Wasted Opportunities During the Super Bowl
By Amy Griswold on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008Ever since I could remember, I’ve watched the Super Bowl strictly for the commercials. Not being a huge NFL fan, the game doesn’t really all that much matter to me (however, I did pull for the NY Giants this year). But in the past few years I feel like the commercials have gone downhill, and from what I can gather, I’m not the only one. This year I took notes on the commercials and did a bit of analyzing.
Of the 60 commercials I kept tabs on (I excluded all FOX commercials and may have included locally shown commercials), it broke down to 41 brands who spent the dollars (approximately $2.7 million dollars for 30 seconds!) to air several sub-par commercials. It wasn’t until yesterday that I realized there wasn’t much integration with the online channels that many of these brands have created. Only 23 brands listed URLs in their commercials! You’d think with spending that much money on a commercial(s), they’d do everything possible to extend the brand experience online. Of the 23 URLs displayed along the way, 13 were direct links to the brand’s website, 3 were URLs that either mirrored or redirected to the same page used as the homepage, and 7 were microsites dedicated to the campaign.
What’s even more surprising to me is that many recognizable brands didn’t include their website URL on their commercials (Coca-Cola, Bud Light, Budweiser, Victoria’s Secret, and Gatorade). Yes, we’re familiar with your brands, but are we familiar with what you’re doing online? Maybe, but why chance it? With the way marketing is heading, it’s safe to say all of the brands have a website, but is the URL known? Make it easy for consumers to find you and put your address in front of them when they’re captive!
I have to admit, my favorite commercial was the Tide-to-Go talking stain, it was priceless (and so true). I have a hard time focusing on what someone is saying if there’s a stain on their shirt, so distracting! In case you missed it, you can view the commercial here. The microsite allows visitors to watch the ad again, participate in contests, as well as take part in filming a spoof and interacting with their channel on YouTube. To me, Tide-to-Go got it right this year: entertaining commercial, microsite dedicated to the commercial, and social/interactive/engaging aspects of the site. Way to go!
And in case you missed any of the other commercials, you can view them on MySpace – they have them hosted for your convenience. And if you’re interested, I’ve listed out the brands (and linked to their sites) that make up the numbers mentioned above.
Brands who listed website URLs:
Planters
Under Armour
Sales Genie
Bridgestone Tires
GoDaddy
FedEx
Cars.com
Toyota
Garmin
Career Builder
ONDCP
T-Mobile
E*Trade
Brands that used URLs that mirror/redirect to site:
Doritos
Taco Bell
Sunsilk
Brands who listed microsites:
Tide to Go
Audi R8
Sales Genie
Hyundai
Dell
Sobe Life Water
Pepsi Stuff
Kudos to SalesGenie.com for pointing to their URL, but their creative was so bad (in my opinion) that their message did not resonate and drive the traffic it should have.
Amy great recap. My favorite was the Coke Balloons. Love that Charlie Brown finally won something. Do you think they’ll re-run it during the Macy’s Parade this Thanksgiving (smile).
Thanks Toby! The Coke Balloons commercial was cute, it definitely made me smile to see Charlie Brown come in as the winner. I definitely think they’ll re-run it for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade - it’s perfect for that!
Great points Amy. And was it me, but did it feel like the majority of those commercials could have aired 5 years ago? There was a sense of datedness which was odd. Night at the Roxbury?
I agree with Sela. I thought the commercials were OK, but not the greatest in comparison to previous years. My top 3 favorite commercials:
1. Budlight
2. Tide to Go (I actually explored the Tide to Go microsite following the commercial.)
3. Doritos
Interesting, Amy!
Fox refused to air godaddy.com’s commercial so they used their 30 seconds to let everyone know it’s available on their website. Clever!
This year’s winner of the USA Today Superbowl Ad Meter was the Budweiser Rocky-themed Clydesdale. It comes as little surprise, as Budweiser or Bud Light has won the award every year since 1999.
(My favorite was the FedEx ad featuring gigantic carrier pigeons gone wrong.)
I like your recap Amy, but I think that a very important concept here that you are not realizing is Return of Investment. When Bud Light put their commercial on TV, it made me want to go drink yet another beer, not get on my computer become “familiar with what [their] doing online?”. Bud Light is a never changing recipe, with a well established brand name that has small to moderate price sensitivity and is widely available. I don’t need to get online before I go to a store to buy beer; I just get in my truck and go! The same goes for Coca-Cola and Gatorade, what return on investment will they receive from a website, can you buy any of these products online? NO! The choice is made at the store, far far away from a computer.
In some ways I can see benefits for Victoria’s Secret putting their URL on the commercial, however we are once again talking about a well established company with a fairly niche market. If men are daring enough to purchase lingerie for their significant other this Valentines day, I believe many will go into the store to see the products, while a woman may wish to purchase online, however what woman has not been to victoriassecret.com or is not knowledgeable to Google it?
