A Look Into The World of Marketing: Super Bowl vs. Commercials

The Super Bowl is one of the most important nights of the year as far as marketers are concerned. The advertising campaigns surrounding the Super Bowl have become almost as important as the game itself. It’s not uncommon to here someone say, “I only watch the Super Bowl to see the commercials,” and with good reason; the commercials are really good. Companies spend an absurd amount of time and money on Super Bowl commercials because they know how many people are seeing them. People talk about the best commercials for days after Super Bowl Sunday. The commercials go viral. This year we even saw Super Bowl commercials appearing a few days before the game began.

What makes a great Super Bowl commercial? Traditionally these commercials are being watched by a larger group of people at a Super Bowl party; Funny commercials are always winners in a setting like this. We saw a variety of funny commercials this year. Many of the commercials that topped the lists of “commercials worth watching” were the funniest commercials.

I found myself laughing out loud as I re-watched the commercials this morning trying to decide which ones I wanted to write about. Many of the commercials were very clever. I loved seeing the cast of Full House reunited in the Oikos commercial, with Danny prepared to do the cleaning, as always. The Esurance commercial, which was the first to play after the super bowl pointed out that they were able to save 30% by buying that spot, and that they could save you 30% too. Then they offered $1.5million to someone who tweeted #EsuranceSave30, and it was trending on twitter within seconds of playing on the commercial- now that’s clever. And of course we’ll all remember the weird hug that Honda played on screen for an uncomfortably long period of time as part of their safety campaign, reminding us to hug our loved ones.

It looks as if there has been a shift in the way marketers attract our attention. In the past there were always commercials that focused on the use of women to get people’s attention. This was especially common in Super Bowl beer commercials, and I even remember Burger King commercials where this technique was used. However I can’t remember seeing any commercials last night that objectified women as they had in the past. Many companies were using celebrities, humor and puppies instead.

This years commercials were actually filled with some positive messages for girls. The commercial for Intuit QuickBooks and Goldie blocks was well done. The commercial showed girls running through the streets to get rid of their old “traditional” toys, tossing their princess tiaras in the air, and building a rocket ship together made of their old toys. The song in the background was catchy; with lyrics like, “Girls make some noise, more than pink, we want to think, girls build like all the boys.”