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The 46th annual NFL Super Bowl will be taking place on Sunday, February 5th, 2012, culminating the 2011 NFL season. Kickoff time is slated for 6:25pm EST. That, pretty much most red-blooded men know.
But are you ready for the TV commercials that cost on average, $3.5M per 30 second spot?
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It’s that time of year again… the playoffs are here, and soon the Super Bowl 46 will be on those big screens.
When all is said and done, after “the best of the best of the best*” tackle each other in the Super Bowl, “There can be only one!*” One winner. One Super Bowl champion. (They call them world champions, but I think they’re getting a bit liberal with that term!)
But prior to the Super Bowl, the game itself takes a backseat to something more important, and that’s the TV commercials between sets and quarters.
The TV ads that play during the Super Bowl have become a fascinating focus of both the fans and the media. And it’s such a hot bed of business that by May of 2011, NBC had already sold half the TV commercial spots available.
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The Ads Were Fun When We Were Surprised
Fans used to love the ads and because we made such a fervor about them, the media and the advertisers have taken advantage of that mentality.
The ads have such a huge spotlight on them that networks, advertisers and websites were previewing them before the Super Bowl.
Some of the ads were funny. And then again, some aren’t.
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But These Are The TV Ads We Hate!
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It seems ironic that the very TV ads that the loud TV commercials we begrudge become such a coveted focus this time of year.
Several years ago, the Super Bowl ads were pretty funny but as the years passed, advertisers tried to create more mini-masterpieces for the game. And now, because we come into the game expecting funny, I think our expectations are killing the experience. Or advertisers are missing the mark.
Gone are the Budweiser frogs, which were deemed too cute by various lawsuits. In their place are feel-good ads from Coca Cola, Budweiser and what not.
Also in play are the risky or trashy TV ads from GoDaddy or guys sucking other guys fingers in Doritos ads?
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Advertisers Spend Millions to Make Millions
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The funny part is that we bring glory to the advertisers who will be dropping millions upon millions of ad dollars in the Super Bowl to make us want to spend money on their product.
Advertisers spent $10B on ads just for the 2011/2012 TV season for basic networks alone. (No, I did not miss the M on the keyboard for million. That’s B for Billion.) And in this era when movie previews are getting preivews, it’s getting silly, and yet, advertising is taking on a life of its own.
(Heck, I just caught on a live feed I have going that Entertainment Weekly is reporting that a “‘Breaking Dawn — Part 2′ scene to premiere in Target stores on eve of ‘Part 1’ DVD release.”)
So we have ads for ads.
This is a direct off-shoot of the business we call the internet of today. Hence, this is no surprise. It’s disappointing, but no surprise because the internet seems to have pretty much anything we are curious about.
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One Good Story From the 2011 Super Bowl
Last year, I thought one great story came from one really fantastic ad.
The mini Darth Vader commercial for Volkswagen was a very cute ad and we all found out there was a great story behind the little Vader too. (48M hits and counting…)
And that was Max Page, the little boy with a heart defect. Meet Max Page, The small Darth Vader.
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What About The 2012 Super Bowl Ads?
This year, if you’re curious, we’ll be seeing ads (how many, what quarter) from…
Honda (1,4Q), Budweiser (4.5 minutes worth), Audi (1), Best Buy (1), Bridgestone (2), CareerBuilder (1), Cars.com (1, 3Q), Century 21 (1, 3Q), Coca-Cola (at least 1), Dannon Yogurt (1, 3Q), General Motors (5), GoDaddy.com (2), H&M (1, 2Q), Hyundai (2), Kia (1), M&M’s (1, 1Q), Paramount Pictures, Pepsi’s Doritos (2), Pepsi (2), Relativity Media (1, 4Q), Skechers (1, 2Q), Teleflora, Toyota, Universal Pictures, Volkswagen (1, 3Q), & Walt Disney Pictures.
And I’m sure that we will start seeing and hearing about the ads long before the kickoff for Super Bowl 2012.
If I see anything of interest, I’ll probably pass it on but I won’t be hovering and blathering about every single ad getting a preview. I think the advertisers need to earn some of their keep of the ads themselves, during the Super Bowl itself.
What do you think?
*(You know I had to bring in the Men in Black and Highlander movie quotes, right?)
[AdAge: Buying Super Bowl Ads
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