With millions on the line during the Super Bowl commercial breaks, companies strive to avoid wasting their budgets away with ineffective advertising.
Advertisers this year paid upwards of $2.7 million for a 30-second spot on Fox’s broadcast of the NFL Championship game.
Dr. Stephen Blessing is part of team that researches the effectiveness of Super Bowl advertising.
He has found that there are two main components to memorable commercials: tying in the brand, and keeping it simple.
“The ad with the unattractive woman who was being looked at by all the guys, they didn’t do too bad of a job of tying in the brand,” Blessing said. “She was rubbing the Planter’s nuts on her. They did a reasonable job of tying the brand in.”
The Planter’s nuts ad was third on Blessing’s top six ads from the game.
Leading his list was the Budweiser “wine tasting” commercial. Budweiser placed three ads in the top six, also pulling winners with the Clydesdale “Rocky” knockoff and the cavemen commercial.
Blessing cautioned against using cavemen, however.
“When you see a number of companies using the same ad, you start to get confusion,” he said. “Two years ago, Michelob ran an ad, and in our study, a lot of folks thought the Michelob ad was a Budweiser ad. They’re both Anheuser-Busch companies, so that should have worked out fine.”
FUZZY COGNITION
Advertisers are targeting the audience to get them to remember their product, although this strategy often backfires. Blessing calls it “brand fuzziness.”
“If you’re not Anheuser-Busch, don’t run a beer ad during the Super Bowl,” he said. “You’re going to be confused with Budweiser. When you think you remember the ad, but you actually remember it as another brand, that’s brand fuzziness. Honda ran an ad two years ago and everyone thought it was for Ford.”
STUDENTS REMEMBER SUCCESSFUL ADS
Pepsi seemed to hit it off well during the game, with two of their ads showing up in Blessing’s top six. The commercial featuring Justin Timberlake was particularly popular among UT students, including junior Shakira Henry.
“I liked the ‘get closer to Justin by drinking Pepsi’ one,” she said. “It was him getting hit by stuff. And no, I don’t like Pepsi.”
Sophomore Lauren McAndrews preferred the Diet PepsiMax ad that featured celebrities nodding off to the song “What is Love” by the artist Haddaway.
“It was funny to see everyone like that, like ‘Night at the Roxbury’,” she said. The Pepsi Max ad was Blessing’s fifth-favorite commercial.
E-Trade had a number of memorable commercials according to a number of students.
“The baby said he’s all grown up, but he’s not, then he tries to buy stocks and throws up,” said Jo Yates. Senior Veronica Okpani agreed that the talking baby was her favorite ad of the night.
Blessing, however, wasn’t sure if E-Trade would be able to stick a baby to stock brokers.
Also on the unofficial list of bad ads was a commercial for Bridgestone tires.
“My guess is, because Bridgestone didn’t tie the brand in well, I imagine there is going to be a lot of brand fuzziness to them,” said Blessing. “Either that or people will remember it as a car ad.”
ECONOMIC IMPACT
With $2.7 million down the drain every 30 seconds, advertisers have a small window to capture the viewer and get them to buy their product. Blessing hasn’t looked at the true value of ads yet, but said it is on the plan.
“Really you have to look at consumer buying behavior first,” he said. “They saw the ad, they’re buying the brand, that’s good. You’ve definitely wasted your money if they’re buying a different product. Honda wasted that money two years ago.”
Some advertisers have taken huge risks in spending their advertising money, including apparel maker UnderArmour, who purchased two 60-second ads for their new cross-trainer athletic shoes. Investors hit UnderArmour hard last week, disagreeing with management’s decision to spend so much of their advertising budget so early in the year.
As companies prepare for the next round of commercials, Blessing’s research will be important to budget managers and economists alike.
“What we haven’t looked at but probably will is, does remembering the brand influence your purchase behavior?”
Staff writer Alex Vera contributed to this article.