchestrated campaign across all available channels. Every marketer dreams of igniting that ‘viral’ fire. It’s a brave new world where we are all being forced to innovate and experiment.
Volkswagon also seems to have a viral hit on its hands with their infectious “The Bark Side” spot.
At least, the dogs out there are enjoying it: “Chewbacca like response to ‘The Bark Side’”.
H.L. Mencken was right, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” Look … I’m all for free markets and letting the buyer beware, but Super Bowl ads are the advertising equivalent of shooting slightly demented fish in a barrel. It’s fair, but somehow it’s really like robbing a kid of their milk money.
First of all, hat’s off to Super Bowl marketers who, like Victoria’s Secret, have convinced the couch-bound and chicken wing deprived citizens of our fair land that advertising is entertainment and, not just ordinary entertainment, but entertainment you need to devote hours of your life to. Next, more kudos for successfully stretching that “special moment” between Cheetos ingestion and reaching for another cold one past 30 or 60 seconds first to the day after the game, and now to weeks before the game.
If they could figure out how to do that for other “pleasurable” activities they probably wouldn’t have to sell cars, insurance, etc.
So … why not just market the spots before the game? In fact … why not make it easier for all those poor fans whose attention spans are shrinking because of over-ingesting salty snacks and whose eyes are strained from staring at their 500 inch plasmas and just eliminate the game altogether? Think of it! You could just run all the commercials — and, of course, that fabulous halftime show — and shave hours off the required viewing period.
Or … one could envision marketing heaven where, having eliminated the game, clearly the least important part of the show, you could now have even more time for ads — selling commercials for all commercial programming. Why, with any luck the months of January and February could be completely devoted to nothing but watching and discussing Super Bowl ads and how bad the halftime entertainment was.
Eureka!!! We have found it!!!
Even for the largest advertisers, the “investment” for a Super Bowl ad, including development and production, is still a significant amount, approaching $4-5 million for a :30 impact. There is no choice but to extend the reach, at least in terms of time span, if not actual audience, if there is to be some measurable effect.
Interestingly, so many of the SB spots seem to be “one-offs” and not connected to longstanding campaigns and brand messages. At the same time, the overwhelming majority of the advertisers this year are not new to the SB, indicating that they believe the investment is worthwhile.
Given the level of analysis we put into loyalty marketing investments, many of which are less than the cost of a single :30 spot in the Super Bowl, it’s always amazing how little measurement or analysis is done versus how much “hope” there is. This morning’s WSJ did a piece on the increasing amount of research that is done prior to running the ads and it is striking how subjective it is and how little is invested in truly understanding the impact of such a large investment.
I think they lose some of the ooompph with everyone not seeing it at once and the discussion that follows. I have seen several of them already. I miss the anticipation of the commercials during the game, especially since my team will be watching the game from the French Quarter.
A GRP or TRP (target rating point) is not created equal — pre-game vs. in-action vs. post-game. The decision by what appears to be the majority of clients and their media placement/agency partners to fully reveal their spots in order to get more eyeballs in advance of the game is a natural evolution of marketing/media strategy/tactics. As a former media director, teaser campaigns (see JCP over the past three weeks) are not out of the ordinary.
Previewing or fully revealing your campaign makes sense if you aren’t concerned with giving the competition advance notice of your new positioning or service offering. As the game play date has moved further into the Spring selling season, the strategy of launching a new product/service offering with a Super Bowl ad has lost some of its luster.
Generating buzz and sales in advance of the big game is simply using your status as a Super Bowl advertiser. It is sound business strategy. Now, think back to the famous Apple Macintosh 1984 ad — better to show it in advance or blow us all away seeing it for the first (and only time) in the game? My vote goes for the sheer power of “wow”/surprise, and dominating the post-game buzz for weeks (or in this case years) to follow.
Bigger bang. Increase utility of dollars invested. Goose the USA Today score. Teasers generate forward interest. Social media extends and integrates brand voice.
But does familiarity breed contempt?
