Throughout the years, the advertising marketing tool has been so successful to create brand awareness and to entice customers to purchase, that some companies today are willing to pay huge amounts of money just to advertise their brand. This is the case of companies who decide to promote their products in a 30 second spot during the championship game of the National Football League in the United States: the SUPER BOWL. However, the fact that a company decides to spend millions (2.7 million dollars in 2008 at the Super Bowl plus the expenses of creating and running an ad) in a 30 second exposure commercial has been seen by worldwide critics as a controversial issue, because they argue that Super Bowls commercials are risky ventures. Millions of dollars are dropped in less time than breaks between NFL plays, and the result may be viewers’ yawns and media pans, which makes one wonder: Considering all the major sporting events during the year, isn’t there a better way for companies to spend their ad money?
To clarify this point I would think that obviously companies spend huge amounts of money in advertising because they know that their actual expenses in advertising will be greatly compensated in the short term future with the sales they will generate. Companies know since the beginning that the exposure they will receive will be around 93 million viewers and that the money they will make will be tremendous. Moreover, companies who advertise themselves at the Super Bowl aside of wanting to create more money, want people to talk about them, they want people to create a buzz. Therefore, as advertisers know that commercials are part of our lives, and they know we watch them, enjoy them, and discuss them with our friends, it is evident that after the game there is going to be a flurry of opinions from people in general, from marketing experts and from focus groups of which was the most effective Super Bowl ad. I also think that advertisers invest at the Super Bowl because they know that they will generate crowds of Internet traffic in their web sites because the event encourages consumers to purchase their products, and this fact is sufficient to make the wise investment. Moreover, I believe that advertisers know that after the event there is going to be an Internet following on the ads that were publicized, and therefore they will get sort of a red carpet treatment for a few weeks that as a study suggests, this could inflate company stock values by 1.3 percent after the game. 1
In conclusion, I would say that if I were a companies´ advertising decision maker of a well known company, I would definitively decide to continue spending a huge amount of money to advertise the brand at the Super Bowl. I think that the event is really worth it because the Super Bowl is the greatest American showcase where football teams field highly paid players in an attempt to win the most important game of the season, and therefore the whole country specifically, has been waiting for this event to happen. Finally, I think that although this event is not exclusively targeted for women or for people who don´t like football at all, we could unquestionably watch it just to know about the appealing commercials, which definitely would create a buzz in the following weeks after the event.
REFERENCES:
2. Goldman, Kevin. “Advertising: Super Bowl Ads Looked Worse than Bills.” The Wall Street. Journal, February 1, 1994.
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