As a Canadian who has
spent most of my career working with iconic global brands like Emirates Airline, Jim Beam and
Heineken, finding a single evening that
has the effects of Super Bowl is rare.
Living in the US, it's easier to understand the
magnetic pull and awesome power of the
Super Bowl as a place for brands. For those outside the US, it all may seem a little foggy. OK, everyone knows the
mythology of how Apple broke out against IBM in
1984 using a Super Bowl spot directed by
Ridley Scott. In those days - the olden days - Super Bowl was the place where the greatest brands dared to place an ad. It was the arena of boldness. Of daring. The
most hard core advertising forum of all.
In 2016, however the data is clear, this reverent
platform is an effective place for smart brands. Here's why.
Super Bowl 50 is designed to capture the hearts, minds and 260 million eye balls on
CBS this year. They will come for the game and also for the commercials because the ads are seen as entertainment in
and of themselves. With the fractalisation of TV
viewing and the consumer having choice
overload, appointment viewing television is a stronger tool than ever before for marketers to utilize. The Super
Bowl is an American social cultural phenomenon;
no one wants to be left out of the loop.
Leading up to the game, during the game, and for days after the game the event is a point of social discussion and
debate. The Super Bowl makes more sense
than ever because it provides a brand an
important platform.
When devising your Super Bowl commercial, you
need to keep the mood of the country in
mind. We are living in conservative times, people are fearful, anxious. Alongside ads that are silly,
humorous, wacky, we will deliver a
profound ad with an optimistic message because people want to feel good. That is why our clients, my team
and our partners are launching the 'onUp
movement' for SunTrust Bank during Super Bowl 50. It will be introduced with an innovative commercial called
"Hold Your Breath." If you hold
your breath while watching it, you'll get the
full experience. It is, I believe, one of the first interactive ads that will engage people from the first second and keep
them engaged until the end, participating
in the SunTrust ad, and then drive people to
onUp.com where an immersive experience is waiting for you.
Platforming Gives Brands a Bigger Role
It is exactly this powerful platform that gives
a select group of brands such as SunTrust
the opportunity to stand out. Platforming a brand lets you punch above your weight, connect with the power of
culture, hang with other American icons and in
the end create mass awareness and
engagement. I saw this first hand when Karin Drakenberg and I brought Heineken to James Bond and when our
young independent agency StrawberryFrog
did the Casino Royale global Heineken
campaign, and later when we brought Heineken to Champion's League as the official sponsor. We experienced this
when we brought Pampers to Super Bowl and
later to the Olympic Games. Platforming works.
Think about it. Between barking dogs, screaming
babies and the millions of daily
interruptions and flashes of messaging that seem to enter and exit our brains in the blink of an eye, the
many different ways we watch programs,
and don’t forget the tiny social media messages
that pop up incessantly, brands today need BIGGER platforms to breakthrough, and bigger brand ideas to galvanize
the general public to make waves and get
people to remember them. How many millions
of messages and hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on client messages that never register?
Super Bowl and spiralling fragmentation
In the United States, the Super Bowl platform
makes even more sense when you look at
the devolution of traditional television. There’s a downward spiral in regular TV ratings on American
television, which continues with no end
in sight. Super Bowl stands out as a powerful platform for a brand that wants to accelerate its trajectory, and make
an impact with the American consumer. Against
this are the numbers that underscore the
rapid changes in how TV viewers are consuming content. Americans are increasingly watching TV shows on Netflix,
Hulu, Amazon streaming and other services. Some
40 percent of households now have
subscription video service, Nielsen reported at the end of 2015. In an era of fragmentation Super Bowl is the only
media program remaining that has any mass American
ritual component.
In 2016, I have been working on a purpose driven
Super Bowl 50 campaign for SunTrust Banks
that will break during the 2 minute warning
in the fourth quarter. Getting here required a lot of research and uncovering the cost and benefit of the Super Bowl.