Advertising ain’t for sissies either!
With absolutely nothing to back this up, I’m going out on a limb to say that I think most of the huge audience that will watch the SB will not have seen the preview showings. And many who see those ads will not see them during the SB. So, it makes economic sense to use them for other audiences. It does reduce the suspense factor to show them before.
As far as I can tell, the SB has three draws: the game, the commercials and the half-time show. Of those three, it is the commercials (barring anything like a wardrobe malfunction) that have legs. Just look at all the ratings reports that follow for days after.
The brands have to leverage their efforts beyond the 30 second spot. Social media and mobile apps will continue to be a way to build up and continue momentum to carry forward engagement after the Super Bowl. I suspect that “Watch With” apps for iPad, etc, will flourish and will provide TV viewers a way to go deeper into the campaign, share virally, vote on best spots, etc.
It seems perhaps best to view all of the preliminary activity around Superbowl advertising as essentially an increase in “Reach and Frequency” for those advertising messages. If the advertising messages and execution are strategically powerful, then more exposure should be a good thing; if messages lack strategic power, then repeat exposure won’t fix that and might, indeed, amplify negative reactions.
I’m not sure if the “surprise value” of seeing the ads for the first time at the time of the Superbowl was ever a part of their persuasive impact on behalf of the advertised brands. If we think of Superbowl ads more as “media experiences” like films, then perhaps we can object to “spoiling the surprise”; if we remember that these clips are commercial messaging designed to build the business of a brand, our traditional wisdom that “more is better” would seem to be relevant.
Perhaps more study of first-time exposure vs. repeated exposure for persuasive impact of advertising is in order. My online searches don’t yield much (see 30 year old cite below) — perhaps others know more?
Christopher P. Puto, William D. Wells (1984), “INFORMATIONAL AND TRANSFORMATIONAL ADVERTISING: THE DIFFERENTIAL EFFECTS OF TIME,” in Advances in Consumer Research Volume 11, eds. Thomas C. Kinnear, Provo, UT : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 638-643.
Yes. Pre-game marketing is a must. If you are spending over $3 million dollars on an ad, you need to support it with social media buzz and PR weeks before the game in order to maximize your exposure. There are too many free options to maximizing your exposure whenever a company promotes a product on the Superbowl. Not to take full advantage of these would be a poor marketing decision.
It absolutely gives marketers a bigger bang for their ad buck. 1) you get the chance to go viral and increase exposure and impact, 2) it prepares for the actual viewing during the Super Bowl…”watch this, I saw it already and it is hilarious!”
It looks like the final count was that about half (20 of the 36) spots were available before the game. Of course the early ads were really only available to the digitally savvy segment of viewers.
My favorite ad was not aired prior the game, the 2 minute spot from Chrysler’s with Clint Eastwood by Wieden+Kennedy (which only cost $14M in airtime!).
More interesting to me was all the interaction and live commentary on the social networks for, and about the ads. This phenomenon opens a number of new marketing doors, but also creates some new pitfalls, as Toyota found out this year. They set up a social media campaign to autoreply to anyone on who mentioned the Superbowl on Twitter, which most users rightly felt was spam (and prompted an apology from Toyota.).
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Super Bowl ads are a major investment for advertisers, so I think that getting the ads out early, and allowing for them to go viral, is a good business decision.
This should be an empirical question — research should be able to show the difference in sales impact for a commercial running pre-game versus during the game. You have to hold GRPs constant, but that shouldn’t be hard for someone like SymphonyIRI with their split-cable Behaviorscan panels.
Personally, I would expect to find that you dilute the impact of the ad by introducing it early.
The trend toward online advertising creates more viral interest in watching the commercials during the game, not less. This sort of “sneak preview” seems to be drawing larger audiences to the Super Bowl, regardless of interest in the actual game or teams involved. Last year’s Super Bowl was the most-watched ever, and we can expect this year’s game to surpass it. If the goal is to expose advertising to a broader audience, more power to the online commercials.
