Deflating the Value of All That Advertising

Hey, this is the one evening a year when people actually pay attention to advertising. And since this is the attention economy, that should mean that the very best advertising is presented to the viewing public.

Which is a good theory, based on sound economic principles - and probably utterly irrelevant.

Ego, money, careerism, client-agency conflict, the internet, social media, mobility, loss of sensation in the upper reaches of the brain. All of these tend to interfere with the delivery of good advertising.

And given that this is now a world full of experts without portfolio on the subject of what constitutes good advertising, we are reminded of what brand expert Jonathan Salem Baskin says are the questions viewers should be asking themselves while they watch, in whatever degree of stupefaction: on Monday morning, can you remember the name of the brand behind the ad? And does the ad tell you something about the product that makes you feel different (and hopefully better) about it?

The purpose of advertising is not to make you like it, but to buy the product being touted. Or at least that is what those paying for it would like to believe. JL

Tim Gough comments in Dunnhumby:

It won’t be long before Super Bowl ads are more important than the game itself, unless of course you’re a Broncos fan in which case that’s already true.
It won’t be long before Super Bowl ads are more important than the game itself, unless of course you’re a Broncos fan in which case that’s already true.
There really is no better way to get attention than the biggest TV audience of the year, and an audience which remarkably is still growing and breaking records year after year. Pricing certainly reflects that; NBC claim that $4.5 million per 30s spot “is a steal.”
But for an advertiser, is it really worth the huge premium for a slot in the Super Bowl? Well, it depends on how you use it, and how you measure success.
TV ad spend is coming under more and more scrutiny, especially now that it can be measured in a similar way to digital channels by tracking the response of exposed households. But from a targeting perspective addressable TV is something which is only just becoming available in the marketplace, meaning waste is still a big issue for most TV buys. The Super Bowl is a completely different beast though, it is the ultimate TV inventory for advertisers wanting to drive impact.
But how much impact is a Super Bowl slot expected to have on traditional metrics like short-term ROI? The majority of the US will see the Pepsi brand name displayed prominently as Katy Perry does her stuff during the Half-Time show (cameo from James Franco and Randall Park maybe? Spoiler alert), but will sales of Pepsi spike in the following week? Probably not. Clearly there are other metrics which define success for such a high profile spot where the huge football-loving audience are often watching out of home and while knocking back beers (and perhaps Skittles) with friends.
So how can advertisers get value from Super Bowl advertising spend, and perhaps more importantly, how can they measure that value? Here are three approaches:
1.Create something unexpected and truly memorable:
Advertisers must make the absolute most of that single impression and go for impact above all else. That means playing to emotions, changing perceptions and surprising the audience. This can be the ultimate stage from which to launch a new product or brand, or for brands and organizations that don’t regularly advertise on TV to drive awareness and consideration.
This year one brand will attempt something which has never before been done in a Super Bowl slot. Something which could shake sports advertising to its core. Yes, next week Avocados From Mexico will run an ad for fresh produce during a major sports event! What does the future hold? Will the Super Bowl 50 half-time show be sponsored by Bananas From Brazil? Only time will tell…
For these blockbusting ads the measurement criteria will be twofold:

• Reach: the most important thing is how many people see it, the Super Bowl can certainly deliver on that front.
• Impact: press, social metrics like hashtags, buzz, mentions, reviews. Advertisers aspire to achieve legendary status and the inevitable sequels that follow. Ads which drive that pure emotional response are talked about for the next year and beyond.  

2.Expand beyond just a single 30s ad by leveraging other media and digital channels:
A Super Bowl ad certainly drives enormous reach, but only a single impression. So how can advertisers drive up the number of associated impressions and buzz, increasing the overall effectiveness of their buy in the process?
The answer is digital. Releasing an ad early can drive millions of impressions online before the Super Bowl even begins, and popular ads can continue to drive huge numbers of views in the weeks following the big event. YouTube claims that “last year, you watched more than 6.3 million hours' worth of Super Bowl ads on YouTube. That's enough time for you to fly from Phoenix to the moon and back 87,500 times, watch every NFL game in history 138 times, or listen to Katy Perry's "Roar" 84M times. In other words ... there are a lot of you who watch football for the ads!”
Taking that further NBC announced that this year they will show all Super Bowl ads on their Tumblr page immediately after they air, meaning that even if you’re in the minority of people that take bathroom breaks during the commercials you can still catch up on the best ones immediately without having to rewind and watch the game on delay.
So to truly measure the impact of a Super Bowl slot in 2015 an advertiser needs to be able to track impressions across many different channels rather than simply rely on traditional TV ratings.
3.Take the Patriots’ alleged approach: cheat!
Deflate the $4.5 million cost of entry by trying one of these ideas:

• Use out-of-game slots strategically: the audience is still huge and you don’t have to pay the in-game premium. Esurance executed this to great effect last year, saving $1.5 million by getting the first ad spot after the game had finished and then promising to give away that money to a lucky winner who tweeted their hashtag. Millions of hashtag uses and billions of social impressions later the campaign was declared an extraordinary success!

• Use digital and social channels to crash the party: real-time advertising has no better success story than the Oreos “You Can Dunk in the Dark” tweet from 2013. A wave of copycats have followed, with brands setting up social media war rooms for major events. The results have been mixed and have even included accusations of corporate drunk-tweeting.

• Crash another brand’s ad! This year, in what sounds like a scene from the movie Inception, Newcastle Brown Ale  has crashed Dorito’s “crash the Super Bowl” ad campaign. The Dorito’s campaign has been the source of some hilarious user-generated ads over the years and is now so well established that another brand spotted the opportunity to crash it, although I’m not entirely convinced their ad will be selected as a competition winner. However if you thought that was crazy just wait until you see what Newcastle have in store for the game itself in what they are calling Band of Brands.

• Create your own half-time show! This year YouTube will be featuring a number of its growing stars in a half-time show all of its own, to coincide with the real one over on NBC. And if that seems like too much effort then an advertiser can always turn to the internet’s most valuable currency: cats.

Whichever option is chosen there are still plenty of ways to get value out of Super Bowl advertising. The potential reach for an advertiser’s message is huge, but perhaps more importantly it is one of the few times in the year that people genuinely get excited about great advertising. The Super Bowl sets the bar on TV advertising, and should inspire advertisers to drive the most response from all of their marketing efforts throughout the year.