Marketers face pressure to deliver with Super Bowl ads

Lizards perform Swan Lake with NFL players in a 3-D ad for PepsiCo's Sobe Lifewater.

For most Super Bowl advertisers, there’s one sure thing about being in the game: the pressure.

And thanks to the imploded economy, this one on Sunday may be the all-time pressure cooker. The decision to spend $3 million — $100,000 a second — to air a 30-second Super Bowl ad seems almost indefensible.

It is a particularly sticky wicket after a week in which 70,000 layoffs were announced and labor statistics set a couple of firsts: Unemployment was up in every state in December, and people getting unemployment benefits has hit a record. The quiet question: How many jobs could be saved by not running a Super Bowl spot?

“This is the first Super Bowl of the Great Depression 2.0,” says Steve Hayden, vice chairman at Ogilvy Worldwide perhaps best known as the co-writer of the “1984″ Apple ad that set off the Super Bowl ad frenzy 25 years ago. “Being on the Super Bowl this year is like driving around in a Duesenberg in 1929.”

Don’t tell that to 30-some brands that bought the 33.5 minutes of ad time in the NBC game broadcast, including veterans such as Budweiser, Pepsi and Coke and first-timers such as Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes, Pedigree pet food and Denny’s.

The common goal: $100,000-a-second worth of ad buzz. Buzz means Web hits after the game and, in good times anyway, that translates into sales.

There’s no telling what it means in the worst of times, which is why NBC had two ad slots left Thursday. “I’m not going to tell you it hasn’t been a tough slog,” Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC Sports, said early this week. “But we have not crashed price in any way, shape or form.”

Advertisers who bought in are rethinking what to air. They’re doing more research. They’re focusing on hallmarks such as heritage. They are even alluding to the economy — some seriously, some with a chuckle.

“The biggest danger every Super Bowl advertiser faces is being ignored,” says advertising research guru Don Bruzzone.

More Below:

Marketers face pressure to deliver with Super Bowl ads – USATODAY.com.

Related posts:

  1. Welfare Aid Not Growing as Economy Drops Off Michigan cut welfare rolls 13 percent despite the fact...
  2. The New Face of Race Relations THE awkward conversations usually start with something like, “You look...
  3. Getting Theirs Cuts Both Ways on Wall Street There was none of the old swagger at Citigroup headquarters...
  4. Yes We Can! The GOP says the stimulus can’t create jobs. They’re wrong. Cutting the Unemployment Line Even in this economic chaos,...
  5. Google powers new NYC information hub Google Maps and Google Earth are the centerpiece of...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Tags: , , , ,

Leave a Reply

Calendar
January 2009
M T W T F S S
    Feb »
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031  
Categories
My Communities
  • September 5
    “The concept ‘neighbor’ is really a reduplication of your own self; the ‘neighbor’ is what philosophers would call the ‘other,’ the touchstone for  testing what is selfish in self-love. Insofar, for the sake of the thought, it is not even necessary that the neighbor should exist. If a man lived on a desert island, if [...] […]
  • September 04
    “Who is there that knows the happy instant, who has comprehended the delight of it and has not sensed that dread lest something might suddenly occur, the most insignificant thing, yet with power to disturb it all! Who has held in his hand the magic lamp and yet not felt that swooning of delight at [...] […]
  • September 03
    “One lives only once. If when death comes thy life is well spent, that is, spent so that it is related rightly to eternity — then God be praised eternally. If not, then it is irremediable — one lives only once.” ——————————————————————– ~Source: The Attack Upon “Christendom” (1854 – 1855) Author: Soren Kierkegaard Filed under: [...] […]
  • September 02
    “The paradoxical character of the truth is its objective uncertainty; this uncertainty is an expression for the passionate inwardness, and this passion is precisely the truth. So far the Socratic principle. The eternal and essential truth, the truth which has an essential relationship to an existing individual because it pertains essentially to existence (al […]
  • September 01
    “The present work has set as its task the psychological treatment of the concept of ‘anxiety,’ but in such a way that it constantly keeps in mente [in mind] and before its eye the dogma of hereditary sin. Sin, however, is no subject for psychological concern, and only by submitting to the service of a [...] […]
  • August 31
    “It is so impossible for the world to exist without God that if God could forget it it would instantly cease to be.” ——————————————————– ~Source: The Journals (1837) Author: Søren Kierkegaard Filed under: Blooms Tagged: The Journals […]
  • August 30
    “Someone out in a blizzard dressed in the lightest summer clothes is not as exposed as one who wills to be a solitary human being in a world where everything is alliance and accordingly, with the selfishness of the alliance, demands that one ally oneself with it until the individual protects himself against several alliances [...] […]
  • August 29
    “Now in case a man were able to maintain himself upon the pinnacle of the instant choice, in case he could cease to be a man, in case he were in his inmost nature only an airy thought, in case personality meant nothing more than to be a kobold, which takes part indeed in the [...] […]
Related Posts

Related posts:

  1. Welfare Aid Not Growing as Economy Drops Off Michigan cut welfare rolls 13 percent despite the fact...
  2. The New Face of Race Relations THE awkward conversations usually start with something like, “You look...
  3. Getting Theirs Cuts Both Ways on Wall Street There was none of the old swagger at Citigroup headquarters...
  4. Yes We Can! The GOP says the stimulus can’t create jobs. They’re wrong. Cutting the Unemployment Line Even in this economic chaos,...
  5. Google powers new NYC information hub Google Maps and Google Earth are the centerpiece of...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

iLike
Connections
Contributions
View my FriendFeed
Connect with me!
Seeing the World!
Blog Network