2008 Woodie Awards
Cost for Super Bowl ads on the rise
By Kortney Stringer \ KRT Campus Media
Issue date: 2/3/06 Section: News
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At a time when consumers increasingly zap past TV commercials, the Super Bowl may be the only television show of the year where we not only tolerate, but also actually look forward to, the ads.
Of course, viewers expect those ads to be highly entertaining. We want to be cracked up or choked up and have something to yak merrily about on Monday morning.
"The challenge for the advertisers is the expectations are so high," said Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. This year, he said, "we're going to see more humor and more unexpected twists."
Expectations are one reason why advertisers often debut their most creative ads during the game. The fact that it's the biggest television audience of the year has something to do with it, too. But it's also a night we want to laugh and yes, even shed a tear or two.
So be prepared for everything from a comical Emerald Nuts ad with a druid conducting business under a stairway and a star-studded Cadillac commercial with the glitz of a Paris fashion show to a Dove heart-string tugger with young girls talking about self-esteem.
This year's Super Bowl ads will shock, inspire, awe and amaze, or at least that's what their creators hope they'll do.
Super Bowl advertising is a big deal. After all, more than 133 million Americans watched the game last year. Only about 20 million American households typically tune in to a Sunday night episode of "Desperate Housewives."
As a result, advertising to that XL crowd can carry an XL price tag: an estimated $2.5 million for 30 seconds this year.
What marketers do with these precious time slots are as important as the exposure itself. After all, making a ho-hum ad that no one talks about the next day can be almost as bad as not advertising at all. Conversely, creating a spot like Coke's "Mean Joe Green" in 1980 or Master Lock's "Marksman" in 1974 can have people talking years later.
Super Bowl ads can make or break a company's image in the minds of consumers, so this year advertisers are pulling out a number of tricks. Unlike the days before the Janet Jackson "wardrobe malfunction" debacle, advertisers for the most part will keep commercials clean and family-friendly.
Completely gone are ads for erectile-dysfunction drugs. And some top Super Bowl advertisers of past years, such as McDonald's and Visa, won't have an ad presence as they've opted to advertise during the Winter Olympics, which starts five days after the big game.
