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old Super Bowl
The whole thing is soaked in tradition--and ad $s
By Heidi Vogt
Today we know two things about this month's Super Bowl. Neither New York team will be in it, perhaps to the relief of the rest of the nation, and it will be a return to the cozy Super Bowls of years past -- full of tradition and usually not much noteworthy football.
Last year, the Super Bowl aired before an America still grieving the tragedy of 9/11, and the year before that it aired before a nation scratching its head over the swarm of dot.com advertisers.
This year, by comparison, war may loom but the commercial break will remind viewers of Super Bowls past, with the roll out clever messages from traditional Super Bowl advertisers like Budweiser.
“This is a pretty boring year,” says Mel Berning, president of U.S. broadcast at MediaVest.
“The market’s pretty healthy. There’s a few units left. But it’s not like two years ago when a crush of money came out for the dot.coms. I don’t think there’s anything new.”
It’s back to the way it used to be for pricing as well. For the first time since 2000, Super Bowl ad spots are more expensive than the previous year. ABC, which is broadcasting the Jan. 26 game, is commanding an average $2.2 million for a 30-second spot this year, up from $1.9 million in 2002.
Those companies willing to put down $2.2 million to advertise in the Super Bowl are all the old favorites.
Pepsi is promoting its relatively new Sierra Mist drink. H&R Block is showcasing Willie Nelson. Levi Strauss is doing a contest tie-in that will end in one fan winning $150,000. Fed Ex, Anheuser-Busch, General Motors and Visa are all returning.
Just two dot.coms are in the mix: Monster and Hotjobs.
One of the few new advertisers is Gatorade, now owned by Pepsi. While this will be the first time Gatorade appears on a commercial spot during the Super Bowl, the brand has a long tradition of Super Bowl product placement on the sidelines of the game.
A spokesperson for Gatorade’s ad agency, Element 79 Partners in Chicago, a unit of Omnicom, says the spot, which features Michael Jordan, is aimed at building momentum coming off a successful sales year.
The lure of Super Bowl this year is the same as the lure of recent years, and nothing particularly surprising to media people: a way to pull a mass audience, many of them hard-to-reach males, in an era of increasing media fragmentation.
“The Super Bowl is one of the few places left on national television where there are mass audiences. The audience is probably even underestimated because of a lot of guest viewing,” says Bruce Goerlich, senior vice president research director at MediaVest.
The ads that remain to be sold for the Super Bowl are end-of-the-game spots, which networks typically hold on to as long as possible to try to drive up prices. Spots at the beginning of the game are bought up early because they’re guaranteed to have a large audience even if the game is a rout -- simply so dull that people quit viewing at the half.
“Buy the third or fourth quarter and you’ve got some risk,” says Berning. “On the other hand, if you buy fourth quarter and the game’s tied, it’s tremendous. It’s a question of how risk-averse you are.”
Last year Super Bowl audiences stayed tuned through the final seconds of the game when the New England Patriots kicked a field goal to win with no time left on the clock.
But trying to guess the way the game will play out is a tricky venture.
“I’m not sure that there's anybody who's smart enough to know whether a game is still going to be a game in the last two minutes,” says Berning. “You really have to either be very brave or know football very well to make a purchase based on how good you think the game is going to be."
But there are some strategy tricks to Super Bowl ads, as British liquor marketer Diageo has shown this year.
Diageo has managed to get around ABC’s exclusive arrangement with sponsor Anheuser-Busch by buying spots from local TV stations around the country. Diageo has bought 30-second spots in 64 markets to air commercials for Smirnoff Ice Triple Black, a new malt beverage.
While the local ad spots are getting Smirnoff on the air, it probably cost Diageo about double the price of a national spot.
“You’d probably have to buy 30 to 35 markets to equal the price [of a national ad],” says Berning. “If they’re buying 60 markets, they’re paying a lot more than $2.2 million.
January 13,2003© 2003 Media Life
-Heidi Vogt is a staff writer for Media Life.
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