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.  Add the costs of production, promotion, social media and the like, and truly it adds up to a mega-investment.

That isn't stopping a lengthy list of blue-chip brands from climbing aboard Super Bowl's ad band wagon. Many are regulars or semi-regulars in the big game: Amazon Alexa, Avocados From Mexico, Bud Light, Budweiser, Coca-Cola, Doritos, Hulu, Hyundai, Kia, Lexus, M&Ms, Michelob Ultra, Mountain Dew, Paramount Pictures, Pepsi-Cola, Persil ProClean, Squarespace, Stella Artois, Tide, Toyota, TurboTax, Universal Pictures and WeatherTech.

Some brands are coming back after hiatuses, among them Diet Coke; E*Trade; Groupon, which suffered a humiliating setback when its initial foray into Super Bowl advertising, in 2011, was met with an ugly backlash, and Verizon.  Some brands, such as Intuit, Monster Products and Pringles, will be playing in the game for the first time.

The question that's 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 year.

It's great to pitch a product in front of such a giant audience, usually the largest viewership for a TV show for the year.  Super 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 marketing.

But the high rewards come with high risks, as the executives at Groupon who approved the terrible campaign in 2011 would tell you.  Oh, wait, they can't; they don't work there anymore. Jaw-droppingly 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 football.

A new study by two professors, Wesley R. Hartmann and Daniel Klapper, published in Marketing Science, suggests that Super Bowl ads indeed have value.  The 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 tournament.

The 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 advertisers.

Still, there's another wrinkle to the ad bowl coming up inside Sunday's game: The impact our current political climate is having on everything that's usually unrelated to politics.  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.  What if there are incendiary presidential tweets before or during the game on a hot-button subject such as the players' protests centered on the National Anthem?  That might well overshadow any ad -- or even the game itself.

In the wake of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements the commercials this year could be subjected to additional scrunity vis-a-vis how women appear and are treated, over and above the criticism that long has been leveled at Super Bowl ads for being sexist.  (See past offenders such as Best Buy, Budweiser and GoDaddy.)

The 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 real-time reactions to commercials, using the hashtag #3percentsb. For the first time, there'll be an event in New York, led by Kat Gordon, the organization's founder.  There also are to be Tweetups in Boston, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami and San Francisco.

Of 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, Coca-Cola and 84 Lumber -- ran engaging, absorbing spots that took stands on issues such as the environment, equal pay and immigration. One brand, It's a 10 Haircare, even made fun of Trump's "awful hair."

How will the ad bowl within Super Bowl LII play itself out? Stay tuned.  If 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.  The anticipated ad revenue from the Winter Games: more than $900 million.

Editor's Note:  Look for the next Stuart Elliott Report, reviewing the Super Bowl commercials, on Monday, Feb. 5. 

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