Super-Bowl Advertising

Experts call it fragmentation. TV shows no longer attract big audience that once made mass marketing possible, so advertisers lost faith in making big budget emotional spectaculars to move the general public. Critics called Breaking Bad the greatest show of all time, but fewer than 3% of Americans actually watched it.

The Super Bowl is the exception.  As we have noted, more than a hundred million Americans come together to watch the game. And a hundred million viewers glued to their TVs for four hours is a big deal for advertisers.
As we have seen, the airtime alone costs $4m for 30 seconds. Many advertisers budget a further $4-6m to preview their spots on YouTube and promote them on Twitter. They have staffed social media command centers with sitcom writers to talk their way into the online conversation and spin it the way of the advertisers and their client.  Add the cost of shooting special effects and hiring the star name or director and the fifty advertisers who appear in the Super Bowl have staked half a billion dollars on a night’s popularity.
Some struck early. This was the first Super Bowl where the ads were already in the public domain weeks in advance of the event. Budweiser racked up close to 20m YouTube views of their Super Bowl spots before game time.

Sodastream: Banned Super-bowl advert: the issues

Scarlett Johansen’s Soda stream advert was banned because of its jokey, disrespectful reference to Coke and Pepsi who are both significant and substantial sponsors of the Super-bowl and of American football.

The reaction prompts a number of issues:

•  Did Soda stream know the reaction/response and seek such publicity by creating a controversy – the advert has attracted millions of YouTube hits as well as pages and pages of newspaper coverage and Facebook, Twitter and blogger commentaries.  Millions of dollars’ worth of free publicity.

• The swift banning indicates the protective attitude of brands to their images – would such a joke have dented the sales of Coke and Pepsi?

• Do Soda stream come off as being much edgier and thus of wider youth market appeal as a result of their tongue in cheek advert?  Remember, this is a product that was for many years associated with traditions such as soda siphons and whiskey and soda rather than a cool modern refreshment brand.  How do Coke and Pepsi look – maybe a little insecure if they are frightened of the impact of one jokey advert on their powerful brand identity?

• The power that brands can exert over media institutions – who would want to offend these giants of advertising spending [each of these giants spent over $2 billion dollars each in America in 2012 advertising their brands] if it meant them threatening to take their advertising money elsewhere?

• The increasing influence of the internet and social media – despite being banned the advert was still seen by millions on YouTube days before Super-bowl and so dominated much of the traditional media coverage.  In this sense, is social media setting the agenda? [Have a think about McComb and Shaw here].

• The fact that adverts are viewed as news by the big media institutions.  NBC have a 30 minutes feature each Super-bowl devoted to running previews of the ads and interviewing the celebrities involved in them - treating them as if they were movies.

• The status of the advert – or the paycheck – attracts luminaries to feature in their creation.  This season’s super-bowl featured adverts directed by ‘A’ list directors such as Tom Hooper [The King’s Speech/Jaguar], Jake Ridley-Scott [Budweiser],  Nicholas Winding Refn [Drive/H&M] and actors -  Scarlett Johannsen, Anna Kendrick, Laurence Fishburne, Tom Hiddleston, Ben Kingsley, Mark Strong.