"Super Bowl Lessons Learned" by Ken Bernhardt Taylor E. Little Jr. Professor of Marketing and Special Assistant to the Dean Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University Atlanta Business Chronicle - February 6, 2009 Last Sunday almost 100 million people tuned into the Super Bowl.  Every year I pass on invitations to attend a Super Bowl party because for me, the Super Bowl represents an opportunity to observe the strategies that advertisers are using at the beginning of a new year. This year, 28 advertisers bought a total of 52 ads during the game, spending $206 million dollars, an awful lot of money for 33.5 minutes worth of ads. There are a number of reasons why marketers are willing to invest this level of resources, $3 million for one 30 second spot.  Some are trying to increase awareness for their brand.  As an example, Cash4Gold.com made millions of people aware of the opportunity to convert some of their unused gold jewelry into cash, at a time when almost 5 million people were out of work, many of whom could use some cash.  To ensure their ad would break through the clutter, Cash4Gold used testimonials from Ed McMahon and MC Hammer, great choices given their well-known financial problems. Trailers for 8 different movies were shown, all designed to raise awareness of their opening over the next several months.  Hyundai ran an ad for its Genesis model to inform potential car buyers that it had been named North American Car of the Year.  Last year, Hyundai's advertising drew 300,000 visitors to their website, who stayed an average of 5.5 minutes and generated 25,000 sales leads.  Other advertisers are trying to induce consumers to try their products or services.  SalesGenie.com and Denny's are good examples of this objective.  Sales Genie promoted 100 free sales leads per salesperson to stimulate trial of their service, and Denny's advertised a one-day promotion offering a free Grand Slam breakfast for everyone in America, an offer that caused their website to crash.    Still other advertisers used the Super Bowl to point out points of difference with competitors.  Hyundai announced their Hyundai Assurance plan, which enables people who lose their job after buying a car to return the car without damaging their credit rating.  Pepsi Max advertised that it is the first diet cola for men and Teleflora pointed out that flowers bought from them are hand arranged and hand delivered, not sent in a box. Dorito's used their ads as a way to generate buzz, stimulating hundreds of media stories touting that their ads were consumer-generated rather than being created by professionals.  USA Today's consumer research found it to be the most liked ad during the game, winning a $1 million prize for the 2 unemployed brothers who created the ad with a budget of only $2,000.  Anheiser Busch ran a series of "feel good" ads to build a strong emotional connection with consumers.  The Clydesdales are particularly effective at helping achieve that objective. CareerBuilder.com advertised to get people thinking it may be time to change jobs. Last year their Super Bowl ad generated 68,000 job applications in the 3 months following the game.  A fairly new phenomenon is the purchase of search terms related to the Super Bowl ads.  Reprise Media reported that 65 percent of the advertisers bought search terms related to their commercials, up from 54 percent last year and 21 percent 5 years ago.   There were many ads for which I had trouble determining what message the advertiser was trying to convey.  Many bloggers and reviewers for publications like Ad age rated the advertising overall as pretty mediocre (in the words of one reviewer, the game was much more exciting than the commercials, something that has not always been true in the past). So what are the lessons learned? 1. To be successful it is critical that the advertiser have a clear objective in mind.  Is it awareness, trial generation, differentiating the product from competitive alternatives, building an emotional connection with consumers, etc.? 2. The advertising must be integrated with other aspects of the marketing strategy.  PR can leverage the advertising investment significantly. Effective advertising can drive consumers to the Internet, and purchasing key search terms can enhance the effectiveness of the advertising. 3. It is hard to break through the clutter, with many people watching the game with others, often in a party atmosphere, so attention-getting creative is important.  Celebrity spokespersons can help here, as can demonstrations, and the highlighting of clear points of differences on attributes important to consumers. 4. Creativity and clear communication are important.  An ad made for $2,000 can be just as effective as one made for $500,000. 5. Make sure the audience is right.  The mass audience probably makes sense for Budweiser, colas, snacks, automobiles, but it is not clear that is makes sense for GE to advertise wind energy and smart electrical grid technology during the Super Bowl.  6. Measurement of results against the objectives is important.  These lessons learned can be used to evaluate any marketing activities, whether they cost $1,000 or $3,000,000 and applying them consistently can make your company a winner.