It’s only early November, and CBS says that they’re almost sold out of ad inventory for Super Bowl 50, which will be held nearly 3 months from now, on February 7 of next year. What is it about this event that drives so many advertisers to line up to pay the going price of $5 million per :30 of commercial time, plus all of the production and PR costs that go along with the buy?
It can’t be the numbers. On the basis of the conservatively estimated $10mm total investment, a typical CPG brand would have to sell 50 million additional units beyond what they would have sold without the commercial buy to recoup the investment. An auto company would have to sell over 7,000 additional cars which without that 30-second experience would have gone unsold to recover the cost of being on the Super Bowl.
What’s more, we know the odds are stacked against this happening – while some commercials do better than others in breaking through and persuading, the average Super Bowl commercial achieves branded awareness among about 9.5 % of American adults, or 2.3 million consumers. Okay, that’s a pretty big number on the basis of a single exposure. However, the odds are only one in five that this one commercial exposure is going to actually convince a meaningful number of that 2.3 million consumers to do anything differently, in regards to the brand, than they otherwise would have. The math just doesn’t add up.
But of course, each individual advertiser is convinced that this year, this spot is going to break out and win it all. And, in fact there are the winners. Some win big in a short-term way. Budweiser’s 2014 pairing of its iconic Clydesdales with a puppy, in the widely heralded Puppy Love execution, didn’t only generate strong awareness and buzz for the brand – Communicus data suggests that it also had a significant impact on building favorability for the beer itself.
Some win big over a longer period. GoDaddy first started advertising on the Super Bowl in 2005, and for the next seven years was highly effective in using the venue to build awareness of the company and its products. However, the brand has been off its game recently, having stalled in 2013, 2014 and 2015 in its use of the Super Bowl buy to leverage its way into the consideration set of those who are in the market for domain names and websites.
For some Super Bowl advertisers, the allure may be more about getting to have a really good time developing creative concepts that become high-budget, talked about TV commercials. It’s just like in the good old days before the advent of DVR’s, the Internet, social media and branded content – all of which helped to reduce the focus on high-budget TV commercials. Plus, there’s the opportunity to develop a really creative PR and social activation campaign, generating even more buzz on the basis of the creativity that you’ve brought to the brand. The advertisers who sign up have the chance to be old school and leading edge simultaneously!
Who doesn’t want all that? So maybe the expectation of increased sales is not always the point after all.
