Advertising at the Super Bowl holds some important lessons for Aussie marketers spending big on advertising during sports broadcasts. This year, many Super Bowl advertisers wasted their money in pursuit of branding over consumer action and engagement.
Recent data from Nielsen shows close to half (44%) of Aussies aged over 16 engage in second screening -watching television while browsing the Internet or scanning social media platforms. This demonstrates the power of reaching customers on mobile and tablets during sports broadcasts.
If you're going to pay $US4.5 million for 30 seconds at the Super Bowl and you're not willing to put in a call to action to make that engagement happen with customers, then you are wasting money and missing the opportunity afforded by the connected consumer.
Here is a recap of trends that jump out at me both from reviewing our own social media conversation data and watching the Super Bowl advertisements:
The biggest CTA during Super Bowl XLIX was no CTA at all. Yes, in an era where our research showed 61% of US consumers planned to watch the Super Bowl with a smartphone in hand, a whopping 51% of US advertisers elected to just run their ad without asking viewers to do anything. I love branding as much as the next person, but the Super Bowl is such an expensive platform, you must do more than boost brand recall. You need consumers to take action — buy, opt-in, subscribe, amplify — anything to make your ad last beyond its 30 seconds.
Mobile? What's mobile? In 2015, more Super Bowl ads contained phone numbers than calls to download mobile apps or engage with SMS. Attention brand advertisers: all marketing is now direct, thanks to all the mobile phones, tablets, and laptops floating around. However, in order to generate direct results from a TV commercial, you must ask the viewer to do something specific on their device.
Hashtags are lazy marketing unless you build something around them. The average time a hashtag was on screen during a Super Bowl commercial was less than one second. Just like last year. Not even the most adept texting tween can capture and type a hashtag that fast.
True social engagement was nowhere to be found (on TV). While Facebook rebounded somewhat from last year's near shutout in ad CTAs, subtract all the hashtags and one could argue there wasn't a single, true social call to action in any of the Super Bowl ads. However, if you were on Facebook during the game, you probably saw a lot of friends talking about the game and the ads. And therein lies the social magic.
Pre-released ads on YouTube had better CTAs. 2015 was the year the vast majority (about 80% by my count) released their ads for online viewing on YouTube, Facebook, and elsewhere. You can argue whether this trend is spoiling the surprise of seeing ads for the first time during the game, but no one can argue with the outcome — especially Budweiser. The King of Beers was the undisputed King of Super Bowl pre-releasing with its "Lost Puppy" ad garnering more than 20 million views on YouTube before the Super Bowl began.
In short, the Super Bowl ads don't work hard enough for the brands paying their bills. Aussie marketers should look to the Super Bowl as a lesson when they are considering how they can reach customers and maximise their advertising spend during this year’s key sporting events and big television events.
Marketers need to engage meaningfully in the moment with consumers who are watching, mobile device at the ready.
Jeffrey Rohrs,
VP marketing insights
Salesforce