Super Bowl: The Ultimate Benchmark for Ad Industry?
There is an annual pre-Super Bowl buzz-buildup and an ensuing flurry of commentary about gameday ads – and all of it is just part of the entertainment. But, these attention-getting moments on one deep winter’s Sunday evening reflect no true marketing wisdom. Such flash-in-the-pan attempts at reaching millions of eyeballs (whether they are attentive or not) or a mention from Stuart Elliott the next day does not an effective ad buy make. So, tell me again, why these ads should get SO much attention while the rest of the year’s efforts are barely a blip on the marketing industry’s radar?
The Super Bowl is a greeting card holiday in a way – a made up reason to run ads that otherwise wouldn’t get made and don’t really do the job of reaching consumers (other than for the fun of watercooler discussions). Do they generally correspond with the brand’s other messaging? No. Do they generate so much interest from consumers that they remember the brand name and switch products the next time they are in their grocery store? Not likely. Would many of them (if any) be cited as part of a great marketing case study by a business school professor? Nope. Will a one be remembered next year about this time? You can answer that.
Applying a general marketing or specific marketing to women filter to Super Bowl ads as well, seems like an exercise in futility. I should know, I have tried it in previous years – and, my passion just wasn’t behind it. I kept wondering why I was spending time calling out advertisers for not doing their best work in reaching women, when the truth has always been that Super Bowl ads are not about doing a great job reaching anyone. Instead, they are about grabbing a consumer’s attention for 30 seconds in the hopes of generating search engine play.
How can we possibly measure a brand’s marketing brilliance to any degree with such a set up?
As for the women’s market – from what Elliott wrote in his post-Super Bowl ad wrap up, and from the sampling of ads I actually saw (when not distracted by my newly adopted dog’s disappearance and recovery trauma), none of them did much by way of innovation or engagement (and that would be no matter the viewer’s gender). Can we rake the advertising brands over the coals for not understanding the women’s market? Sure. But, that’s beside the point.
It seems that Super Bowl ads are fun and goofy, which may be worth the cost for a select few brands, but they are largely irrelevant for consumers. And thus, they are a waste of time for most advertisers. This has long been the case, but given this economy and struggle to connect with penny pinching consumers, the truth became more evident in 2009. It is an uphill battle to be more clever or exciting than the last ad of the day or than the ads from last year’s game. Brands that are fine-tuning their media buys and larger marketing efforts in hard times might want to stick with improving on and innovating their own “game,” rather than jumping ship for the glory of one big ad and football-obsessed day (enjoyable though it may be).
