Super Bowl Is Like "American Idol" for Advertisers: Despite New-Media Marketing, Nothing Garners a Bigger Audience for Ads — and There's a Football Game, Too
Despite a year full of significant media-marketing developments, iced by the explosion of social-media visibility, the fact remains that nothing compares to the Super Bowl when it comes to reaching the biggest and most influential audience — many of whom are actually tuning in to see the commercials. This year's big players — and those notably absent — are preparing to see their clout spike (or not) in this "American Idol" of marketing events.
Before culture and even before sports, the Super Bowl is about business. For weeks, the advertising community has been buzzing about which companies are in the show (Doritos, Denny's, Dockers) and which are not (General Motors, Ford, FedEx). Is it significant that the only domestic carmaker represented this year is the thoroughly troubled Chrysler, while upstart foreign nameplates such as Kia and Hyundai are shoveling vast amounts of cash through CBS' transom? What does it mean for the beverage business that Pepsi is riding the pine while Coke is still in the Big Game? When enormous, category-defining incumbents like FedEx skip the Super Bowl, it's hard not to take that as a sign of decline, or retreat. Super Bowl ad buys thus constitute a sort of futures market of corporate America, the LA Times reports.
Marketers have learned by now to leverage Super Bowl buys with a coordinated seek-and-persuade campaign online, where the ads will enjoy a longer shelf life and wag even more tongues. Last year, online views of Super Bowl spots tallied 99.5 million, Advertising Age reported. That's almost exactly the number of viewers of the televised event. In other words, marketers who geared up had the opportunity to double their marketing return on investment, reports Times writer Dan Neil.
Comments:
Wednesday, January 27, 2010 9:52:13 AM by Matt Gersib
I see this as more of a strategic timing issue. With the Winter Olympics just weeks away, I suspect some key marketers are hedging their bets that more eyeballs will be glued on the Games than on the Super Bowl. It may be no more complicated than that. Next year may see a complete return to "normalcy," whatever that is.
BurrellesLuce's Johna Burke interviews Steve Mayerowitz, ABC Travel Producer, who discusses how social media has changed how broadcasters process inquiries and requests from PR people.
