Stuart Elliott: Will Super Bowl Ads Truly Be "Super"?

Marketers are paying an estimated rate of 5 million for each 30 seconds of commercial time during the Super Bowl amp160Add the costs of production promotion social media and the like and truly it adds up to a megainvestmentThat isn39t stopping a lengthy list of bluechip brands from climbing aboard Super Bowl39s ad band wagon Many are regulars or semiregulars in the big game Amazon Alexa Avocados From Mexico Bud Light Budweiser CocaCola Doritos Hulu Hyundai Kia Lexus MampampMs Michelob Ultra Mountain Dew Paramount Pictures PepsiCola Persil ProClean Squarespace Stella Artois Tide Toyota TurboTax Universal Pictures and WeatherTechSome brands are coming back after hiatuses among them Diet Coke ETrade Groupon which suffered a humiliating setback when its initial foray into Super Bowl advertising in 2011 was met with an ugly backlash and Verizon amp160Some brands such as Intuit Monster Products and Pringles will be playing in the game for the first timeThe question that39s asked every year as the Super Bowl rolls around is whether such hefty outlays are worth it given how increasingly expensive it is to be a sponsor and how much higher the stakes are compared with running a commercial the other 364 days of the yearIt39s great to pitch a product in front of such a giant audience usually the largest viewership for a TV show for the year amp160Super Bowl commercials get the kind of attention that regular spots would die for from social media platforms such as Facebook Twitter and YouTube from people at Super Bowl parties who shush their friends when the ads come on and from print and broadcast media including outlets that rarely if ever cover marketingBut the high rewards come with high risks as the executives at Groupon who approved the terrible campaign in 2011 would tell you amp160Oh wait they can39t they don39t work there anymore Jawdroppingly awful Super Bowl ads also have cursed other companies such as Holiday Inn HomeAway and Just for Feet all of which would have been far better off had they never heard of Super Bowl advertising the Super Bowl or even footballA new study by two professors Wesley R Hartmann and Daniel Klapper published in Marketing Science suggests that Super Bowl ads indeed have value amp160The study focused on beer and soda brands suggests that the effectiveness of Super Bowl commercials persists into the year particularly in weeks when there are other major sporting events such as the NCAA basketball tournamentThe study also finds that sales gains from a presence in the big game are more pronounced when brands have exclusivity in their categories and long have been associated with being Super Bowl advertisersStill there39s another wrinkle to the ad bowl coming up inside Sunday39s game The impact our current political climate is having on everything that39s usually unrelated to politicsamp160 Some are wondering whether the highly charged atmosphere surrounding everything President Trump does means there will be less of a focus on the Super Bowl and the commercials in the sense that time and time again he manages to suck all the oxygen out of a room amp160What if there are incendiary presidential tweets before or during the game on a hotbutton subject such as the players39 protests centered on the National Anthem amp160That might well overshadow any ad or even the game itselfIn the wake of the MeToo and TimesUp movements the commercials this year could be subjected to additional scrunity visavis how women appear and are treated over and above the criticism that long has been leveled at Super Bowl ads for being sexist amp160See past offenders such as Best Buy Budweiser and GoDaddyThe organization known as the 3 Movement which fights for gender inclusion and equality in ads and the ad industry plans to host its fifth annual Super Bowl Tweetup events inviting attendees to post on Twitter realtime reactions to commercials using the hashtag 3percentsb For the first time there39ll be an event in New York led by Kat Gordon the organization39s founderamp160 There also are to be Tweetups in Boston Denver Los Angeles Miami and San FranciscoOf course it could be argued that the fraught political times will yield more interesting and better Super Bowl commercials That certainly was the case last year when several advertisers among them Audi Budweiser CocaCola and 84 Lumber ran engaging absorbing spots that took stands on issues such as the environment equal pay and immigration One brand It39s a 10 Haircare even made fun of Trump39s quotawful hairquotHow will the ad bowl within Super Bowl LII play itself out Stay tuned amp160If it falls short take heart There will be plenty of potentially special commercials appearing during the 2018 Winter Olympics which NBC will cover from Feb 9 through Feb 25 amp160The anticipated ad revenue from the Winter Games more than 900 millionEditor39s Note amp160Look for the next Stuart Elliott Report reviewing the Super Bowl commercials on Monday Feb 5amp160Click the social buttons above or below to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writersamp160amp160amp160

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Stuart Elliott: Will Super Bowl Ads Truly Be "Super"?

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Stuart Elliott: Will Super Bowl Ads Truly Be "Super"?

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