Why You Spend $2.6 Million on Super Bowl Ad

Compare the blog buzz the day after the Super Bowl for frequent advertiser Bud Light (blue line with big spike) versus non-advertiser Miller Lite (red line that's flat).

Trend courtesy of IceRocket.com.

Complete Thoughts on Super Bowl Ads

As always, I overestimated local journalism. Rather than post our actual thoughts, the A-J simply posted our top and bottom ads. As a moment of pride, fellow advertising professor Harsha Gangadharbatla and I both ranked the vile Snickers ad as the worst. The difference was that Harsha's picture was on the cover, while I made the jump. Pandering to diversity, I tell you (kidding).

Then I picked up USA Today to see that the Snickers ad made the top 10. It's the end of the world, people.

Since these thoughts got edited out of the A-J, here is what I thought. Feel free to pan me.

LUBBOCK, Texas -- Overall the Super Bowl ads were lackluster this year. Early reports suggested that humor was the dominant theme and that most of the ads fell short. That was the case. Several of the ads elicited a smile at best.

To me, Bud Light was the clear winner. All of their ads were funny and in keeping with their brand image. And Bud Light’s ads actually made me laugh. They had three really clever ads, and it was difficult for me not to name Bud Light ads as all of my favorites. So we will be talking about these ads Monday, and the ads might actually increase sales.

CBS was another huge winner that will not occur to most people. I counted dozens of promotions for CBS shows, many of which already top the ratings. The promotional spot with David Letterman and Oprah in Colts and Bears jerseys was among my favorite spots of the night. CBS promos were everywhere. CBS came out of the halftime show promoting 5 straight CBS programs and specials.

There is an old adage in advertising, “it isn’t creative unless it sells.” Too often Super Bowl ad producers forget this. Sure, you might have a clever idea, but if it has nothing to do with the brand, it will not affect sales. Being effective is the real goal.

The Pizza Hut ad with Jessica Simpson in the pre-game show will not top anyone’s list. But it may have been the most effective ad of the night. Just before kickoff is the perfect time to order pizza, and that ad likely both caught attention and led to sales. As an advertising professor, I like that.

Coca-Cola’s return to the Super Bowl was underwhelming. The Grand Theft Auto videogame takeoff was clever, but it’s been circulating on Youtube.com for weeks. So for much of the target audience, the GTA Coke ad was stale.

Ford also underwhelmed me. In truth, the locally placed Ford ad promoting Texas patriotism was the best automotive ad that I saw tonight. And this cost Ford far less than $2.6 million.

There were several contests this year inviting the audience to submit ads. I think this “category” was won by the Chevrolet HHR car wash ad created by University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee student Katie Crabb.

Both academic research and sales data show that sex for sex’s sake does not sell (e.g., Paris Hilton for Carl's Jr.). GoDaddy.com fell short to me. Although sex ties back to the name, it has nothing to do with the company’s business.

Conversely, beer, Coca-Cola, and snacks are exactly what the Super Bowl is about. That’s why these products are a natural tie in.

I awoke to these words this morning from my dad and advertising industry executive, Sam Bradley version 2.0:

"I didn't see a single commercial that made we want to remember to try their product. I thought a couple were entertaining -- not brilliantly so."

Watching Super Bowl Ads 'On Duty'

I watched the Super Bowl as an ad critic today. On Friday, a reporter from the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal called and asked whether I would watch and give them a top 3, worst 3, and overall remarks. After getting over the shame of being their second choice, I agreed.

So I logged every ad. I paid attention to which ads made me laugh and which ads made my wife, Emily, laugh. She here are my Top 3 and Bottom 3.

Top 3
1. Bud Light: Rock, Paper, Scissors
2. Bud Light: Fist Bump
3. T Mobile: Charles Barkley as Dwayne Wade’s "dad"

Honorable Mention
CBS: David Letterman and Oprah

Bottom 3
1. Snickers: Two mechanics kissing
2. Sierra Mist Free: Beard comb over
3. Garmin Navigation: Maposaurus

Here are my concluding thoughts, which were primed by a great Super Bowl TV network post by my colleague Rob Potter:

CBS was another huge winner that will not occur to most people. I counted dozens of promotions for CBS shows, many of which already top the ratings. The promotional spot with David Letterman and Oprah in Colts and Bears jerseys was among my favorite spots of the night. CBS promos were everywhere. CBS came out of the halftime show promoting 5 straight CBS programs and specials.

