Car Manufacturers Dominate Super Bowl Advertising

From my ABC News Column

Valuable Share At Stake.

One of the most reliable trends indicating the economy is improving is the growth of car sales. Last year, car sales increased by more than 10%, the best showing for the industry since 2008. American auto makers did well in 2011 as Japanese car makers Toyota and Honda struggled through a major earthquake and a tsunami that crippled manufacturing, hurt inventory and parts availability and left the door open for a resurgence from U.S. automakers. 2012 is setting itself up as a very important year for automakers. Did American car makers do well just because Japanese car makers encountered obstacles beyond their control? Will foreign automakers come back with a vengeance and push U.S. automakers back into the hole they’ve slowly been climbing out of since the U.S. Government had to come to their aid with the bailout of 2008? These questions have put the car industry on the center stage this year. From an advertising perspective, there is no bigger stage than the Super Bowl and automobile manufacturers have purchased almost a third of the spots to be run during the game. In addition, they’ve pulled out the stops on engagement as well developing apps and social media strategies to get consumers to watch the game while interacting with brand using their smartphones, tablets and laptops. Lexus will be advertising during the Super Bowl broadcast for the first time. Volkswagen is using dogs as a variation of its popular Star Wars ad of last year. Hyundai also has decided to go with an animal, in this case a cheetah, in one of three spots it will be running on the big game telecast. Acura has gone deep into its pockets signing celebrities Jerry Seinfied and Jay Leno, Kia is one of two advertisers (the other is Teleflora) using supermodel Adriana Lima. Honda has tapped Matthew Broderick in a bit of Boomer nostalgia reprising his role as Ferris Bueller while Chevy, in arguably the most exhilarating Super Bowl spot makes the car the hero by taking it skydiving and bungee Jumping. Chevy’s other Super Bowl commercial is the only crowdsourced spot for auto-makers. The spot called Happy Grad was the winner of a competition that received 400 scripts and 198 films. The winner Zach Borst received $25,000 for his efforts. In all, 12 auto brands have purchased space on the Super Bowl. So, nearly $100 Million dollars will be spent, not including production or activation to social media and PR by auto makers vying for buyers. Last year, Volkswagen’s take off on Star Wars was the hands-down winner based on recall and likeability. My vote this year goes to the Chevy Sonic because it best captures the attitude of the car buying audience it is targeting in a memorable way.
This year’s crop of Super Bowl car ads have something for everyone as car makers make an appeal for buyers. It’s good to see the auto industry regain some of its swagger. Let’s hope they are still swaggering when the first quarter sales results come in.

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Sex and The Super Bowl

From my ABC News Column

Super Bowl's Sexy Ads: Will They Work?

Allow me to set the stage. Picture the Roman Coliseum in Ancient Rome where as many as 50,000 spectators would gather to see gladiator fights, prisoners battle with lions and wild animal hunts. Now think bigger and gaudier. This Sunday at Super Bowl XLVI, 68,000 will gather at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis and over 100 Million will watch on TV and the internet. Most will be eating and drinking to excess and the sole focus will be entertainment. The game will be intense. Two teams vying for a large paycheck and the most important distinction of their lives: that of “champions”. They will have been worked into a frenzy by coaches and teammates assuring them that this chance may never come again so they should leave everything on the field. Once on the field they will hit each other with the force of a car crash, over and over again. Every move they make will be scrutinized and important moments that happen on the field and the sidelines will be replayed over and over again. Periodically, throughout the game necessary breaks will be taken so the players can rest and the networks can earn money by showing advertisements for 30 and 60 second time slots they have sold for as much as $4 Million dollars a slot. The purchasers of those time slots will have those scant seconds to make a positive connection with an audience that is half in the tank and available to be entertained but not overtly sold to. This is the story of why advertisers try to use sex to sell in their Super Bowl Ads.
According to the creator of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, we are obsessed with sex. It constantly occupies our minds both consciously and unconsciously. According to a study conducted by the Journal of Sex Research, men had sex thoughts an average of 19 times a day. Sex is the most searched term on the internet. It is therefore, not surprising that, in an effort to cut through the clutter advertisers use sex. So this year, both Kia and Teleflora have engaged Adriana Lima, best known as a Victoria’s Secret Angel. GoDaddy, the perennial pimp of Super Bowl commercials has hired Danica Patrick, Jillian Michaels and the Pussycat Dolls and H&M strangely is going with David Beckham. From what I’ve seen, the spots do a pretty fair job at titillation considering that on network TV you really can’t show anything or do anything. From an eye-candy perspective, the stars are, for the most part (I ain’t rating Beckham) attractive. But do the ads work? Advertising Professor Jef. I. Richards is credited with having said: “Sex sells. But only if you’re selling sex”. GoDaddy might argue that they successfully used sex in their 2005 Super Bowl ad to create name recognition. So, why, 7 years later are they still using it? It could be that they believe it works. They started advertising as a small company with about a 16% share of the market and now boast a better than 50% share of the market and over a billion in sales. It has been viewed as polarizing but then again, no one sees you purchase a web domain from GoDaddy so there is no pressure not to be viewed as sexist. And finally, they are one of the few big advertisers in their category. I bet you can’t name any other of the top five web-hosting providers. The other advertisers don’t have sex as their primary marketing strategy. They have pulled it out for the Super Bowl as a special tact for this occasion. If you take a look at the top 15 Super Bowl commercials of all time you’ll find that sex only finds the list twice: Joe Namath and Farah Fawcett for Noxzema and Cindy Crawford for Pepsi. The Xerox Monk, Mean Joe Greene for Coke, Apple’s breakthrough 1984 ad, Michael Jordan and Larry Byrd playing one-on-one for McDonalds, The Budweiser Frogs, Monster.com’s cinematic “When I grow Up”, E*TRADE’s Monkeys, EDS’s Cat Herders, Linebacker Terry Tate for Reebok, Budweiser’s Clydesdales, Brad Pitt for Heineken and Betty White for Snickers all won with humor and star power. And each (with varying degrees of success) manages to connect the activity on the screen to a product attribute.
I suspect that like in years past this year’s attempts to use sex will be middle-of-the road efforts that might catch your eye but fail to connect with audience at the deeper level needed to initiate a sell or spur consumer brand interest. The strategic problem that is almost impossible to overcome when using this tactic is that connecting a brand benefit to sex is a long shot unless like the professor says that’s what you’re selling.

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