At a cost of $116,666 a second, Super Bowl advertisers are marketing their 30-second commercials at every opportunity before the game. This process further enlarges this Big Bucks phenomenon, but it might also be transferring the game itself into a parallel event, not a solo feature.
As this ever-increasing high-ticket marketing frenzy continues, don’t be surprised if the actual Super Bowl game in the future becomes a halftime event. Should that happen, one could then say that advertisers are getting a bigger bang for their bucks … but how will the players feel about that?
The economics along with the digital landscape have dictated that every channel — before, during, and after the actual game — must be utilized. When the TODAY show has to claim that they have an exclusive showing of the entire 60 second spot that will be shown during the Super Bowl, the anticipation of that surprise and delight that comes with that first broadcast is lost. The new, digitally empowered consumer landscape now dictates that this must be an orchestrated campaign across all available channels. Every marketer dreams of igniting that ‘viral’ fire. It’s a brave new world where we are all being forced to innovate and experiment.
Volkswagon also seems to have a viral hit on its hands with their infectious “The Bark Side” spot.
At least, the dogs out there are enjoying it: “Chewbacca like response to ‘The Bark Side’”.
H.L. Mencken was right, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” Look … I’m all for free markets and letting the buyer beware, but Super Bowl ads are the advertising equivalent of shooting slightly demented fish in a barrel. It’s fair, but somehow it’s really like robbing a kid of their milk money.
First of all, hat’s off to Super Bowl marketers who, like Victoria’s Secret, have convinced the couch-bound and chicken wing deprived citizens of our fair land that advertising is entertainment and, not just ordinary entertainment, but entertainment you need to devote hours of your life to. Next, more kudos for successfully stretching that “special moment” between Cheetos ingestion and reaching for another cold one past 30 or 60 seconds first to the day after the game, and now to weeks before the game.
If they could figure out how to do that for other “pleasurable” activities they probably wouldn’t have to sell cars, insurance, etc.
So … why not just market the spots before the game? In fact … why not make it easier for all those poor fans whose attention spans are shrinking because of over-ingesting salty snacks and whose eyes are strained from staring at their 500 inch plasmas and just eliminate the game altogether? Think of it! You could just run all the commercials — and, of course, that fabulous halftime show — and shave hours off the required viewing period.
Or … one could envision marketing heaven where, having eliminated the game, clearly the least important part of the show, you could now have even more time for ads — selling commercials for all commercial programming. Why, with any luck the months of January and February could be completely devoted to nothing but watching and discussing Super Bowl ads and how bad the halftime entertainment was.
Eureka!!! We have found it!!!
Even for the largest advertisers, the “investment” for a Super Bowl ad, including development and production, is still a significant amount, approaching $4-5 million for a :30 impact. There is no choice but to extend the reach, at least in terms of time span, if not actual audience, if there is to be some measurable effect.
Interestingly, so many of the SB spots seem to be “one-offs” and not connected to longstanding campaigns and brand messages. At the same time, the overwhelming majority of the advertisers this year are not new to the SB, indicating that they believe the investment is worthwhile.
Given the level of analysis we put into loyalty marketing investments, many of which are less than the cost of a single :30 spot in the Super Bowl, it’s always amazing how little measurement or analysis is done versus how much “hope” there is. This morning’s WSJ did a piece on the increasing amount of research that is done prior to running the ads and it is striking how subjective it is and how little is invested in truly understanding the impact of such a large investment.
I think they lose some of the ooompph with everyone not seeing it at once and the discussion that follows. I have seen several of them already. I miss the anticipation of the commercials during the game, especially since my team will be watching the game from the French Quarter.
A GRP or TRP (target rating point) is not created equal — pre-game vs. in-action vs. post-game. The decision by what appears to be the majority of clients and their media placement/agency partners to fully reveal their spots in order to get more eyeballs in advance of the game is a natural evolution of marketing/media strategy/tactics. As a former media director, teaser campaigns (see JCP over the past three weeks) are not out of the ordinary.
