Fully half of Super
Bowl ads won't connect
They'll aim to build awareness. They should be aiming for engagement.
By Diego Vasquez
Jan 25, 2012
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| 'If Budweiser is so smart, how come they keep losing share' |
Dozens of companies will advertise on next month's Super Bowl on NBC, but only about half of them will reap real returns on that investment. That's according to the Brand Keys Super Bowl Engagement Survey, released earlier this week, which finds that about half the brands advertising in the big game fail to engage customers, drive positive behavior or sales, or build the brand. The main objective for Super Bowl advertisers should not be driving awareness, argues Brand Keys, a New York-based brand and customer loyalty research consultancy. Any advertiser that can afford the game's $3.5 million commercial price usually has high awareness heading into the game. Rather advertisers should be focusing on engagement, which reaches far beyond amusement at a cute animal in an ad. Robert Passikoff, Ph.D., founder and president at Brand Keys, and Amy Shea, Brand Keys' executive vice president and global director, talk to Media Life about which Super Bowl advertisers are doing it right, which aren't, and how a really good ad can get people engaged.
Why isn't awareness the goal for a Super Bowl advertiser? When is awareness the goal for an advertiser?
Shea: The thing with the Super Bowl is basically it's a show that's as much about commercials as it is about the sport itself. So you already have a guarantee of awareness, that's what you get for your money.
Knowing you're going to get that, there's the entertainment aspect that you want to be remembered from a brand perspective. But remembered for what? That it's entertaining? You want to entertain as your message resonates and is relevant.
Passikoff: When you talk to awareness, you're talking about did people remember the name or such? The general rule is anyone who can afford at minimum the $3.5 million for just one spot, and the production costs that go into it, already has universal awareness. There isn't a single advertiser on there [on the Super Bowl] that people don't already know.
If advertisers are not chasing awareness in the Super Bowl, how do they measure brand engagement?
Shea: I think there is a day-after recall measure that's very popular. They look now to social media and people commenting on it. They'll do focus groups, etc., but what they tend to get is that sort of stickiness of the entertainment of the ad.
Sometimes people won't remember who the advertiser was. They'll talk about buzz, how many people went online--there's all sorts of things in play that the brand is paying all that money for that really has nothing to do with entertainment.
It's like a doorway you want to walk through--you have to get someone to pay attention, but it's a waste of $3.5 million if you don't move them in some way. What have you done to create a greater affinity with the brand?
Passikoff: The problem we have as researchers is the definition of engagement has been so bastardized to fit an all-occasion situation for the media and advertisers. It becomes associated with some degree of that issue of awareness.
When we talk about engagement we talk about the result of the marketing effort where the brand who pays for it comes away as being better for it. Did ultimately the activity increase brand value to better meet their expectations?
Reasonable people can agree that running one ad is not going to shift everyone's world in terms of a brand. It can if something is absolutely new, if something is surprising and changes the paradigm for a category, but you don’t really expect after single ad for Coca-Cola for the shelves to be empty of Coca-Cola.
What do the top scorers in your poll have in common? What have they done to increase brand equity?
Passikoff: There are two classic examples, and the first is the GoDaddy.com because it's a really good example of brand building.
Shea: This was the only exception in my memory of a brand who came on the Super Bowl and no one knew them. They knew that and came on with an amazingly risqué kind of advertising and really made an impact. People were saying, "Who is this? What is this?"
For them it was effective because they knew people had no idea who they were, but also that they didn't understand the category. So they wanted to build the question. So now it's this thing they do annually that keeps that awareness, if you will, of the brand, and it's something that's made up their character. They're remembering what they do--it's their job to get companies noticed. So there's a kind of fit.
And they're very rigorous about tracking their results from the Super Bowl. What leads are coming in, what leads get turned over, they have a strict program about finding out what it's delivering.
Passikoff: The other one I was going to talk about is Hyundai, because they introduced the insurance program where if you lost your job they'd buy the car back. That was their entrance at a time when folks were worried about the economy, and that absolutely launched the brand.
Part of it is if Budweiser is so smart, how come they keep losing share? Maybe a new product introduction for an established brand will do something in terms of trial, but look at Budweiser and Bud Light. If [Super Bowl advertising] works so well, why aren't they getting better? All things being equal, if the advertising is supposed to do something beyond people saying "oh, isn't that a cute baby Clydesdale," where are the sales? Where is the share of market?
How can a brand advertise in the Super Bowl without its brand being affected? Would you say that's a waste of $3.5 million?
Shea: There's short-term buzz factor and lift and a million words for it, and people try to find a way to talk about it to make it sound bigger than it is. There's all that stuff that can feel good, but really it's we're mentioning this big brand because it's turned into this almost Academy Awards of advertising, the creatives want to show off, and who can blame them.
There's not--that I've seen--a willingness of brands to say "this didn't really work for us." There's not going to be a lot of talk about that in the press. Ultimately brands are looking for something that's building the brand positively. I think about it as moving the consumer closer. You expect the consumer to move closer to the brand because they said something meaningful to them. Just entertaining them is a very short-term jolt.
What do the brand losers have in common? Does this necessarily mean they muffed their commercials, or did they just not connect with people?
Passikoff: We haven't seen the commercials yet so we're just doing it on the basis of the brands, but we would suggest that the venue and values that are inherent in the Super Bowl just do not lend themselves as well to certain brands and certain categories. This is pure interpretation. If you think of the Super Bowl, what kind of food do you think of? Do you think of yogurt? Dannon is advertising on it and they were one of the losers.
Also, Century 21. My interpretation is that when I'm rooting for one team versus the other, I'm not thinking about selling my house or buying a house.
What's a good example of a brand that has really lived up to the potential of a Super Bowl ad buy?
Passikoff: I think that the categories that relate better to the values of the sports and the experience do well. Colas do well. Snack foods do well all the time. Athletic shoes do well.
So when we do these kinds of engagement metrics, we can see diagnostically what values are reinforced and which aren’t. If you accept the premise and the reality of the marketplace, that no one who's advertising in the Super Bowl needs higher levels of awareness, you can have a gut sense of whether or not this works with the venue, the Super Bowl. I think it's a fair individual acid test.
What's the greatest misconception about Super Bowl ad buys from a branding perspective?
Shea: I'd say that it's all good. That as long as you put something out there that people talk about and you're spoken of well the next day, then it's all good. It's too easy.
Passikoff: I was going to say that you actually think it's going to affect the consumer in the marketplace.
Shea: I've always wanted someone to do the ad recall thing the next week rather than the next day. There's a certain kind of "social capital" you earn by seeing the ads.
Passikoff: It's a good news-bad news situation. The good news is everyone watches the ads. And the bad news is everyone watches the ads--buzz comes in two frequencies, good and bad. The levels of awareness aren't going to shift dramatically, but the issue for us is did you ultimately get more highly engaged loyal customers out this?
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