Remember Creative

Digiday had an interesting article the other day about how much it costs to run an ad during the Super Bowl. In particular, how much a $5.2 million dollar ad could buy you on various online platforms.

It was a humorous and eye opening article (read it if you get a chance) but it got me thinking … would I really want to reach Selena Gomez’s fans 8 times or reach the entire Super Bowl audience in one ad? If all of her followers viewed the gram, you would definitely get more impressions, but is it worth it?

Working for a creative agency thats primary focus is on digital, I often advocate for the immense opportunity that digital affords brands, not least of which is influencer marketing, and a Selena post could be potentially worth it. But that doesn’t mean we are blind to the positive impact TV and other traditional media can have on any integrated campaign.

In fact, you can still find studies that purport TV still has the highest relative efficiency on relative spends¹.

No bones about it, $5,200,000 for a 30 second ad is a lot of money. But what does it get you?

Check out part two of this article here

114 million viewers in the US alone² watch the Super Bowl live – people watching it in other counties will get their own local programming, but people streaming the event via VPN could be exposed as well. The Super Bowl is an event, but the ads truly are events in their own rights. The exposure your ad will get is far greater than just the spot itself.

Countless TV shows, radio programs, blogs and various other commentators (with huge viewership/readership) review these ads and talk about them religiously in the days following the Super Bowl in America. Not to mention all the @ mentions you will get by live tweeters, and all the other social streams talking about you, which instantly generates conversation.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg, in terms of publicity, that a Super Bowl ad spot affords a brand.

In the US, marketers are well aware that not only the ad spots can gain exposure for your brand during the Super Bowl; Oreo (among others) was quick to jump when a power outage at the 2013 Super Bowl interrupted play.

Their tweet received 15,000 retweets in rapid fire, and the reach was huge.

At the end of the day, the bang for your buck can vary tremendously depending on platform. Digital may offer greater targeting than we have ever known, and traditional media stills has a place in any integrated marketing campaign. But as Oreo showed us, quick thinking and the creative quality of your collateral can be just as important.

And finally, speaking of creative quality, if you’re spending over $5 million, you want it to be good. Nationwide got panned for this effort a couple of years back:

1 – http://www.atresmediapublicidad.com/a3document/2017/06/20/DOCUMENTS/00901/00901.pdf
2 – http://fox40.com/2016/02/08/how-many-people-watched-super-bowl-50/