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Dan Loney: Well, the big game,
otherwise known by most people as the Super Bowl, is something that
draws the attention of millions
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upon millions of people, both
here in the United States and around the globe. But it has also
become a very important
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advertising component for
companies as well. Companies expect numerous eyeballs
watching that last pro football
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game of the year, but they're
looking to try and connect with the consumer. But the process of
actually getting to that point
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and making those decisions is
quite the challenge. How they go about it, and what should they
be thinking about? Well, we
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discuss that and more with
Wharton's Patti Williams, who's Professor of Marketing and Vice
Dean of Executive Education here
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at Wharton. Great to see you
again. Patti Williams: So nice
to be here. So when I think about this idea of
the connection of the
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advertising component with— with
the football game, I think a lot of people normally
associate going back to 1984
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with the Apple spot, correct? I —so at least that's— I think
in popular culture, when the
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Super Bowl became a thing. You
know, I think there were always Super Bowl ads before that. I'm
sure advertisers were spending
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time and money making great
Super Bowl ads, but I think that ad really showed them the
outsized impact that just the
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right ad in that context could
actually have. It is amazing, though, to see
how much— when you think about
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this event— that it's not just a
football game. I mean, it has become— the importance of the
commercials and people watching
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them and— and wanting to see what
they are, in— for many people, is just as important.
- Just as important.
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In fact, I was looking
at <i>Adweek</i> earlier, and I think I saw a little quote
that said, "At <i>Ad Week</i>, the Super
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Bowl is our Super Bowl. So companies know that they're
gonna have the eyeballs. But
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what are they looking for beyond
the eyeballs? Yeah. Well, maybe— let me just step
back and say the eyeballs for
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one second, right? They're
forecasting that this year's ratings will be somewhere
between 115 and 120 million people
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tuning in. That gives
you, even with an $8 million 30-second ad, something like a $71
cost per 1000, which is
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expensive, but not outrageously
expensive, right? The price is a lot, but the viewership is— it's
really the only mass audience
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that's left in the United
States, in many ways. And not only is it a mass audience— so
you're going to get, you know,
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roughly 115 or 120
million people, two-fifths of them, in recent surveys, have
said they tune in just to watch
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the ads. You know, that's 10s of
millions of people who are there just to watch the ads. And even
those who say they're going to—
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you know, they're tuning in
primarily for the game— go birds— you know, maybe they're tuning
in with a little extra
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engagement and interest around
those ads. They're not using the ads as an opportunity to get up
and walk out of the room quite
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as much. And so they get this
deeply engaged audience that is at scale, and I think, an
opportunity to really show the
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world who they are and why they
could be— why the brands could be beneficial or meaningful to
that audience.
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So if we're seeing ad buy rates
like $8 million for a spot, I would imagine there's a— there's
a point where the company has to
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say, "Okay, maybe it's too much
for us." They will make that call. But it still feels like
there are a lot of companies
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where they haven't reached that
plateau yet. No, and it goes up every single
year. And you see many of the
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same companies returning year
after year after year, right? If you see a Super Bowl, and
there's not multiple Budweiser
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ads, there aren't Doritos ads— at
this point, I think we've come to expect GoDaddy. Not only are
they making that decision once,
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but they're making that decision
year over year over year. - Yeah. So what— the type of ad that they
want to bring forward, I guess,
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depends on the company. Maybe
some dynamics of what's going on in culture right now. Is that
correct? - Yeah,
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I think that's right. And if you—
you look at the— you know, what's worked well in the Super Bowl
over time, maybe as well as what
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you tend to see, I would say you
tend to see a few— for the most part, they're light-hearted,
with some exceptions. They are
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aligned with culture. And one
big way companies do that is by bringing in celebrities. You get
the extra oomph of the eyeballs
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and the interest that they
bring, but it also immediately aligns you with culture in some
way. Humor is super important,
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right? You're going to see lots
of funny ads. People are looking to laugh at the ads in the Super
Bowl, and hopefully companies
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will actually deliver, though
it's harder to do that than it seems like it should be. Once in
a while you get ads that I would
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describe as moving. Maybe those
P and G, "Thanks, Mom" ads, you know, in the years of the
Olympics. I hear that Budweiser
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has the Clydesdales back this
year, and people are saying it's an amazing ad, and it has a
little bit of that moving, you
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know, Americana that they're so
well known for. You get a lot of animals doing dumb things,
right? And once in a while, you
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get an ad that's really a little
more informational. I think about the original WeatherTech
ads telling people who they
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were and what WeatherTech
actually was. - Yeah. So there's not one right formula
to getting the perfect Super
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Bowl spot, to getting that hook.
- No, there's not one right formula, I
don't think. I mean, the breakout
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ads tend to be funny or tend to
be moving, I think. So you see advertisers pushing and dialing
up the emotional components in
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particular, because I think
people are looking for that emotional engagement in the
moment. - We're
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in a time where certainly AI is
a conversation piece for so many right now, and it's being talked
about in the world of
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advertising. Are we there right
now, or soon we'll be there, where some of these ads are
probably going to lean heavily
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on AI? I think we're probably already
there, but most of these advertisers seem to be keeping
their use of AI a little bit
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behind the scenes, in part
because I think they know users aren't quite sure how they feel
about it. The talent in ads
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really isn't sure how they feel
about it. So again, I saw— I think it was— it was either— I
think was <i>Ad Age</i>. They contacted
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39 advertisers. 31 of them said
they had no AI in their ads or declined to answer. So, you
know, maybe they are. It's
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pretty clear some are using it.
