Super Bowl week has passed. And with it also go all the brands that used some promotion, some copy, some mention or something related to the Super Bowl. At least until the following year.
While I’m not a fan of the NFL, I generally enjoy watching the ads and the marketing and advertising phenomenon that comes with such an event.
First and most impressive are the overall numbers. In a world dominated by social media generated content, it seems to be one of the few global TV broadcasts to beat social media in terms of influence and ratings. To see the figures, the previous year, during 2022, the SB had more than 100 million viewers and the NFL led 82 of the 100 highest-rated broadcasts in the US, according to Nielsen. To make the comparison, the premiere of House of the Dragon, one of the most successful series of 2022, only had 10 million viewers. Crazy, if you ask me.
In general, the statistics for some years show the decline of advertising in media such as Television to take these investments to the digital world, but the particular case of SB is shown as a panacea for the advertising world. The big advertisers put all the meat on the grill to have 30 seconds in the transmission. It is a catwalk where advertisements for brands such as Doritos, Chrysler, Pepsi, Netflix, Amazon, BMW, Apple, among many others, are released. This year in particular, “the Breaking Bad ad” made a lot of noise and precisely the launch on the SB gave it the boost it needed.
I continue with the numbers (because I am surprised every time I find out about these figures). During SB 2020, the record for the most expensive ad was broken, as Amazon paid $16.8 million for a 90-second “Before Alexa” commercial. Another madness, if you ask me. Now, the “SB effect” is interesting, where the position you gain worldwide is worth precisely 16.8 million. And it is that in general, as I was talking with some of my clients, we still cannot replace the presence or the construction and/or remembrance that the advertising that happens on TV gives you. As much of a digital presence as we have, as much as TikTok, as much as whatever, we still can’t top that within the industry. That is why the pretext of the Super Bowl is ideal for building a brand. Particular case, this year the sponsor of the Pepsi halftime show was changed to Apple Music. In other words: the apple brand goes after Spotify for world leadership and starts with the SB.
In addition to the catwalk of ads and brands that make efforts, social networks become a sea of mentions. During the day of transmissions, user figures are always broken by commenting, creating and/or saying something related to the event. I think that only the Oscars compete in the number of memes that appear during the transmission.
It is curious to see how a thousand things have changed in the world since the Super Bowl was born, mainly the media, digitization and the creation of social networks, but it is more curious to see how the content generated for TV -and the ads- has its biggest point during the Super Bowl telecast and this is a winning battle for the big screen. At this point, digital is not seen to even shadow it and it is not seen that there will be any kind of competition in the coming years because the genre of “sports” is the only one in all of Television content that continues to gain followers even within of the younger segment, according to Nielsen statistics. This means that even after many years, the new generation will return to their TV screen to consume this type of content. It is one of the reasons for the SB phenomenon, where they have clearly also been concerned with attracting new audiences, mainly with the halftime show.
In any case, I think that everything that happens within “Super Sunday” is genius in terms of marketing and publicity, and I think all the people behind the NFL are the greatest geniuses in the entertainment industry above all. Other brands like Disney. Just look at the audience figures that have been generated and will continue to be generated in subsequent seasons and the way in which a traditionally “very American” sport has penetrated other world markets.
Crazy (or genius from where you see it) if they ask me again.