Super Bowl Sunday is just around the corner…
The day where 90 million Americans sit through around 3 hours of football, watching for some of the most entertaining television advertising around.
…or something like that…
This year, it’s reported CBS is selling 30-second Super Bowl XLI ad spots at US $2.6 million a piece…
Sheesh!
Maybe it’s not so bad… To put it in perspective, at US $0.29 per lead (AUD $0.38) it’s cheaper than mailing 90 million people. Plus the viral element as Super Bowl ads are shared over the internet these days. But will these companies see a big pay-off for their investment?
It’s difficult to say exactly how successful (or unsuccessful) Super Bowl ads are when it comes to making sales…
(because the Return On Investment is the true measure of success for any advertising!)
…Most traditional advertising agencies don’t track the response rates of their ads.
Instead, they use measurements like “brand recognition”, how popularly the ad rates in focus groups and how many awards the ad wins.
Super Bowl case study - Pets.com
One particularly noteworthy Super Bowl advertisement was the Pets.com advertisement which featured at the height of the Dot Com boom in 2000.
Pets.com paid over $2million to show this ad during the Super Bowl to help grow their brand.
“Everyone” knew the Pets.com sock puppet - it helped to create a measurable brand which people still remember, even 7 years later.
However by November that year, Pets.com had declared bankruptcy.
Successful ad? - Perhaps not…
Another “Big Ad” case study
Closer to (my) home is an example of another ad which was extremely popular, extremely expensive to create, and was seen by many within the advertising industry as a huge success story.
The Carlton Draught “Big Ad”.
Epic, huh?
The production team behind this ad had previously worked on Lord of the Rings and The Matrix… and it shows.
It’s a really entertaining ad!
No doubt expensive… but entertaining.
Apart from being so entertaining, one of the reasons this ad was seen to be so popular by those within the ad industry was because of what happened before it aired on TV.
Two weeks before the Big Ad was scheduled to air on TV, it was released on the internet.
Instantly it went viral with over 160,000 downloads in the first 24 hours.
By the time the ad was scheduled to appear on TV, over 1,000,000 people in 132 countries had seen the ad.
This prompted the advertising agency responsible for the ad to reduce the TV ad budget “so as not to overexpose the advertisement”.
Crazy! …Something a direct marketing expert would never do - because if an ad is selling, we’d keep it selling until it stops selling!
So was the Big Ad a Big Success?
Well, ask any ad executive and they’ll tell you “absolutely!” - the ad was seen by millions of people, helped grow the brand, and won prestigious international advertising awards…
…But I say the ad was a spectacular failure.
Why?
Because the ad failed in the one area it counts - the “Big Ad” failed to sell beer!
Listen to the lyrics…
It’s a big ad.
Expensive ad!
This ad better sell some blooooody beer!
However, after the ad was released, sales for Carlton Draught dropped!
The lesson here is - Don’t get caught up in believing the things people say about what makes a successful ad…
…A successful ad sells - period.
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4 responses so far ↓
1 Chris Kieff // Feb 1, 2007 at 5:14 am
The only difference this year is that clients are actually paying advertisers to not do anything! They call it “user generated content” but it’s really “pay me for doing nothing”.
Read more on this angle here: http://msco.com/blog/madison-ave-stumped-and-stupefied-by-super-bowl
2 Mark Stevens // Feb 3, 2007 at 3:12 am
If corporations really want to make consumers happy, they should forego costly Super Bowl ads and instead invest in a Chief Customer Officer, a single person of power charged with putting him or herself in the customers’ mind.
But instead they spend their time and money making sure their ad is funny and entertaining, which doesn’t mean it sells more products. A good marketer surprises consumers by giving them new ideas on how and why to use a particular product. Ads developed by typical people or starring famous celebrities may get laughs, but are unlikely to generate sales. For every dollar you spend you should be seeing a dollar back and I sincerely doubt that these companies are generating an additional $2.6 million due to these Super Bowl ads.
Marketers need to stop thinking that marketing HAS to be creative. It HAS to sell goods and services. Sometimes the least creative marketing is the most effective.
Mark Stevens
CEO of MSCO
http://www.msco.com/blog
3 Brent Hodgson // Feb 5, 2007 at 12:20 pm
@ Mark - you sum everything up in your last line.
However, I’d go even further by saying that for every $1 you invest into advertising, you want >$1 back.
Chief Customer Officer isn’t a term I’ve heard used before. Are they a “public face” of the company - part Richard Branson, part Steve Jobs, but not a CEO?
Brent
4 6 Steps to Viral Internet Marketing Success « Brent Hodgson, Copywriter // Mar 28, 2007 at 10:46 pm
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