And I think Google, in particular, which is doing this
interesting thing. They're
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launching 50 regional ads, one
for every state. And they are saying "We used Google Gemini in
the ideation stage, maybe in the
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image creation process." So some
are being very upfront about it, and I think some are doing it a
little bit behind the scenes. - Do
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you have a favorite that stands
out? I mean, maybe that's like asking you your— you know, who
your favorite child is. But—
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but, I mean, there's so many
great ads that we've seen over the course of the year.
- Yeah.
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I'm always a sucker for the
Budweiser Clydesdale ads. I think they're just great. My—
probably my favorite Super Bowl
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ad of all time is actually a
Snickers ad. And it was— I think it was in the 2010 Super Bowl.
Betty White was in the ad. - Okay.
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And I just think that ad hit the
right notes on humor, hit the right notes around the brand.
You know, "You're not you when
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you're hungry, you might turn
into Betty White at the last moment," right? It just was, I
think, a standout, because it
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was a well executed little 30-second
spot that really sat in the sweet spot of who they wanted to
be as a brand
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and how they wanted
to show up. But the story of doing these
ads is usually— and correct me
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if I'm wrong— you're tying it
into some other campaign that that company is bringing
forward. And so it's just part
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of the overall process, correct? It depends. For some, the Super
Bowl is where you launch a new
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campaign. Maybe it's the big
platform to, you know, set out who you're going to be and how
you want to show up in the
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future. For some, I would say
there's a campaign of ads at the Super Bowl, but not necessarily
do those Super Bowl ads sit
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within a bigger campaign.
Doritos has had a competition for years. So there is a
campaign. You can compete to
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create the Doritos ad. But those
Doritos ads don't really sit right next to the rest of the
ads
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that Doritos is running the
rest of the year. So what do companies expect
then, on the back end after the
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game, after the spot runs that
first time? - Well, I'm going to say they actually start
expecting things before the game
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even runs. They are running
their teasers, and they are hoping they're getting
engagement. And people watching
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the teasers are watching the ads
before the ads even begin, hopefully picking them up on
social media, starting to maybe
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be intrigued by what the real ad
is going to look like, or starting to learn a little bit
about the brand. They're
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definitely going to be watching
social media during the— during the Super Bowl. Are the ads
being shared on social media?
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What's the reaction to those
ads? Immediately afterward, they're going to do everything
from looking at just
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likeability—do people say they
liked the ad or they didn't like the ad, to looking at maybe long
term ROI. Maybe even doing
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neuroimaging studies in response
to the ads. They're looking at all of those things. And I think
one of the big things they're
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looking at in a lot of these CPG
companies is, they're trying to show the ads aren't just for
their consumers. They're showing
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their retailers how much energy
and commitment they have behind their products and what they're
doing to drive traffic to the
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stores. And so I think you're
going to see them looking for things like sales of these products
or traffic in the stores.
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But the component of social
media brings the unique dynamic of that
in-time reality of
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people either
tweeting or Instagraming or whatever platform it is, about
the spot. I'm sure there are
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probably even people that, you
know, take video on their phone of the spot so they can— they
can loop it again. And it's
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changed the dynamics of how
quickly companies are seeing that return on investment, that—
that connection with the consumer.
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Absolutely. And they're relying
on immediate amplification. You and I are going
to do their work for them
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and help them get more than $8 million worth of value from it.
I think that's right. And you
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see some brands who are going to
try to time something that they're going to launch on
social media to right around,
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right before, during or right
after their ad actually shows. And the ad might even drive you
to social media or it's going to
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pop up in your feed at the same
moment, and they're going to hope that you might interact.
Maybe you're going to click
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through and buy or click through
and learn at the same time. But because this is a one— once a
year event, it puts more
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emphasis on the message that's
being delivered, how you deliver it, the connection with the
consumer, more so than the World
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Series, or the NCAA Tournament,
or, you know, a premiere of a show on— on— on— on a TV
channel. It has separated itself
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from everything else kind of
in the media landscape. Yeah. There just aren't this
many viewers. Even, you know, in
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the Final Four or anything like
that. And certainly not as broad an audience, right? You get
people who wouldn't normally be
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watching a football game tuning
in and watching this game. So it's— you're— not only is it at
scale, but it's a breadth of
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audience and a depth of audience
at scale. And there's a lot at risk. I think that's right. You
even see some that have thought
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they were going to advertise and
they pulled out because they thought it was too risky, right?
State Farm decided, in the wake
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of the fires and the insurance
premiums going up and so on, that this wasn't a good time. And it felt
too risky to follow through with
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the— you know, ad they presumably
already filmed and spent a lot
of money on. Yeah. Patti, great to see you
again. Thanks very much.
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My pleasure, Dan.
- Thank you. Patti Williams, Professor of Marketing and Vice Dean of Executive
Education
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here at the Wharton School.