With roughly millions of viewers worldwide, the Super Bowl has become one of the premier venues for marketers. The thrills, the chills, the laughter, the tears – and that’s just the advertisements! (It was a pretty lop-sided game this year between the Denver Broncos and Seattle Seahawks.) At a cost of $4 million for 30 seconds of air time, the Super Bowl is also the most expensive advertising placement of any event or show. Add the costs of designing and producing ads, plus the integration into other marketing tactics, and a company can easily spend upwards of $5 million at a single event.
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Super Bowl advertisements have become a talking point during and after the game. It’s a big stage, and can also be a big risk. Ads from Cheerios, GoDaddy, Soda Stream, and Axe hit the nerves of some audience members. But with an audience of 111.5 million viewers the 48th Super Bowl game ranked ninth with a 69% of U.S. households with TVs tuned to the game. And days later, we are still watching ads and measuring results.
Watch the ads – which company do you think did the best, and worst, job on their advertisements?
Group Activities and Discussion Questions:
- Bring up one of the Web sites that have all the Super Bowl ads. These can be found on www.youtube.com; www.adage.com; www.brandchannel.com; http://www.superbowl-commercials.org/cat/2014; http://www.nfl.com/superbowl/48; and other sites.
- Divide students into teams of two. Have each team select a Super Bowl ad to analyze and present in class.
- What is the target market, key message, and offer from the ad?
- How does the ad integrate with a company’s other advertisements?
- Are the messages integrated with a company’s Web site and social media?
- As a class, after each commercial have students assign one to five stars for the advertisements. Which ad won your class votes?
Source: Ad Age Daily, Brandchannel.com, other news sources
