Want An Interactive Super Bowl Experience? Rate the Ads
By Robert L. Williams, Jr., assistant professor of marketing, Saint Mary's College
Robert Williams, assistant professor
of marketing, Saint Mary's College Are you good at multi-tasking? To get the interactive experience watching Super Bowl XLVI, you’ll need to be. While juggling your plate of the chips, salsa, buffalo wings, and pizza and your beverage of choice, try to keep a hand free for your smart phone. Like a sportscaster giving a play-by-play analysis, you can “broadcast” your review of the highly anticipated Super Bowl ads. Yes, there are aps for that and plenty of social media and Internet sites.
USA Today will host its famous AdMeter as an ap on Facebook this year and will tabulate your “likes.” Adweek will host a live blog, featuring its writers and guests, and post the ads in real time.
Want to do some Super Bowl ad homework beforehand? Some “training” for the big game? YouTube has already made available some of the commercials and when they’ll run during the game. There you’ll find Audi’s ad called #SoLongVampires, among others. There are also teaser videos for upcoming Super Bowl ads on the web. Yes, commercials for commercials. Check out the “Bark Side,” a teaser of a Volkswagen ad. It’s 60-seconds of dogs barking to Star Wars’ Imperial March.
What else is there to look forward to during the commercial breaks? Doritos is doing their “Crash the Super Bowl” contest again. Last year’s customer-submitted commercial has been running for the snack company since then, and the customer only spent $82 dollars to create it. Yes, only $82 dollars.
Social media has been the game changer for Super Bowl ads. The point is to spread out the impact from a single TV show that last year saw 111 million people tune in for one day, across time and media platforms. It will cost $3.5 million dollars for one 30-second spot to run during the Super Bowl this year, 16.7% more than last year. Consider that 30-seconds to be the "event." It’s the hype before and afterward that’s making the investment worthwhile for some advertisers.
As Suzie Reider, head of industry development for the global video team at Google, told the New York Times, “In previous years, Super Bowl commercials were single-day lightning. Now, it feels more like rolling thunder.” The way to generate the highest ROI on your media buy is to use many forms over many days. The buzz has already started with Volkswagen’s “Bark Side.” Tim Mahoney, chief product and marketing officer at Volkswagen of America, is quoted as saying in the same New York Times article, “We want to start and provoke a conversation, and we’re off to a rock-solid start.”
Ultimately the key is for Super Bowl advertisers to utilize basic marketing “blocking and tackling,” following the STP process of integrated marketing communications: Segment the market, select the Target most aligned with the company’s capabilities and strategy, then Position the offering in the mind of the consumer. It’s about communicating benefits, not features. The customer wants to know how a product, service, or “experience” satisfies their needs and wants. Marketers must do the basic things before stretching for the creative “touchdown”. In the end, an ad, no matter how creative, must be authentic. Customers today can see through the hype, and with the power of social media they’ll quickly get the word out. Their word.