How long can the Super Bowl stay “super”?
The limping economy throws up a big challenge in front of companies advertising on Sunday’s Super Bowl. Sure, they want to make a big splash on the big game. But they also have to adjust to a shaky economy and strike the right tone with consumers who may be very nervous about their present and future condition.
Anheuser-Busch, the second-largest advertiser this year behind PepsiCo, has said viewers see the game as a respite and a time to kick back with family and friends. In other words, advertisers shouldn’t cut back or give off a gloomy vibe.
NPR asks a key question: Given a nationwide pullback in spending and the rise of a new ethos of frugality, how long will the Super Bowl stay “super”? The answer is pretty pessimistic, but it’s intriguing. We excerpt the story’s discussion of advertising here.
From the NPR story:
On TV, the Super Bowl not only pits the season’s two best teams against each other; it traditionally showcases the latest, most creative national advertising campaigns. Over the years, Super Bowl advertising has taken on a life of its own, spawning theories and books and TV specials.
The NFL is guaranteed huge bucks - some $3.7 billion a year - from the networks through 2010. But the future is unclear as media become more fractured and fragmented by new developments such as cable TV and the Internet. Will the money still be there in the strange new media landscape?
The Super Bowl is perhaps the last bastion of massiveness. Nowhere else can a company get its message out to so many millions of people in 30 seconds at the bargain price of $3 million - the going rate for this year’s game.
Nevertheless, this year there is a definite chill in the advertising air. Noticeably absent from the latest list of Super Bowl sponsors: the omnipresent FedEx and, even more significant, any U.S. automaker. Not even GM, whose recent earnings have sunk - like a rock.
The Associated Press, meanwhile, reports that the Super Bowl is set to be a big advertising bash, as always. But the accompanying festivities — Playboy parties, etc. — are being cut back.
Anheuser-Busch marketers, for their part, don’t seem to be running for cover as the economy limps. If anything, they are saying their Super Bowl plans haven’t changed. Keith Levy, vice president of marketing, recently told Lager Heads and other reporters that the Super Bowl might be the perfect escape for A-B’s target audience. Hence, a great venue to advertise.
“All the heavy things in life that are weighing down on people, when you think about drinking beer…it’s kind of the lighter side of their life,” Levy said.
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Jeremiah McWilliams is a native Virginian who came to the Post-Dispatch in early 2007 to cover beer and other consumer products. He previously covered manufacturing for the Virginian-Pilot newspaper in Norfolk, Va. He is a graduate of Washington and Lee University. 
Yeah - beer is the lighter side of life,…. except for those 2000 people fired by InBev, where beer is the heavy side of a seriously injured life.
The reason Bud Light has always finished at the top of USA Today’s post-Supser Bowl AdMeter rankings is twofold: They’re advertising a fun product, so it’s easy to make viewers laugh; and they always position the commercials at the very top of the telecast, often the first spots after kickoff, when everyone waiting for the commercials is primed and ready to roar at ANYTHING. By the fourth quarter, they’re not only ignoring the commercials, they’re in the bathroom getting rid of all that beer.
Now, does that lofty AdMeter ranking sell more beer? Only, apparently, if the ranking viewers are entertained by it, since beer is a completely nonessential purchase. That’s where the new “Drinkability” campaign fails, by trying to stress the beer’s steak (”drinkability”, whatever that is) instead of the sizzle (fun). And those silly freeze-frame ads are no fun.
That “steak” approach during Super Bowl ads works only if your product is of true benefit. Example: Last year SalesGenie.com got the lowest AdMeter ranking of all spots in that Super Bowl…yet its website got ten times what the company expected in direct response; it succeeded beyond their wildest imagination, because instead of targeting (like beer makers) hooting and hollering, partying football fans, they zeroes in on sales professionals and small business people with an ad touting 100 free sales leads. That’s dead serious business — “steak” — to people paid to sell, but largely ignored by beer lovers who just want to have fun (sizzle).