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Are You Ready For The Hype!
January 31, 2012
Have an opinion? Add your comment below. Sammy Simpson reports on who gets out to an early lead at the Super Bowl.
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Well, here we are again. Another super week leading up to the big game ... and a time where the competition taking place on the field is only a set up for big brands looking to capture the world championship of attention.
The hype has increased each year since another New York quarterback was featured during the game in an advertisement for Noxzema. Joe Namath would help the brand become the first famous Super Bowl commercial in 1973.
And Wikipedia.org explains...
As television audiences continued to fracture with the increasing number of subscription television channels, by the 1990s the Super Bowl was one of the few events on broadcast television that could consistently draw a critical mass of viewers (and thus potential customers), a distinction that remains to this day. (The Super Bowl has never been awarded to a cable channel in its history, and current contracts would not allow such until Super Bowl LVIII in 2024 at the earliest.) As such, the network that owns the right to the Super Bowl can charge a premium on the advertising during the game, to the point where marketers have raised concerns that Super Bowl advertising has become so expensive that it does not positively impact an advertiser's market share. Super Bowl XLVI, broadcast on NBC, set a record for the price of a Super Bowl advertisement, selling 58 spots (including those longer than 30 seconds) during the game generating US $75 million for the network; the most expensive advertisement sold for $4 million.
But, as Breant Leary, co-Founder CRM Essentials said, “The attention economy is not growing, which means we have to grab the attention that someone else has today.”
So it’s no surprise that with the evolution of media, and the fact that people are no longer glued to just the television commercials alone, a brand has to be truly integrated in order to win.
Case-in-point. I’m sure the you’ve seen the video making the rounds this week of Matthew Broderick once again becoming one of his most infamous characters, Ferris Bueller.
Here are three reasons why I feel that Honda has really done a great job with this idea:
* Build anticipation
* Create something for people to talk about and share
* Make an appointmentIt started as a simple :10 video tease a week before the event that quickly blitzed the social web. People were talking and anticipating what was happening next ... a new movie, a TV show, or what? (It built anticipation.)
It became an even greater whirlwind of activity within just a few hours to start the week as a full version was released and it was revealed that Matthew Broderick would be using Ferris to present the Honda CR-V for a Super Bowl commercial.
People were instantly sharing and talking about the fact that Ferris Bueller was back, and whether they agreed with the commercial approach or not ... it was spreading fast and creating a ton of talk.
It will have everyone discussing Honda going into the game, and not just during it. (Something to talk about.)
Finally, you can bet that Ferris Bueller fans will be watching a little closer during the game and the commercial breaks, in hopes that Honda is going to reveal more of that high school senior skipping class to take us on more adventures.
It reminded me of an article I wrote for Radio & Records to start 2002. I asked some industry folks, “What makes a good promotion this year?”
One of my favorite people, Von Freeman who was VP of Marketing at Clear Channel Los Angeles at the time said, “What makes a good promo? It has to be super-original, super-creative and borderline funny. Create new ideas -- and I don’t mean reinventing the wheel, but take something that was huge in the ‘70s, or an idea that hasn’t been done in your market and make it bigger than life for you.”
Honda gets it, and they came to play by making something old new again, and scoring the first touchdown for a brand in 2012.
I hope by seeing some of their playbook, you’ll see an opportunity for you as well, and use it to help chart your plays for success.
Enjoy the game.
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