The NFL Super Bowl, as we all know, is so much more than a game. And just as the hype and analysis start well before
and continue long after, so it is with the commercials debuted during the match.
Advertisers spend millions of dollars for less than a minute of airtime during the big game, with some of the more spectacular
commercials being remembered and discussed weeks or even years later.
Without a doubt, the commercials are serious business – no less so for college professors, who focus on training the
next generation of advertisers and business leaders.
They take it so seriously, in fact, that some have been banned from Super Bowl parties because they focus too much on
the advertising.
Christine
Barnes, professor of business management at Lakeland Community College, is one such person. She and her
husband haven’t been to a Super Bowl party in probably a decade or more
because, she wrote in an email, “I make everyone be quiet during all of
the commercials.”
Barnes,
as well as the other professors interviewed for Monday’s story, all
said they took notes throughout the game
Sunday in preparation for upcoming class discussions. They noted which
commercials they liked, which appeared to miss the target audience, and
which simply were unclear.
Preparation, however, started well in advance of Sunday, with Barnes asking her students to email or tweet her throughout
the first quarter with their reactions to various commercials.
“It was across the board; they seemed to like a lot of the commercials,” Barnes said at halftime Sunday night.
However, she said, the automobile advertisement featuring a post-disaster scene did earn a negative
review.
“One of the students did comment that he didn’t think he’d like that life too much because there were no women. He didn’t
think the dog and Twinkies would be enough,” Barnes said.
Barnes
assigns Super Bowl advertising assignments for all of her classes,
asking students to watch at least part of
the game and analyze three of the commercials. A key question she asks
is whether the commercials appear to reach their target market.
“It’s not directed to me, so whether I personally like it or not is not the point. The point is who it’s directed to,”
Barnes said of a commercial she personally dislikes but which appears to reach its intended demographic.
Another key question is whether the commercials actually serve the intended purpose.
“Just
because a commercial is funny or shocking, that means nothing if we
can’t remember what the product is the next
morning. Every year when we discuss the commercials in class, there is
at least one where the class really loved the commercial, but can’t
remember the company or product,” Barnes said.
Robert
J. Trebar, dean of the School of Business at Lake Erie College, also
said he prepped his students in advance
of the game, asking them which ads they were looking forward to the
most. The automobile and soft drink ads topped the list, with some
students also mentioning two companies that effectively branded a
particular style of commercial.
Key
questions, he said, are these: “What was the company that paid $3.5
million for 30 seconds hoping to accomplish?
Are they trying to create awareness for a new product? … build interest
among potential consumers? … create desire and urgency to have the
product? … calling a customer to action … or is this strictly company
image building?
Like Barnes, Trebar attempts to drive home to his students the point
that some companies may try so hard to be clever and memorable in their
ads that they ultimately lose sight of the product message itself.
“We’ll
ask ourselves if these ads are worth it? Would I have been better off
buying ten less expensive ads that hit
a more targeted audience? Is this really about selling stuff? Or has it
become a corporate ego-driven high-end competition for attention that
won’t translate into better business results?” Trebar said in an email.
In a year that saw many ads leaked early or previewed online, Trebar also plans to ask the students how the role of
social media has affected Super Bowl advertising.
“I’ll
probably ask my students, given the role of social media (Facebook Twitter, etc) if the heyday of big production,
expensive, one-time ads is over? A lot of experts in the field believe
that this type of advertising no longer sells product. It’s just not
‘sticky’ or interactive enough for the under 35 crowd. You can see that
companies are starting to realize this by linking
mobile device apps to codes in the Super Bowl ads that direct viewers
to sites where they can win prizes, coupons, etc., and, of course, where
there is additional advertising. This way the advertiser gets more and
longer exposure than just the ad itself –
a good thing if you’re spending $3.5 million on 30 seconds of TV time,”
Trebar wrote.
Ultimately, as clichéd as it may sound to students, it’s important for any advertiser to know the intended audience
and target advertising accordingly, wrote Steven Gutierrez, assistant professor of integrated media at Lake Erie College.
And
Mary Kay McManamon, professor of marketing at Lake Erie College,
observed that a little experimenting doesn’t hurt.
That could mean using social media tie-ins, like those Trebar
described, or it could mean planning a series of shorter commercials,
instead of planning one big, expensive ad.
“Two years ago (a company) did a series of 10-second spots. Very clever. Those ads topped just about every list of most
recalled Super Bowl ads,” McManamon wrote in an email.
As
for social media, she added later, “You remember when people would say,
‘I’m only watching the game for the commercials?’
Well, some of these games are pretty darn boring and if you’re a
marketing professional and you put your commercial in the fourth quarter
and the game’s a blowout in the second quarter, you’ve taken a risk.”
That’s a lot of factors for the next generation of marketing and business professionals to consider.
Rachel Jackson |
RJackson@News-Herald.com | @nh_rachel
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