The Super Bowl is an all encompassing media event–even more so this year as evidenced by two seemingly incongruous statements that both ring true.
“I’ve got to get my big screen TV in time for the Super Bowl,” says one consumer.
Meanwhile another–or even the same consumer–could be heard to utter, “I’d better get my small screen ready for the Big Game.”
The former has a sense of urgency in that the Super Bowl is broadcast in HD. And for the first time not only the Big Game, but also more than half of its commercials will be shown in hi-def. In that many viewers actually want to see the Super Bowl spots, the HD factor looms as significant.
At the same time, advertisers need to be conscious of other venues on which their Super Sunday pitches will appear–namely on much smaller screens. The NFL, for example, will place all Super Bowl XL spots on its video-on-demand service, on NFL.com, and NFL mobile programs on Sprint. These ads will be available for a full week after the Game. This small-screen exposure provides an additional return to advertisers who are paying an average of $2.5 million per :30 time slot on the Fox Super Bowl telecast.
Anheuser-Busch’s five minutes of Super Bowl advertising will be shown at Budweiser.com. These ads can even be downloaded to video iPods, a dynamic that can enhance, if not extend, water cooler talk about the spots after the Game itself.
This past Monday, Diet Pepsi launched brownandbubbly.com, providing content related to its upcoming Super Bowl ads, which will be posted on the site after the game. The Diet Pepsi campaign revolves around the Diet Pepsi vending machine, which has become a star NFL player, so much so that it is represented by a high-powered sports agent played by comedian Jay Mohr (from Jerry Macguire).
Also engaging consumers in concert with and beyond the Super Bowl ad itself is Emerald Nuts with its acrostic word game, based on the letters in Emerald and identifying the many different kinds of people who love Emerald nuts. The Web site’s example is Elizabethan Monarchs Examining Reruns Are Lounging Despite Not Upgrading The Sofa. For the 10 days leading up to the Super Bowl, site visitors can submit their own Emerald acrostic as part of a contest; the winners will have their entries posted on the Emerald site.
Degree antiperspirant will give men on their email list a sneak peek at its Super Bowl ad the morning of the Big Game. Degree is also running a 30-second action film on male-appeal Web sites (ign.com, Degree.com). The short centers on the exploits of a stunt man who is featured in the Big Game spot.
Meanwhile Sprint’s two Super Sunday commercials can be seen by its cell subscribers. Sprint has also set up polls whereby subscribers can vote for their favorite Sprint ad as well as song performed by the Rolling Stones during the Sprint-sponsored halftime show.
It’s somehow apropos that the Sprint spots come from TBWA/Chiat/Day, New York. You may recall that the agency’s Los Angeles and San Francisco shops some years ago launched the lauded Apple campaign “Think Different.” And in today’s multi-platform marketplace, an offshoot of that mantra could take the form of advice for even the largest advertisers: “Think Small.”