What a game yesterday in the Super Bowl! I thought the Kansas City Chiefs were out of it, but they showed, once again, that they are the comeback kids!
As always, the TV advertisements during the Super Bowl were a mixed bag.
Some were very entertaining, even memorable!
Though I’m struggling to remember any brand names at the moment…
Other ads were real head-scratchers that left me wondering, what was the point of that?
Considering the cost of those Super Bowl ads yesterday averaged $5 million for 30 seconds, you would think advertisers would want to be sure that such a large investment would give them something substantial in return.
The Allure of 100 Million Eyeballs
It is said that the Super Bowl is watched by over 100 million people.
For advertisers that want to get their message out, that number is hard to ignore.
But it’s highly unlikely that those investments pay off for most of the advertisers. Research evaluating the impact of Super Bowl TV ads is beyond the scope of this article, but you can Google it and see what I mean.
Given that, it’s interesting to me that there was a pro-life group that reportedly bid to place a 30 second ad spot during the Super Bowl.
The bid was by a new pro-life group called Faces of Choice.
I encourage you to go to their website at https://facesofchoice.org/ where you can watch a very moving, powerful 2-minute video on their home page.
If they could have shown that 2 minute video during the Super Bowl, I could see how it would possibly have significant impact, although I’m not sure it would justify the $20 million price tag (4 x $5 million per 30 seconds).
Faces of Choice cut 90 seconds of content out of the 2 minute video, paring it down to 30 seconds, and bid for a Super Bowl ad spot.
FOX rejected the ad.
Money Not Well Spent
Personally, I’m glad FOX rejected the ad because I believe it would have been a waste of $5 million.
Please compare the 2 minute video you watched on the website, to the 30 second version which you can watch here: https://youtu.be/lD4KD8X4Tj4
Now imagine you are the typical person watching the Super Bowl, and you are not an active pro-life advocate who might be clued in to what these people in the ad are actually talking about.
I would be scratching my head going, what was that all about?
All of the truly relevant information was in the 90 seconds of content that got cut out of the 2 minute version!
A Better Way to Get Millions of Eyeballs
There is a better, and much more cost effective way, to get the 2 minute ad in front of millions of people: YouTube
It still would probably be better to create 30 second spots for YouTube advertisements, but you could create many variations pulling from the 2 minute ad, without dropping the interesting parts of the content – sections that could persuade people to actually respond by clicking and going to the Faces of Choice website.
In addition, unlike the Super Bowl audience, which is about as untargeted an audience as you can get (“everyone” is not a good focused target), YouTube enables you to focus your video ads both geographically and demographically.
My hope is that the Faces of Choice organization attempted to place the Super Bowl ad with the best of intentions, and not as a publicity stunt to get noticed.
But even if they had been successful placing the Super Bowl ad, I wonder if the leadership of the organization could give a clear persuasive answer to the question, “What measurable impact did you hope to achieve with the ad?“
Would it have yielded a greater impact than investing $5 Million in the demand side of the Pro-Life Business Industry? An investment that would have resulted in at least 2,500 preborn babies’ lives being saved from abortion ($5 million divided by $2,000 per life saved).
I wonder….
Regards,
Brett
Bridget
Brett of course I love the idea of a.SB ad because of the sex appeal.
And sometimes there is X factor that can’t be measured easily. earned media (paid 5M how much ROI). Jolts of energy to the movement? Maybeeee…
But your idea about 5M in truly impactful YouTube ads…wow.
Maybe better yet. 5 Thrives in HVT areas.
Things that make you go hmmm.
Brett Attebery
Thank you for your comments Bridget.
I made a comment this morning during a team meeting that I don’t believe in making those kinds of big investments ($5M!) unless it is already an established BRAND. For Budweiser, for example, everyone already knows who they are so those ads are simply reinforcing an existing strong brand.
For an unknown BRAND, 30 seconds is unlikely to establish a name, or concept, in the minds of consumers unless it’s something really dramatic.
You may recall 20 years ago when Pets.com tried this with their “sock puppet” commercial, which received rave reviews for its creativity and novelty, but the company went bankrupt shortly afterward.
I think effective branding is about building trust with customers over the long-term, something that you do well at ThriVe.
Brett
Jose
Interesting take. Does one preclude the other? They could’ve posted the ad both to the Superbowl and to Youtube. $5MM is a lot of money, no doubt, and the execution of the commercial is key…but 100MM viewers is a big number, at at 5 cents per pair of eyeballs, that seems like a pretty good price. The problem with mass media advertising has been something of a chain – how many people see the ad, how many have their perceptions changed, and then how many act on the ad. Intent to try/intent to purchase have been very difficult statistics to derive. So mass media depends on the underlying belief that if enough people see it, the percentage who act will make the cost worthwhile. You add on to that the idea of scale – that production costs for an ad are the same, whether 100 or 100 million see it – so the more the better.
Abortion isn’t a decision made in the head, though; I believe it is made with the heart, moreso the decision to oppose abortion. There is a guttural, visceral, emotional realization that we are talking about murder, the extinguishment of a life, often in excruciating fashion. The only way I fear that happens is to give it enough opportunity to do so – hence eyeballs, and frequently in front of them.
Just a few thoughts. Really admire you for what you are doing.
Brett Attebery
Thank you for your comments Jose!
I agree with your thoughts, especially a word you used in the last sentence, “frequently.”
While I agree that 5 cents per pair of eyeballs is a good price, if the brand in question blows out its entire ad budget on one big party, like the Superbowl, in my mind there will be no “frequency.”
I don’t think it’s possible to brand effectively without frequency of views, all the more so in our distracted ad-saturated culture.
The same $5MM invested in a YouTube campaign could not only target both geography and demographics better, but could be run in such a way to make sure “frequency of views” achieved some minimum threshold, say 10.
Grateful for your feedback.