A Lesson from the Super Bowl Playbook

Whether or not your company is coughing up the coin (roughly $3 million for 30 seconds) to advertise during the 2010 Super Bowl, one thing is certain: emphasis is less about the 30 seconds of air time and more about what you do before and after the big game to get your brand noticed. Where once TV spots reigned king, now social media and digital marketing are being employed to ensure that advertisers are getting sufficient bang for their buck.

Case in point, Pepsi bucked its 23-year Super Bowl advertising tradition and opted instead to turn to its consumers, inviting them to dictate how that money should be spent to improve sustainability and provide grant money for social causes. Pepsi is betting that by engaging its consumers and pushing them to its cause marketing initiative site, it will garner goodwill and brand favorability. Most would probably agree that the effort is already a public relations success for the company, as it has received more ink for this effort than any other Super Bowl advertiser (and did we mention Pepsi's not even advertising this year.) Seems like announcing that it was not going to advertise was a pretty slick way of rising above the clutter, especially given the fact that Pepsi actually owns another brand that will be airing ads on Super Bowl Sunday (Doritos.)

Other companies looking to extend their reach past their 30 seconds of fame include:

• Papa John's will be using mobile banners and SMS (text messaging) to promote its Super Bowl special (an extra large, four-topping pizza, a play on the roman numerals of this year’s game – XLIV). Additionally, it has been promoting a contest to win a trip to the Super Bowl for customers who register on its site.
• Doritos will continue its tradition, now in its fourth year, of utilizing customer-created content for its Super Bowl commercial. To further extend the reach this year, Doritos has also allowed contestants to post videos to Facebook, Digg and Twitter.
• Diamond Foods (Emerald Nuts and Pop-Secret) is using search marketing to drive consumers to a Super Bowl microsite that houses its TV spot as well as other interactive content
• First-time Super Bowl advertiser, Boost Mobile, placed snippets of its commercials on YouTube in hopes of generating early buzz.

Paying $100,000 per second is clearly not for the faint of heart. With all of the distractions, competition and TiVos in the mix, advertisers would be remiss not to come up with creative ways to extend their 30 seconds well past the 100-yard line. Be it through social media, search or good old-fashioned media buzz, marketers need to recognize that their investments must be leveraged for maximum ROI by creating an integrated plan.

But why stop at the Super Bowl? While the buzz around XLIV will fade before the end of February, your customers’ use of social media, mobile and other nontraditional media will still be going strong. Which means you’ll need an integrated plan for all your marketing initiatives in 2010 – not just the ones with $3 million budgets.

<< back to blog