Tech Ad Students Make Us Proud

From this morning's weekly College of Mass Communications newsletter:

"Two advertising undergraduate students, Kelly Donaldson and Jason LeMaster, along with their faculty advisor Ann Rodriguez, submitted a script and storyboard for a television commercial for the Super Bowl contest that Chevrolet was holding last October. Although their ad was not chosen as one of the top five entries to be produced by Chevrolet, they were invited to further animate their storyboard for an opportunity for the ad to be highlighted on CBS’ The Early Show in the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl. They accomplished this feat with the help of graduate student Mike Devlin (not the one arrested last week). They were informed last week that their ad was indeed chosen to be featured on The Early Show and that it will air on January 24."

Way to go!

Football, Violence Chapter Published

Today marked a pleasant surprise. I received a copy of the book, "Handbook of Sports and Media," in which I have a chapter with former Indiana colleagues Dr. Walter Gantz and Zheng Wang.

The chapter outlines our investigation of the relationship between televised football and domestic violence (read more here). The project began more than 4 years ago, and it is excellent to see the volume in print (despite a copy editing problem with the authors and my affiliation).

If you are interested in sports and media from an academic perspective, I highly recommend the book, which is published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Now that my copy arrived, I can read the many other interesting chapters.

Officially, our citation is (according to the table of contents):

Gantz, W., Bradley, S. D., & Wang, Z. (2006). Televised NFL games, the family, and domestic violence. In A. A. Raney & J. Bryant (Eds.), Handbook of sports and media (pp. 365-381). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Regrettable Side of the Super Bowl

Today people will gather at parties around the nation. According to today's Kansas City Star, Americans will consume more food today than any other day than Christmas. Antacid sales will spike 20 percent tomorrow. Americans also will consume thousands -- maybe millions -- of bottles of beer. And, sadly, more Americans will commit acts of domestic violence today.

Four years ago, in spring semester 2002, I was working as a research assistant for Walter Gantz, chair of the department of telecommunications at Indiana University. Walt had heard all of the rumors and urban legends linking the Super Bowl with domestic violence, and he wanted to use the tools of social science to examine whether a link really existed.

We attempted to get data from emergency rooms, women's shelters, and police departments. We could not muster much cooperation from the first two sources. They either did not keep date-specific information, or it was too difficult to obtain. However, we were able to get date-specific information on 911 domestic violence dispatches from 15 of the 30 police departments in NFL cities that we targeted. We ended up with 26,192 days of domestic violence data from the 15 cities.

We wanted to know whether the mere fact of a Super Bowl falling on a given day caused domestic violence to increase. We controlled for the city size (i.e., one would expect there to be more domestic violence in a large market compared to a small market), time of year, day of the week, and many other factors.

Along the way, I learned a lot about domestic violence. The truth is saddening. Domestic violence increases on the weekend (we are more likely to be together), and it increases in the summer (it is both hotter, and we have more time off of work). However, domestic violence really increases on holidays. Christmas. Thanksgiving. Labor Day. When we think of these holidays, we think of celebration. But the police reports tell another side of the story. We are also more likely to lash out against those whom we love.

In the final analysis, we were looking at 1,366,518 separate domestic violence dispatches. How many were statistically related to the Super Bowl? According to our analysis, 272 of those incidents were due to a Super Bowl falling on a given day (we also included the day following the Super Bowl to capture any 911 dispatches that happened after midnight since the Super Bowl starts so late on the East coast). In the total pool of incidents, this is a small fraction (.0199 percent); however, for those 272 individuals, the threat is very real.

If we look at all of the incidents on Super Bowl days, then those 272 incidents represent 6.5% of the total incidents for those days. This is no small increase -- especially for those involved. To put the Super Bowl in perspective, however, our analysis predicted that 1,238 incidents -- almost 1,000 more -- were due to Christmas.

In the end, the Super Bowl does not look like a Super villain. Instead, it looks a lot like a holiday. The Super Bowl puts more people together and sprinkles in alcohol. In the final piece, we wrote: "Viewed from this perspective, it appears that the Super Bowl has all of the elements to spark holiday-related domestic violence: increased expectations, close domestic interaction, and alcohol consumption. And unlike the other three major sports in America, this one game is for all the marbles, raising the stakes for those who care about the outcome. Although it goes against the hopes associated with any holiday, it appears that when one throws together a mix of people, expectations, anxiety, and alcohol -- and in many locales, in close quarters under wintry conditions -- a same and next day spike in violence is the result."

This study is being published as a chapter in an edited book:

Gantz, W., Bradley, S. D., & Wang, Z. (2006). Televised NFL games, the family, and domestic violence. In A. A. Raney & J. Bryant (Eds.), Handbook of sports and media. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

You can read more about an earlier version of the report in a news release from IU.