Who will win the Super Bowl? The Kansas City Chiefs? The San Francisco 49ers?
Will one of the 40+ brands (yes, at least 40) advertised during the show win? What about halftime performer Usher? Or Taylor Swift? Okay, that last one is funny.
But who will be the big winner?
These brands are making huge bets (and investments) that they will.
But what does this mean for other marketers? Is the Super Bowl ad game just a spectator sport that will expand into water cooler talk about what a waste of money it was? Must not be.
CMI Chief Strategy Advisor Robert Rose comments. Watch this video or read his opinion.
Big marketing hype
The Super Bowl has almost become more of a marketing conference than a championship for the National Football League. Sunday’s game culminates a week of events and exhibitions that include sponsorships, marketing and content-based experiences.
The week kicked off on Monday with Super Bowl Opening Night powered by Gatorade. On Wednesday, it was the Super Bowl Soulful Celebration presented by CBS. Each day also featured meet and greets, merchandise events and physical experiences such as competing against virtual versions of NFL players. A better name for the extravaganza would be FootballCon.
But on screen, aside from the game itself, most eyes will be on the big bets displayed by the 40-plus brands during commercial breaks. The average 30-second ad costs $7 million. That’s more than $230,000 per second of airtime and doesn’t include any of the costs to make those big, creative ideas happen.
Beyond the confusing comments and scathing reviews, what does it mean for marketers who don’t play the Super Bowl game? Mere mortals working with annual marketing budgets often equate to a few seconds of Super Bowl time.
It raises two questions for marketers, especially those in B2B, to ponder.
Where is the creativity and innovation?
Where are the big bets in B2B? I ask because most B2B marketers seem to have stopped doing them.
You see, even for the biggest B2C brands, $7 million for 30 seconds of airtime is still a big bet. From budget to creative risk, the Super Bowl serves as one of the last places where big, creative marketing still thrives. If these campaigns survive the satanic Monday morning analysis, many continue to support brands creatively for the rest of the year.
But in recent years, I’ve noticed that B2B is going back into a bit of a shell. Where are the BIG, breakthrough creative risks? When was the last time you saw something with the same B2B creative impact as a Super Bowl ad?
Where is The Epic Split, the ad where Van Damme’s Jean-Claude demonstrated the precision of Volvo trucks by performing the splits between two vehicles? (The ad even has its own Wikipedia page.)
Where is the End of Software campaign from nearly 25 years ago, when Salesforce took a shot at Siebel, Oracle and other established software vendors? They even protested against the software outside the Siebel conference.
Where is “inbound marketing” next, this disruptive content marketing initiative from HubSpot?
The entirety of B2B marketing exists in a monotonous world of data-driven averages. Incremental creative SEO improvements, organic LinkedIn posts, search engine ads, weekly blog posts, and quarterly research white papers lead to simple, average performance.
Yes, marketers use podcasts and videos, but where are the ones that aren’t interview shows about what customers are doing? Yes, thought leadership exists, but when does it answer the unasked question rather than the frequent question?
You’ve been so focused on what your personas are looking for that you’ve forgotten to ask what might please them.
What about the trip?
The second part of this reflection requires some homework this weekend.
How many of the brand’s ads ordinary connect their 30 seconds of money to a proprietary media experience where viewers can go to subscribe, participate, engage, or otherwise continue the journey? How many have a URL, QR code, or something else that invites the audience to continue the journey?
Or maybe it will be easier to just keep an eye on the brands that continue the journey.
This analysis leads to the second question: How well are you connecting all of your brand’s media experiences?
Does your owned media link to your blog, resource center, webinar hub, thought leadership event, customer service event, etc.? How can you combine all your databases of email addresses and first-party data to create true insight into what, if any, journey you’re taking your audience on?
The Super Bowl reminds us that betting big in marketing is still a thing. Let it also remind you that your company can lose just as easily when it gets lost in the average, incremental and less expensive ways to move the needle.
Recently, I sat in a meeting where the VP of marketing asked if the team could get 70% to 80% of this amazing innovative idea at less cost by having AI create the content. The answer is probably yes. But what a way to ultimately create more average content.
In this, I must paraphrase one of my heroes, Captain James T. Kirk of Star Trek:
“[They] they are right – they point out the huge potential for risk… But I must point out that the potential, the potential for knowledge and progress is just as great. Danger. The risk is our own. That’s what this spaceship is all about. That’s why we’re with her.”
You don’t have the budget that Super Bowl advertisers have. But you have just as many innovative and creative ideas. It’s time to break away from B2Boring. Take some risks.
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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
