On 25 January, 160 million Americans will gather round their TV
sets for the football highlight of the season. Adland’s finest will
eagerly scan the commercial breaks for the year’s hottest commercials,
and NBC, which is broadcasting the event, will be laughing all the way
to the bank.
The National Football League’s Super Bowl has always been a top-rated TV
programme in the US. But its status as a showcase for the year’s best
ads has propelled its advertising airtime to ever dizzier financial
heights. And next year’s game is no exception. Advertising space sold
out in the fastest time ever - by October - despite the record price of
an average of dollars 1.3 million per 30-second spot.
This time, as in recent Super Bowls, Anheuser-Busch will be the biggest
advertiser. Most of the brewer’s eight spots will centre around its ’Bud
Bowl’ competition, in which a football team of Budweiser beer bottles
plays against a team of Bud Lite bottles. The match progresses through a
series of ads, ending in a spot which reveals the winning team.
Pepsi has bought four slots in January’s game, while Frito-Lay and Nike
have bought two each. New advertisers for 1998 include Hormel Foods’
low-fat canned chilli, Network Associates’ Mc-Afee anti-virus computer
software and Tommy Hilfiger, the fashion brand.
But the best creative work is likely to be three spots from the the
microchip company, Intel, which are expected to be tagged with an
Internet address so viewers can respond directly to the commercial. E.
McIllhenny Sons makes its Super Bowl debut this year with an
award-winning spot for Tabasco sauce, which stars an exploding
mosquito.
Bill Croasdale, the president of national broadcast for Western
International Media, describes the Super Bowl as a ’great launch vehicle
for creative work’, adding: ’It’s important to be associated with the
prestige event.
People say, ’Wow, you’ve got the kind of money to buy a Super Bowl
ad.’’
So eagerly anticipated is the advertising spectacle that the day after
Super Bowl Sunday, USA Today, America’s dominant national newspaper, is
scheduled to run the results of focus group research which evaluates
each commercial aired during the game.
Financially, NBC is expected to gross dollars 75 million from January’s
Super Bowl - the 32nd in the series - since buyers have paid dollars
100,000 more than last year per 30-second slot. But ratings are so high
that airtime is not the most expensive per thousand viewers. That honour
goes to other programmes including the NCAA college basketball Final
Four games and the Academy Awards. The past year’s events sold for
between dollars 800,000 and dollars 900,000 for an audience not much
more than half that of the Super Bowl.
Advertisers could, in fact, tap into a male audience much more
efficiently by buying airtime in the two NFL championship games that
determine the two teams that will go forward into the Super Bowl. But
advertisers that buy into the Super Bowl are looking for more out of the
purchase than commercial airtime. Most use it as the culmination of an
extended advertising campaign.
’Super Bowl gets the sales force hopped up and the sales promotions
going,’ Jerry Solomon, the president of national broadcast for SFM
Media, says.
’If you have all the tie-ins lined up, the campaign pays off before the
Super Bowl runs.’
Super Bowl advertising does not come without risks, however. The
creative on the ads comes under intense scrutiny, and some cannot stand
up to it.
Most Super Bowl advertisers are big enough to afford an expensive ad
foray once in a while. But there have been a few small advertisers that
bet the ranch on the biggest single sporting event in the US.
Until two years ago, Master Lock spent its entire network budget on the
Super Bowl. The commercial showed a bullet being shot through a Master
Lock without any effect on its function. The company claimed its sales
soared in the month following the Super Bowl but it is not buying time
this year.
One final reason why sponsors can’t keep away from the Super Bowl is the
involvement of movie studios. Last year’s game featured an ad for radio
shock-jock Howard Stern’s movie, Private Parts. And five studios have
bought airtime for the forthcoming Super Bowl XXXII: Walt Disney, New
Line Cinema, Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures and Warner Bros.
Super Bowl 1967-97
Year Network Households
%share No (000)
1967 CBS 44 12,500
NBC 34 10,200
1968 CBS 68 20,800
1969 NBC 70 21,000
1970 CBS 69 23,000
1971 NBC 75 24,000
1972 CBS 74 27,400
1973 NBC 72 27,700
1974 CBS 73 27,500
1975 NBC 72 29,000
1976 CBS 78 29,400
1977 NBC 73 31,600
1978 CBS 67 34,400
1979 NBC 74 35,100
1980 CBS 67 35,300
1981 NBC 63 35,500
1982 CBS 73 40,000
1983 NBC 69 40,500
1984 CBS 71 38,900
1985 ABC 63 39,400
1986 NBC 70 41,500
1987 CBS 66 40,000
1988 ABC 62 37,100
1989 NBC 68 39,300
1990 CBS 63 35,900
1991 ABC 63 39,000
1992 CBS 61 37,100
1993 NBC 66 41,990
1994 NBC 66 42,860
1995 ABC 62 39,400
1996 NBC 68 44,209
1997 FOX 65 42,000
Source: 1997 Nielsen Media Research
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