Super Bowl advertising…the savior of football haters everywhere…
Many people are bored by the sport of football or have no interest in the game once their team is eliminated from the playoffs…so why, every year, is such a large audience tuning into the Super Bowl?
Well, it has a lot to do with the mini Darth Vaders and talking, stock trading babies…
Super Bowl ad space is outrageously expensive. NBC has sold all of the commercial time for Super Bowl XLVI at an average of $3.5 million per 30 second spot. This is because it’s quite literally the only time of year viewers don’t use the commercials as bathroom breaks or to load up on snacks.
A classic example of Super Bowl advertising at its best is the “Whassup?” commercial for Budweiser. The hugely viral and ubiquitous campaign will probably be permanently linked to the Budweiser brand. In fact, if you close your eyes and concentrate hard enough, you’ll probably still be able to hear the ridiculous “Whassssuuup?” phone conversations from the commercial in your head.
The campaign was inspired by a short film produced by Charles Stone (the first actor featured in the commercial) and aired in the early 2000s. The ads featured a group of men sitting around, watching sports and drinking Budweiser while calling their friends. The extent of their phone conversations was “Whasssssuup?” repeated over and over humorously. Overall, audiences found it to be amusing and likeable (at least the first few times they saw it).
As the campaign’s popularity grew, Internet parodies integrating pop culture icons like the Teletubbies and South Park characters also began to pop up.
However, ad campaigns based on humor can’t please everyone! A survey by Ad Track reported 61 percent of individuals who were 65+ disliked the “Whassup?” Budweiser commercials. Many of the survey participants said they didn’t understand or didn’t want to understand the ads. However, it is doubtful that any beer company would directly target 65+ market (a market already set in their beer drinking ways).
Budweiser’s “Whassup?” ad campaign won awards all over the globe and was acclaimed as a breakthrough in attention-getting, word-of-mouth marketing communications. However, despite the fact that millions of people were buzzing around and repeating “Whassup?” to their friends, the company’s market share dropped 1.5 to 2.5 percentage points and sales fell 8.3 percent. How could this be? Well, while everyone was excited about the ad’s entertainment — they still weren’t ready to defend the Bud brand at the tap! In the end, it didn’t matter that 20 million people were energized and talking about Budweiser’s creative ad campaign. If your target audience isn’t fighting for your brand and expressing their loyalty to your product or services, innovative marketing will not translate into sales.
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