Super Bowl Wasteland: Why the Big Game Solves the Wrong Problem

I’m done with the Super Bowl. 

I’m done with Super Bowl advertising. Done with its shallow pretentiousness. Done with its tone-deaf take on modern life, its Michael Bay production excess, and its overblown claim on our national consciousness.

Why the cynicism?  My first answer:  Why not? Is there any justification for what the Super Bowl has become? 

Let’s start with the basics: the core product. Pro football. Why is it still a thing? I’ll confess—until a few years ago, I was an avid fan, a season ticket holder no less. No more. I turned on football at about the same time I turned on Hollywood (do you realize how many movies score single digits in Rotten Tomatoes?)

I’ve reached that point in my life where I want things claiming to be big and important to actually be big and important. You get that way after grandchildren. 

Fine, I’m a curmudgeon. But shouldn’t we all be when it comes to the NFL’s punting away of moral authority? The league kills off its talent and has the arrogance to deny that they do so. The only assured penalty for using a helmet as a weapon is 15 yards—if the zebras catch it. And when it comes to domestic abusers, they don’t even get 15 yards. 

I can’t make a moral case for the NFL’s continued existence. 

But let’s talk business, Super Bowl advertising in particular. There’s surprisingly little to say. It’s been a graveyard for creativity for years. 

That’s shameful, considering the investment that a Super Bowl ad commitment requires—$5 million for a 30-second spot, average production costs north of $1 million, and a few million more for the supporting “ecosystem” to get the ad noticed before and after the game.

Oh for the days when placing a breakthrough ad, such as ‘1984’, was a rebellious act. Steve Jobs defied his board to run that spot. How quaint.

Regrettably, the ad industry grovels at the NFL altar on the misguided belief that the game is the destination for ultimate “storytelling”or “great ideas.”  

No.

If your Super Bowl ad doesn’t make the Top 5 in USA Today or get vaulted into the social virusphere, you have wasted your $10 or $20 million investment. If you spend a billion dollars a year on advertising, maybe you don’t notice that malfeasance. 

The odds of hitting the Top 5 in the Super Bowl are akin to pulling an inside straight in poker, the very definition of unnecessary risk.

But I would go further—even if you make the Top 5, you probably have still wasted your money. 

Here’s why: Brands are focused on the wrong problem.  

It’s not about attention, it’s about uncertainty

The Super Bowl sells the mystique of mass attention, but the real problem for most brands is an uncertain, ambiguous future. So it makes a lot more sense for a brand to invest $10 million into understanding its most difficult challenges instead.

What could you learn? Could you discover a market inefficiency that no one has seen? Could you identify indirect or stealth competitors before they sneak up on you and make you irrelevant?  Could you develop a brand extension or a new product line that could offer you access to untapped markets worth millions? 

Think even further ahead. What could you do with $50 million or $100 million if you’re a brand that spends $10 to $20 million on the Super Bowl for five years running, during which time you’ve never come close to justifying the ROI?

I get the law of supply and demand. The Super Bowl is prize media real estate. There will be advertisers who pay the irrational tolls that the networks and the NFL demand, until the entire world is repelled by the moral bankruptcy of it all, and the league goes the way of heavyweight boxing and horse racing—visible, but niche sports with dubious reputations.

The NFL is living on borrowed time. Mothers don’t want to bury 50-year-old sons with CTE and they’re sick of wife beaters. And dads are steadily joining English Premier League fantasy leagues.

Brands are living on borrowed time, too.  

There are plenty of places to tell your story without wasting your money. Spend it on something else. Work on saving your brand and creating its future. Or—even bolder—spend $10 million to fix something broken in your community. 

Real value is priceless. 

The Super Bowl, it’s just expensive.