By Karen Axelton
To say I’m not a sports fan would be putting it mildly. (I had no idea who was playing in the Super Bowl until I read Maria Valdez Haubrich’s post on it the Super Bowl the other day.) But pretty much every year, I end up watching the Super Bowl. First, because I love a good excuse to eat chips and dip. Second, because I love….the commercials.
You heard me. And I know I’m not alone. Last year, I went to a great Super Bowl party. Why was it so outstanding? Well, just about everyone attending worked in advertising, marketing, graphic design, TV or film. That meant everyone attending was as interested—if not more—in the commercials than they were in the outcome of the actual game. When commercials came on, everyone leaned in attentively, the TV volume went up and as soon as the game came on, the chatter started—not about the game, but about the ads we’d just seen.
If you own a small business, you should be watching the Super Bowl as closely for the ads as for the game itself. You should also be watching the reactions of the crowd you’re watching the game with. Why? Because Super Bowl airtime is the big leagues of advertising, with companies paying millions of dollars for a spot. That means companies put their best ads forward, or try to, and you can learn a lot from observing.
Attention and sales aren’t the same thing. The big winner in last year’s Super Bowl of ads was probably the Old Spice Man. The campaign, introduced during the Super Bowl, did garner tons of attention, but BrandWeek reported that sales of Old Spice actually dropped 7 percent between June 2009 and June 2010 (6 months after the campaign began).
Success requires follow-up. The Old Spice Man did garner huge brand awareness, but it didn’t come from the Super Bowl ads alone. Following up with lots of social media engagement with customers was key to growing the buzz. The question, of course, is whether you can translate that buzz into sales.
Humor’s great, but not if they don’t remember you. Every year I bet there are at least a couple of ads that have you and your friends laughing and talking about them afterwards. But when someone asks you, “What was the ad for?” you might scratch your head and go “Hmmm….actually, I don’t remember.” For a small business on a limited ad budget, it’s especially important for your company to be as memorable as the ad that touts it. So if you’re doing, say, a series of radio spots, you might be itching to crack people up—but a basic ad that repeats your business phone number and URL seven times might pay off better in the end.
Learn from the audience. Think of the Super Bowl as free “focus group.” Even if the rest of the people at the part aren’t your target customers, you can learn a lot by observing how people react to ads. Does a certain ad seem to resonate with the women in the audience? Does another get a reaction from the men or the younger viewers? Observe not just the ads, but the viewers and you’ll pick up some valuable nuggets of information.
Grab your note pad and pass the peanuts. It’s game time!
Image by Flickr user Cynthia McLoskey (Creative Commons)
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