Working closely with our clients who
think big, and our media partner on SunTrust, 22 Squared, we uncovered tremendous insights. Jenny Reed, VP Media Director of 22 told me that using the “Super Bowl as a
launch platform for the SunTrust campaign
provides the opportunity to not only instantly
reach 46.6%* of their core target, but many others, to aid in jump starting the movement support at a national level
that will then fuel the local support. “
There is tremendous power in being associated
with positive culture. It’s completely a
feel good time when people are surrounded with friends and family, and enjoy watching and discussing commercials and
what they mean. Another benefit of Super Bowl is
that many of those tuning in to the commercials
are the very same hard to reach consumers who
don’t watch commercials the rest of the year.
Millennials’ Super Bowl TV Viewership Far
Outpaces Closest Competitors
For Millennials, perhaps the most adept audience
at avoiding advertising, the Super Bowl
far eclipses the closest competitors in viewership,
and represents a rare occasion where the ads truly become a central part of the event itself. I spoke with Chris
Boothe, CEO of Spark, our media partner
on StrawberryFrog’s Gold Cannes Lion winning Orexo and the past European Wax Center campaigns. He told me that the
game delivers an avalanche of viewers from this
coveted young generation: “Super Bowl
XLIX most recently delivered a 35.81 live + same day rating (vs. an average 1.02 primetime number for the top five
markets), reflecting a mindboggling 34.6 million
total Millennial viewers (ages 18-34) in
a span of just under 4 hours. To juxtapose the Super Bowl viewership with two popular hit shows, the current season
of Fox’s Empire totalled 45.1 million viewers
over the course of 10 episodes, while
AMC’s The Walking Dead has collected 58.5 million total viewers for the entire current season (ages
18-34). When compared with the Super
Bowl, it took seven episodes of Empire (36.1 million) and five for The Walking Dead (37.0 million) to surpass the
Super Bowl XLIX Millennial total audience.”
But what about hard to reach affluents? Or
C-Suite Management? Opinion formers? Or
Women? Isn’t Super Bowl a male dominated football loving, sporting event? No, this is a social and cultural
event that unites and has some of the
highest engagement numbers with hard to reach audiences. It has cultural relevance, the phenomenon probably dates
back thousands of years to the Roman Empire.
Just like the scene from Ridley Scott’s
Gladiator when the Roman Forum reveals an audience made up of the Roman elite, royal family members as well as
men, women and children in the bleachers
and the cheap seats - all sitting together, eating marzipan and taking in the spectacle. Food tastes have changed
but much remains the same.
"Contrary to many long-held beliefs, the
Super Bowl attracts an impressively large
number of female viewers. “Super Bowl XLIX most recently delivered a 36.94 live + same day rating, which translates to
a total of 34.8 million female viewers (ages 18 49).
This reflects a 25% increase of female
viewers when compared to prime-time broadcast viewership among the same demo, which averaged a 1.85 rating. Millennials, females and, in a sense, all viewers
enjoy the Super Bowl as a competition on
two levels: who wins the big game, but also who has the best commercials. The data is clear, the Super Bowl is an
investment that delivers superb results for
marketers," Chris told me.
For CEOs and CMOs and marketers wanting BIGGER
impact. Super Bowl 50 is the biggest
awareness opportunity and it doesn't require much to sustain. It offers awareness that starts building
pre-game for weeks and is big with
social. For a brand delivering a BIGGER brand idea, the Super Bowl is the kick off to the year. It enables
brands to have local activities across
markets and make all those diverse efforts
work even harder. "It’s the one venue in which the commercials are every bit as
important to viewers as the programming,"
says Shayne Millington, ECD of
StrawberryFrog.
Once you understand the power of the platform
and why it's the smart choice now, then
you need to focus on the ad itself. And then the decision comes down to what kind of ad you want to make: Wacky, absurd celebrity endorsements, straight product
pitches or, an opportunity to deliver an
important galvanizing message to America.
Scott Goodson is Founder & Chairman, StrawberryFrog & author of bestseller Uprising (McGraw-Hill 2012)