SuperAdBlog

Weekend Superbowl Reading

The weekend of the big game has finally arrived!  The Ad Club has pulled together a crack team of advertising and marketing experts to offer comments on the advertising that will play on Super Sunday.  We are making final preparations, reviewing our play book, stretching out, etc.  What's my role?  I will offer insights and thoughts into the use of new media in relation to the advertising. 

To help set the tone for my part of the conversation, I have pulled together a quick list of articles from the past two weeks about the role that New Media will play in this giant advertising spectacle.  Here is a little weekend reading for you:

New York Times: Colts and Bears and Kevin Federline (February 2, 2007)

Key excerpt: "Now, thanks to the Internet, Super Bowl commercials are like gifts that Madison Avenue tries to keep on giving. As soon as the game ends, video clips of the spots are posted online, on the Web sites of sponsors like fedex.com; the networks that broadcast the game like cbs.sportsline.com; and Internet media companies, among them ifilm.com, msn.foxsports.com, sports.aol.com and youtube.com."

ClickZ: A Level Playing Field for Superbowl Ads (February 2, 2007)

Key excerpt: "This year, advertisers buying spots during Super Bowl XLI are frequently posting those ads online before they're broadcast to try and create buzz. And one group of self-proclaimed "Web 2.0" companies has formed to create spots that ride the wave of Super Bowl advertising -- without actually advertising in the Super Bowl.  Knowing they couldn't afford a standard Super Bowl ad, six start-up firms challenged each other to come up with Super Bowl-style :30 spots and upload them to a YouTube channel at SuperDotComAds XLI."

iMedia Connection: Make Sure Your Website is Ready! (February 1, 2007)

Key excerpt: "Almost one third (30 percent) [of people surveyed] will visit the company's website, and that same number (31 percent) will look for the ad online to view again. Marketers should make it easy for these people to find the ad by giving it a prominent position on their corporate website homepage. Without providing this kind of easy access to the advertisement, marketers will risk losing visitors to those sites clearly dedicated to Super Bowl advertising, such as Google Video or AOL. Along with providing access to the TV ad, these online destinations also provide message boards, voting and other community features."

AdWeek: Snickers to Extend 30 Second Spot Online (January 30, 2007)

Key excerpt: "Masterfoods plans to extend the life of its 30-second Snickers Super Bowl spot via a microsite that will feature player reactions to the commercial and alternate endings. Up to three such endings will be posted, along with the version that will run during the game.... Masterfoods declined to provide the full spot before the game but a clip of the first five seconds is viewable on the microsite, www.SnickersSatisfies.com, which went live today."

Washington Post: $2 Million Airtime, $13 Ad (January 31, 2007)

Key excerpt: "The YouTube Effect has crept into television's mightiest showcase for advertising: the Super Bowl. For the first time, viewers of the biggest football game of the year, Sunday's Super Bowl XLI on CBS between the Indianapolis Colts and the Chicago Bears, will see at least four ads that were created by amateurs, rather than by high-end ad agencies. For advertisers, consumer-created content is a cost-savings bonanza. Advertisers are paying more than $2.6 million for the most expensive 30-second spot in this year's Super Bowl, up from $2.5 million last year. Just to produce a top-level 30-second ad can easily cost more than $1 million. A commercial produced by an amateur, by comparison, can be had for the price of a plane ticket and a trip to the game for the winner and some post-production cleanup for the ad itself.  For the ad creators, it's a shot at the big time and an end run around traditional barriers to appearing on advertising's biggest stage. Indeed, it could be a career starter -- more than 90 million viewers are expected to tune in to the Super Bowl."

And a few more...

Ad Age: Measuing Bowl ROI?  Good Luck (January 29, 2007)

Survey: Sports Marketers Choose New Media Over Superbowl Advertising (January 29, 2007)

ClickZ: Very Different Superbowl Predictions (January 26, 2007)

MarketWatch: Moving the ball, beyond the Super Bowl broadcast (January 29, 2007)

Wall Street Journal: In Web Polls of Super Bowl Ads, Now A Word From the Sponsor's Sponsor (January 29, 2007)

These are just a sampling of the articles that are out there.  But, I think you get a sense that the media is thinking the use of new media may just be the biggest story around the Superbowl advertising bonanza this year.

What are you thinking?

- By Brian Reich.  Brian is the Director of New Media for Cone Inc.

Superbowl Advertising Goes Online Also

Most of the attention when it comes to Superbowl advertising is focused on the television -- and for good reason.  More than a billion people worldwide will plop down on the couch Sunday to watch the big game and dozens of advertisers will spend $2.6 million per 30 second spot in hopes of catching some of those eyeyballs.  Unlike most TV-watchers these days, many viewers will stick around to watch the non-football action because the ads have become almost as a big a spectacle as the game itself.  But for many marketers, more is needed.

The evolution of new media and the alternative channels for pushing information to consumers has created all sorts of opportunities to expand on TV advertising (generally, but particularly for this coming Sunday's game) and marketers are taking advantage.  Stuart Elliot in the New York Times breaks down the 'new math':

Here is a lesson in new math, Madison Avenue style: The most expensive advertising buy of the year may turn out to be something of a bargain.

That buy is, of course, a television commercial during the Super Bowl, typically the most-watched program of any year. And while the cost this year sets a record, at an estimated average of $2.6 million for each 30-second spot, more than two dozen marketers believe it makes sense to spend that much money despite the many cheaper alternatives.

This counterintuitive belief is predicated on a big if — if the Super Bowl is not the end of a marketing game plan but the beginning, the premium cost is economical. The spot needs to be buttressed by a panoply of complementary extensions into new media like Web sites, video clips, cellphone text messaging, blogs and short films.

In other words, one of the most traditional ways to peddle products, the 3o-second TV spot, is being made relevant again by the explosion in nontraditional media choices.

The New York Times offers a few examples, including these: Nationwide Insurance kicked things off earlier this week posting its much maligned ad featuring the former Mr. Britney Spears, Kevin Federline (aka 'K-Fed' now "Fed-Ex'), on its website (www.nationwide.com).  Career Builder, the job search service, created a humorous "Age-O-Matic (at www.ageomatic.com) system to give users an opportunity to calculate how much premature aging a 'soul sucking job' will cause them.  And Anhueser Busch is using Super Bowl Sunday to formally introduce its new web-network, Bud.tv, to the world.

We all know that typical television viewers are prone to multi-tasking while watching TV.   Whether they will do that during a television event as big and dynamic as the Superbowl -- with frequent bathroom breaks brought on by beer consumption, friends sitting around debating the merits of the two-point conversion all around them, and informal, completely legal wagering on everything from the coin toss to the direction of the wind at the end of the first quarter (seriously, I do it every year) -- competing for attention remains to be seen.  What is clear already is that marketers have expanded the already over-sized stage of the Superbowl advertising field in all directions, leveraging new technology and the power of social networks to do it, and consumers are in for a full-advertising experience like they have never seen before.

Welcome to the Super Ad Blog

Welcome to the Ad Club's Super Ad Blog...

Do the commercials on Super Bowl Sunday interest you more than the game?  Are you trying to understand how - or why - a company would spend $2.6 million for 30 seconds of air time?  Then this is the blog for you.  For the next two weeks, the Ad Club of Boston will host a vibrant discussion about the Super Bowl of Advertising.  Our group of experts will help explain how marketers prepare for the big game.  On Super Bowl Sunday we will analyze which ads scored and which ones fell flat.  And in the days following the big game, we'll break it all down for you.