Super Bowl LI Commercials: The Oscars of Advertising
With the Super Bowl hangovers well past and the TV commercials and game highlights viewed repeatedly (yes, Tom Brady is the greatest of all time), let’s reflect on our insights from the big game…of ads competing for consumer’s attentions. Super Bowl commercials are subjective; one review site might rank an ad to its 10 best list, while another site will have the same ad on its 10 worst list, so we’ll stick to our observations rather than opinions.
This year’s Super Bowl saw a lot of firsts for advertisers. GNC became the first advertiser to sue a broadcast network when the NFL rejected their ad just days before the game, after it had already been approved by FOX twice in writing. While ads have not been approved because of content in the past, this year Lumber 84’s ad became the first reported spot to be banned due to overtly political commentary. In response, Lumber 84 used their spot to direct viewers to their website to view their titled “controversial commercial” (including a US-Mexico wall) which caused their website to crash from the amount of traffic received during the game (not a Super Bowl first). We saw a lot of well-known, well-established brands make their Super Bowl debuts with first-time commercials from Mr. Clean, Tiffany’s, Wendy’s, Google, Nintendo, Michelin, Busch Beer and Yellow Tail (the first ad from a wine brand in 40 years). We were entertained when two Oscar-nominated, Hollywood directors squared off for the first time with the Cohen brothers producing an Easy Rider inspired spot for Mercedes with Peter Fonda and Peter Berg producing a spot in real time for Hyundai. That Hyundai spot and a Snickers spot took production and technology to a whole new level when they aired the first live commercial and first commercial produced in real-time – more on that below.
Marketing stakes have never been higher. Do you know how long a football game takes (actual game/play time)? 11 minutes. Yet the Super Bowl broadcast is over 4 hours long. The reason why TV networks keep getting a new record amount for the placement of spots are they tend to get good ROI for the advertisers with all those eyeballs tuned into that airtime. This year FOX sold out of all their spots weeks in advance at $5M per spot because reports indicate that advertisers on average receive more than 11% sales uplift in the month following the game and that one Super Bowl spot generates as much sales as 250 regular TV spots. Those stats are no surprise given the results of Burson-Marsteller’s Fan Experience national survey that found that 53% of viewers would be disappointed if the Super Bowl were broadcasted commercial free, 66% of viewers are more favorable toward brands with a good commercial, and 1 in 3 constant social media users are more likely to use social media during the Super Bowl than they typically do. That last stat is another reason why it’s important for brands to live Tweet during the game to engage in conversations with their consumers like Oreo famously did during the 2013 Super Bowl blackout. That’s why we continually see brands reinvest in Super Bowl spots and new advertisers fighting to get into the game. When asked by the New York times why Nintendo picked the Super Bowl to launch their newest gaming console Switch, their head of marketing stated “there’s no bigger stage in the U.S. on which to showcase the platform.” In the case of Tiffany’s, they’ve actually been handcrafting the Super Bowl’s Vince Lombardi Trophy for 50 years, but decided to advertise last minute this year for the first time after their sales declined over the important November/December holiday season, citing they believed the reach with their partnership with Lady Gaga (headlining the Halftime show) was well worth the $10M airtime investment.
Production has gone beyond high-tech. Some brands have reported that it can take up to a year of planning and production for their Super Bowl spots, however Hyundai decided to up the ante this year by producing their “90-second documentary” in real time. Aforementioned director Peter Berg oversaw production on multiple continents that had Hyundai’s crew shoot footage from an undisclosed U.S. military base overseas and at the game in Houston during the first quarter and then edit it within two hours for air as the first commercial after the game’s final whistle. On top of the technology and logistics necessary to pull off the feat, the spot included the first of its kind 360-degree immersive video pods. Several U.S. troops stepped into the pods overseas and where surprised to find they got to experience watching the game live in Houston with their families as they sat next to the “soldier’s seat” that had robotic cameras on them to stream on the 360- degree video pod. In Snickers’ spot, Adam Driver gave a subtle nod to the crowd that they were filming live when he announced the real half-time 21-3 score to start the commercial. Rigging the set to fall down perfectly on cure live was an impressive logistical feat. It’s reported that over 150 ad executives from Mars, their agency and production partners worked together to pull it off live. Adam Driver told Entertainment Weekly he decided to participate in the ad because it seemed like an interesting challenge with the stakes being really high.
The cola and beer wars have past the torch. Now it’s the wireless, website and tax wars. Given the lukewarm reception of Budweiser bringing back the ghost of Spuds McKenzie, it appears the days of the Bud Bowl and Beer Wars are long gone. And with Coca-Cola promoting family diversity and Pepsi promoting the Lady Gaga Halftime Show and LifeWTR, it appears the cola wars might be over as well, for now. This year, viewers were instead treated to entertainingly light hearted ads of John Hamm for H&R Block and Humpty Dumpty for TurboTax as they battle in preparation for tax season. The battle for personal website development and hosting platforms was even more heated with John Malkovich starring in 3 spots for Square Space and Jason Statham and Gal Gadot staring in a 60-second spot for Wix, the latter of which was viewed 22.6 million times online before the Super Bowl. While Verizon Wireless didn’t run a Super Bowl spot this year, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile did, with Sprint and T-Mobile using their entire ads as direct attacks at Verizon. The attacks didn’t end there, they were only kicked up a notch and intensified as the brands battled back-and-forth on Twitter as the game wore on, proving more entertainment than the game itself (the Patriots hadn’t begun their amazing fourth quarter comeback yet). T-Mobile’s and Sprint’s CEOs both sparred with Verizon via Twitter along with the corporate accounts. It appears the beer and cola wars of the 1980s are alive and well in the world of mobile phones.
Overall, it’s easy to see how the Super Bowl has become the Oscars of Advertising with all of the Oscar-winning directors, A-list actors, creativity, attention, viewership, high costs, high marketing stakes and make-or-break sales opportunities. We all know about the fan polls and awards given after the ads air during the game, but now there’s even pre-game winners. This year Ad Age used True Reach, an MRC accredited metric, to track ads that were released online before the game. The top 3 were ads we’ve already mentioned – “Disrupted World” by Wix, “Humpty Fall” by TurboTax and “Easy Driver” by Mercedes-Benz. So as the football game gets shorter and the Super Bowl broadcast time gets longer, the commercials will continue to be a time-honored part of the game day tradition.