The Superbowl is in the books. Congrats to the New Orleans Saints. Everyone (except those who live in Indiana) loves to see an underdog success story.
Over the next few days, you will see about 944 blog posts about Marketing during the Superbowl. I wanted to be among the first, so that I don’t have to try to outwrite some of the best out there. If I go first, they have to outwrite me. Mwahahahaa! (By the way, I don’t think “outwrite” is actually a word.)
First off, let’s address the obvious. The average cost of a 30-second commercial spot during Superbowl 44 was around $3.01 million. Some companies and products had three or more spots, such as Denny’s (advertising their Free Grand Slam on Tuesday) and Bud Light (who just had a bunch of random commercials that tried to be clever). So, that is over $9 million spent by just those companies.
Dorito’s also had several, along with Hyundai.
We got to see the Tim Tebow ad, which stirred up tons of controversy for no good reason. We got to see Coke team up with the Simpsons.
In all of these, very few of the ads directed viewers to go to the Internet, where they could offer incentives for joining a mailing list or fan page on one of the numerous social media sites. In other words, the ads may have been entertaining (and I use that term loosely), but were completely useless in accomplishing what ads should do, which is get someone to take action.
Speaking of soft drinks, where was all of the social media stuff that Pepsi was going to be doing in lieu of spending millions on TV spots. I haven’t seen anything on Facebook, Twitter, or any of the other sites I frequent. Have I just missed them, or was Pepsi just trying to build anticipatory buzz? I sincerely hope it was not the latter, especially if they didn’t follow through. They may have stuff out there, but I didn’t see any of it, and I am their target audience.
All in all, Superbowl advertising has gotten worse every year. The first few years of entertaining ads, where we saw Budweiser frogs and Spuds Mackenzie, were interesting and fun. Then in the years following, it was no longer about informing and more about trying to be unique and clever. People tune in who aren’t football fans, just to watch the commercials (which are waaaay to frequent for my football-loving tastes).
The advertisers have succeeded in making people want to see commercials, but have failed in delivering memorable messages. In this new era where every commercial is bizarre and intended to be entertaining, nothing sticks out anymore. It is just another flake in the avalanche of advertising we get bombarded with.
