What Your Business Can Learn From Super Bowl Commercials
The Super Bowl is about a month away. While it’s a super important event for the game of football, it is also the biggest marketing day of the year. It’s super helpful that the year kicks off with some new, fresh marketing for you to apply to your business while you are developing your marketing strategy for the year. As marketers, we get a glimpse inside the minds of advertising’s best. We get to see firsthand what sticks and what flops. If you’re a small business, here is why you need to pay even more attention to the commercials than the game!
Let’s start with some stats
With an estimated 111 million people watching the Super Bowl, it’s no surprise that it is easily the most highly-coveted commercial spot to be obtained. There’s absolutely no larger audience ever on TV. It is the most watched television event in US history year after year! In fact, it takes up 17 of the top 20 most watched television broadcasts of all time. But, this comes at a price. According to AdAge, the average cost for a 30-second spot on the Super Bowl is at least $5m. While it is near impossible for small businesses to afford such an ad spend, there is still a TON of things you can learn for free – while those other companies are spending millions.
See the emerging trends
Super Bowl commercials set the tone for marketing throughout the rest of the year. A great Super Bowl commercial will be talked about and replayed, even followed up with sequels or an ongoing storyline. A terrible Super Bowl commercial will be talked about even more. For example, do you remember the “It’s A Tide Ad” series in which actor Jim Hopper would pop into the frame unexpectedly? It was undoubtedly the winner of 2018’s Super Bowl commercials. It was followed up throughout the rest of the program – and weeks after – to the delight of viewers. The takeaway? Audiences love to be surprised!
Pay attention to the conversation
It’s important to pay attention to see what people are saying AFTER the Super Bowl airs and all the commercials have run. While you may think a particular commercial didn’t hit the mark for you, maybe it did for millions of others. That is worthy of listening to.
Apply it to your business
If your business had a similar target audience to one that is running a Super Bowl commercial, pay attention to their feedback. Was it a slam dunk? Take note. Or maybe it was a flop? Take even bigger note. That company just spent millions and millions of dollars on a test that you can take full advantage of for absolutely free. Then, apply it to your own business. See how you can tweak your marketing to tap into the same feeling that commercial did, and ride the wave!
