Super Bowl Advertising through a System 1 Lens
What if the real winners of the Super Bowl advertising competition weren’t the ones that aired the most original, the funniest, most emotional, most talked about ads? What if the winners weren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest name celebrities or celebrity directors or the biggest production budgets?
What if the winners were the ads that actually built the brand in ways that elevated its position in the mind of the consumer?
If the CMOs who approve these ads were thinking about success in the same terms in which they think about successful advertising investments for the rest of the year, we would see a different mix of ads. And no, the ads wouldn’t have to be boring, bland, rational and forgettable. Many sophisticated advertisers have become skilled in figuring out the kinds of ads that will engage consumers and persuade using System 1-based thinking, and many of the ads we’re seeing today on-air and on-line reflect that. It’s too bad this knowledge so often goes out the window on Super Bowl Sunday.
Imagine that more advertisers aired Super Bowl ads that they actually expected to work in support of building the brand in the System 1 brain. We’d be seeing more Game Day ads that…
- Employ emotion to make you love the brand – instead of using emotion solely to make you love the commercial.
- Build onto a familiar campaign, introducing new ads within the brand’s already distinctive and memorable campaign format.
- If a new campaign is to be launched, consider introducing the theme in the weeks before the Super Bowl, enabling the high-priced investment in the game to work harder based on the familiarity that’s already been built.
- Use the brand’s Distinctive Brand Assets in starring roles – tapping into not just brand linkage, but also all of the pre-existing equities that are vested in the DBAs. Ads that star DBAs don’t have to be predictable – they can use the DBAs in fresh, unexpected ways to provide both strong branding and the entertainment value Super Bowl ad viewers have come to expect.
- Bring in celebrities only if they fit seamlessly into an existing campaign, amplify the existing brand values, or otherwise bring attention directly to the brand.
Of course, we can’t expect every CMOs to change how they think about the once-a-year fun of approving that buzz-worthy Super Bowl ad. So, not to worry, there will be plenty of ads that make us talk about the ad but overlook the brand, use celebrities – often multiple celebrities – solely to gain attention, and are otherwise big budget, ROI-busting, but entertaining larks.
