My Love-Hate Relationship With the Super Bowl
It's true. I have a love hate relationship with the Super Bowl. Like most people on Super Bowl Sunday, I laugh and cheer; I growl and curse; I want to hug people and I want to throw things, each in their own turn. Unlike most people, though, my emotional instability on Super Bowl Sunday has almost nothing to do with the game.
Nothing To Do With Football
Don't get me wrong: I enjoy a good football game. Being from Birmingham, Alabama, football fandom is pretty much in our blood. But we don't have a home town NFL team.
We have two top-tier SEC college teams in our state, and our out-of-state conference rivalries run deep. We're not about to cheer for Atlanta or Tennessee or New Orleans on Sunday. That feels too akin to cheering for UT, Georgia or LSU.
So, no, I have nothing invested in cheering for the Bucs or the Chiefs this Sunday.
Super Bowl Commercials
For me, tomorrow is all about the ads. I've been directly involved in marketing for 19 years now, most of that concepting, writing and creating print, radio, tv and digital advertising.
I go into Sunday with drink and chips in hand, fully prepared to yell and scream at the TV like the rest of America. My outbursts just tend punctuate different moments in the broadcast.
I Get Excited About Great Spots That Work
I wait in anticipation for the spots that make me say, "damn. I wish I'd written that." Those are the plays that make my highlight reel and from which I will draw my candidate for MVP of the game.
What makes for an MVP-caliber commercial? One that combines all-star level creativity with a clear purpose rooted in strategy. Original, emotional, with a clear and unambiguous intent. I need to remember the ad 15 minutes later, know what the brand/product was and understand what the advertiser expects me to do next.
I Feel Bad For Spots That Miss The Mark
In the game, fans are often heartbroken when a huge opportunity is missed... a fumble when going for a fourth-down conversion, getting stuffed at the goal line... the missed field goal to steal the lead. I suffer the same trauma.
Sometimes an ad that should be great just doesn't work. It falls flat because of poor execution, or because the acting/ voice-over just wasn't the right fit. Or maybe there were just too many cooks in the kitchen. Either way, seeing an ad that could have been game changing come up short can be a crushing blow.
I Get Pissed At Spots That Wasted Their Effort (& Their Client’s Money)
This is my equivalent of yelling at a coach or a ref for making an asinine call that might cost our team the game.
The Super Bowl is a huge, high-stakes opportunity. A spot in 2021 costs roughly $186,000 per second. Your high stakes here are real, substantial fiscal repercussions.
The upside? It's the one day out of 365 where the DVR and the skip button are irrelevant. It's a magical time when people don't get up and leave the room when the commercials start playing
People tune into the super bowl TO SEE THE ADS. They talk about them around the water cooler at work on Monday. Your content is playing to an audience that actually wants to see it. For an advertiser, that pretty much never happens.
To waste that opportunity with lazy, non-strategic, poorly executed ads I find offensive on behalf of the client.
An ad can be funny as hell and perfectly executed from the standpoint of acting and cinematography and still be a steaming pile of crap.
Many years ago, there was an ad for a cellphone company of some sort (those ist five wie should be a red flag for you). Two men are comparing phones in a gym locker room. Man A's phone clearly outclasses Man B's phone an every aspect, and B clearly gets more and more defensive as the spot develops.
Finally B exclaims "oh yeah, well my phone doubles as a personal protective device!"
Man A barely gets out a "Wha-- ow?" As B snaps his phone shut, hurls it directly into A's face and runs off screen.
It's a clear set-up/punchline structure. The humor was well written with great timing. It was perfectly cast and well acted. Production design was on-point. I literally laughed out loud. It was entertaining and awesome.
The only problem was, before the next ad was even over, I had no idea what that ad was for. I don't know if it was from a telecom service provider like Sprint or AT&T, or if it was a manufacturer like LG or Motorola. No clue.
For all of the time, effort and talent that clearly went into creating that ad, it failed on the most basic, fundamental level. And not from some esoteric glitch in some element beyond "our" control. No, this one failed in the hands of the copywriter.
There's nothing wrong with using humor in advertising. But what people are going to remember about a joke are (a) The punchline and (b) the set-up, in that order. One of the two has to be built around the USP of the brand or product you are selling.
Not only could this ad's punchline be served with any cellphone on the market... the entire setup and the punchline were focused almost solely on the generic, inferior phone from a competitor. Everything about the ad served to further the plot of, what was effectively, a skit. The product being advertised simply served as a foil or Macguffin for the development of Man B's character.
Again, well done for a budding humorist, but a cardinal sin for a copywriter responsible for flushing$5.6 million (per airing) down the toilet. While that's today's cost, at the time, it was still around $3.5 million for a 30-second spot. Unacceptable.
All that said, I'm excited for tomorrow... excited for the good, the bad, the ugly and the wtf (I'm looking at you, PuppyMonkeyBaby). What about you? Are you a excited as I am? What are the biggest wins and losses you can remember from Super Bowl Ads past?