Coming back to the concept of ROI, one must a lot of tide pins & Sobe life water to cover the costs of a micro site, as they are newer products and consumers need to be slightly educated about the product’s capabilities, making a micro-site slightly necessary, but ultimately how much are you and I going to sweat over the decision of a $3 tide pen, or a $1.50 sobe water? Very little, the decision comes down to the isle of the grocery store, and until out shopping carts have laptops embedded in them, I doubt firms selling products in stores, and not online will see a substantial return on these investments.
Audi, Bridgestone, Dell and Hyundai are brands which I feel are justified in spending money on micro-sites, these firms sell a product with a large price tag and long life span. As with major purchase, the consumer wishes to be more informed regarding their decision, soon to be home owners get a house inspection, car buyers take the car for a test drive. I know when I purchased my tires for my truck I spend countless hours comparing Bridgestone All-terrain T/As to Ground Hawg Bias tires. Information is key, consumers will take the time to learn about the product they are seeking, the brands that make them and the price points of the product.
Amy, what I am getting at here is from my reading you seemed astonished that so many of these brands did not seem interested in spreading their marketing experience online; you need to understand that though the internet is great, it does not help many industries and products which retail for low dollars. Look at the websites for items like Planter’s nuts and Morton’s salt, these are fairly simple sites that educate the consumer on uses for their products, they are low maintenance and low investment, while a site for Audi is a flashy (put intended) high investment project. There is simply no reason for many firms to extend their brand experience online, when the real experience should be consuming the product in person.
David,
While ROI definitely is the name of the game, we must realize that these Super Bowl ads are not designed to spark $2.7M from consumers on the night of the Super Bowl, as you alluded to w/ the Bud Light commercial making you want to go drink another beer. The design is to build brand loyalty, leading to revenue, over time.
Below are examples of microsites that have been developed recently by consumer-based companies, including some of those you mentioned in your post:
http://www.herestobeer.com - Bud Light’s Here’s To Beer
http://leagueofclutch.com - Gatorade’s League of Clutch
http://www.mytalkingstain.com - Tide to Go – My Talking Stain
http://orangeunderground.com - Orange Underground
http://chickfila.com/biggestfan - Chick-Fil-A’s Biggest Fan
These companies have already made a choice to “spread their marketing experience online” by developing interactive websites, microsites, and landing pages. Obviously they didn’t develop them to reside in virtual-land without any visitors. I think Amy’s astonishment stems from the lack of collaboration between the TV ads and the existing online initiatives that were developed by these brands.
Super Bowl ads are measured by creativity, but also by brand recollection. The more interaction one has with a brand the more likely they will be to retain that experience and recall it later on. Most of this year’s Super Bowl advertisers missed this. They failed to leverage online mediums in order to gain the most brand recognition for the $90k per second they spent.
I’ll take one line from a great Ad Age article (http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=124838) talking about the importance of capitalizing on Super Bowl ads through online media:
“When compared with the $2.7 million cost of a Super Bowl ad, we’re literally talking about pennies on the dollar to capture this traffic and go the full distance [through online integration].”
Enough said.
Some great points by all.
I am actually glad that companies are showing a little more restraint by not plastering the url all over everything. For several years there, you couldn’t look at any billboard, commercial, or other advertising media without seeing strings of w’s and dots, forward slashes, hyphens or, heaven forbid, the the dreaded tilde (~!).
Unless Coca-cola is directing me to a specific mini-site for an ad campaign, I don’t see as much of a point in putting their url on *everything*.
Most people know how to use google to find what they need and I think, from a pure aesthetic viewpoint, it’s cleaner to stick with a polished logo.
That being said, I do think it’s great when the ad campaign spans several different media, such as interactive websites, print ads, radio ads as well as television. Pretty slick when well done and gives the *impression* that the company really knows how to operate well (and, in theory, produce a decent product, right?).
Most of those companies have long-running ad campaigns that could be much better integrated between airwaves, print and web.
But hey, I remember, not too long ago, when you couldn’t watch the superbowl ads again at all… even if you *wanted* to watch a commercial (gasp!), you were just plain out of luck!
So, here’s to a maturing internet for providing an avenue to relive the highlights (even if they’ve lost the sheen).
Why waste space and time putting your url on a commercial, when your url is most likely “well-knownbrandname.com”. After all, if you can pay the cost of a Superbowl Ad, your brand is more likely than not a widely known brand.
Microsites also often have direct links from the main site’s homepage.
I agree with David in that, if you really want to know what is going on with a brand, the user will find a way (and as I mentioned earlier, without much difficulty).
I do agree with you that the commercials were by far sub par compared to years past. Very disappointing.