Previewing or fully revealing your campaign makes sense if you aren’t concerned with giving the competition advance notice of your new positioning or service offering. As the game play date has moved further into the Spring selling season, the strategy of launching a new product/service offering with a Super Bowl ad has lost some of its luster.
Generating buzz and sales in advance of the big game is simply using your status as a Super Bowl advertiser. It is sound business strategy. Now, think back to the famous Apple Macintosh 1984 ad — better to show it in advance or blow us all away seeing it for the first (and only time) in the game? My vote goes for the sheer power of “wow”/surprise, and dominating the post-game buzz for weeks (or in this case years) to follow.
Bigger bang. Increase utility of dollars invested. Goose the USA Today score. Teasers generate forward interest. Social media extends and integrates brand voice.
But does familiarity breed contempt?
Advertising ain’t for sissies either!
With absolutely nothing to back this up, I’m going out on a limb to say that I think most of the huge audience that will watch the SB will not have seen the preview showings. And many who see those ads will not see them during the SB. So, it makes economic sense to use them for other audiences. It does reduce the suspense factor to show them before.
As far as I can tell, the SB has three draws: the game, the commercials and the half-time show. Of those three, it is the commercials (barring anything like a wardrobe malfunction) that have legs. Just look at all the ratings reports that follow for days after.
The brands have to leverage their efforts beyond the 30 second spot. Social media and mobile apps will continue to be a way to build up and continue momentum to carry forward engagement after the Super Bowl. I suspect that “Watch With” apps for iPad, etc, will flourish and will provide TV viewers a way to go deeper into the campaign, share virally, vote on best spots, etc.
It seems perhaps best to view all of the preliminary activity around Superbowl advertising as essentially an increase in “Reach and Frequency” for those advertising messages. If the advertising messages and execution are strategically powerful, then more exposure should be a good thing; if messages lack strategic power, then repeat exposure won’t fix that and might, indeed, amplify negative reactions.
I’m not sure if the “surprise value” of seeing the ads for the first time at the time of the Superbowl was ever a part of their persuasive impact on behalf of the advertised brands. If we think of Superbowl ads more as “media experiences” like films, then perhaps we can object to “spoiling the surprise”; if we remember that these clips are commercial messaging designed to build the business of a brand, our traditional wisdom that “more is better” would seem to be relevant.
Perhaps more study of first-time exposure vs. repeated exposure for persuasive impact of advertising is in order. My online searches don’t yield much (see 30 year old cite below) — perhaps others know more?
Christopher P. Puto, William D. Wells (1984), “INFORMATIONAL AND TRANSFORMATIONAL ADVERTISING: THE DIFFERENTIAL EFFECTS OF TIME,” in Advances in Consumer Research Volume 11, eds. Thomas C. Kinnear, Provo, UT : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 638-643.
Yes. Pre-game marketing is a must. If you are spending over $3 million dollars on an ad, you need to support it with social media buzz and PR weeks before the game in order to maximize your exposure. There are too many free options to maximizing your exposure whenever a company promotes a product on the Superbowl. Not to take full advantage of these would be a poor marketing decision.
It absolutely gives marketers a bigger bang for their ad buck. 1) you get the chance to go viral and increase exposure and impact, 2) it prepares for the actual viewing during the Super Bowl…”watch this, I saw it already and it is hilarious!”
It looks like the final count was that about half (20 of the 36) spots were available before the game. Of course the early ads were really only available to the digitally savvy segment of viewers.
My favorite ad was not aired prior the game, the 2 minute spot from Chrysler’s with Clint Eastwood by Wieden+Kennedy (which only cost $14M in airtime!).
More interesting to me was all the interaction and live commentary on the social networks for, and about the ads. This phenomenon opens a number of new marketing doors, but also creates some new pitfalls, as Toyota found out this year. They set up a social media campaign to autoreply to anyone on who mentioned the Superbowl on Twitter, which most users rightly felt was spam (and prompted an apology from Toyota.).