• Patriots, Giants and about $3 Million for a 30-second spot

    Posted on January 21st, 2008 by and currently 3 commenting.

    I have a love/hate relationship with Superbowl ads. I look forward to them every year… but as I start reading all the hype built around who purchased time and how much the airtime is going for, I think my expectations get set too high. Because every year, there’s one or two ads that stand out (usually beer commercials for beer that I really don’t like) among a sea of disappointments.

    So before all the hype starts for this year, I wanted to simply take a look at the price tag for a 30-second spot. Three million dollars is a lot of money to a lot of mid-sized – and even some large ” companies. And that’s just for the airtime. How about creative, production, talent and media placement fees on top of that? It’s definitely a chunk out of that first quarter marketing budget.

    So what would you do with $3+ million? Hire a community manager and give them something to manage? Invest in surprising and delighting your biggest fans? Create a sustainable word of mouth movement? Create a customer advisory board? Put it back into engaging your employees (especially customer service)? Do some product sampling? Create avenues to have an authentic, open, two-way conversation with your customers? In other words, create something that will last. That has legs. That is, dare I say it, sustainable.

    Let’s get something clear: I am not bashing Superbowl ads. Advertising is for awareness and is needed. But it’s not for credibility. It is a blip on the radar screen. And it’s most definitely a fly-by-night gamble, not to mention an average 4% ROI. So if you’re one of those marketers that wishes they had the cash to show up on Super Sunday, you may want to rethink the whole thing. Some companies already are.

    How would you make those marketing dollars work hard for your cause?

  • http://www.brandidentityguru.com/wordpress Scott White

    Not a fan of spending the money either but… there have been some big time winners. And when you say 4% what’s that mean in dollars? If you get 4% responses but just one of those turns into say a 20 m illion dollar deal then who cares about 4%.

    The beer companies do it for image and there is no expectation of ROI. But some newcomers, we’ll see who they are, are looking for sales.

    Godaddy did pretty well with their campaign. But I do agree there are better ways to spend one’s valuable marketing budget dollars.

    Leveraging one’s brand identity isn’t a bad way to spend some money.

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  • Pat

    The benefit for new companies to sign up for a superbowl spot is that it creates an event. There are a lot of things three million dollars could do, but to get the most eyeballs, the superbowl seems like the best bet. I like the ads as much as I enjoy the game to be honest. They are always good for a few laughs. It’s great to see that
    Firebrand is going to have the commercials the day after the superbowl too. The better ones are definitely rewatchable.