Super Bowl commercial trends for 2012

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Super Bowl commercial trends for 2012
2/7/2012 5:43:53 PM
Category: Business Owner Tips

More than 111 million people tuned in to watch the Super Bowl last week as the New York Giants defeated the New England Patriots. However, it wasn't the game itself that most advertisers were concerned about - it was, of course, the commercials.

Brands spent an average of $3.5 million per commercial during the Super Bowl, with hopes that their spots would be memorable enough to resonate in consumers' minds far beyond the finals seconds of the game.

The big winners used certain marketing tactics in their ads that businesses may want to consider for future commercial development.

Utilizing its USA Today/Facebook Super Bowl Ad Meter to track the social media buzz of each advert, USA Today found that multiple Doritos commercials, an H&M ad featuring a David Beckham and Chrysler's controversial ad starring Clint Eastwood were among the most buzzworthy spots.

The utilization of pets was a common occurrence in a variety of ads this year. Marketers found people to have an emotional connection to pets that correlates to a warm fuzzy feeling which can't really be replicated by human counterparts, Forbes explains.

One Doritos ad featured a man bring bribed by a dog with the chips to not spill the beans about a cat's mysterious disappearance. Volkswagen, Bud Light, Suzuki and Sketchers also found uses for dog placement in their ads.

The news source notes that the "canine formula" is a seemingly "risk averse" strategy to commercial appeal.

Doritos also aired another well-liked ad featuring a grandmother who slings a baby from a rubberband-like apparatus to steal a bag of chips from a little boy across the yard.

In total, the company garnered nearly 50,000 tweets, according to Super Bowl ad-rating feature the Brand Bowl, and was the third most-liked with a 29 percent approval rating.

H&M saw the second most tweets for its ad (43,536), which featured soccer star Beckham in black and white, promoting underwear. The use of celebrity (or sex appeal) to sell products isn't a new idea, and H&M took full advantage. A GoDaddy.com ad starring racecar driver Danica Patrick and fitness expert Jillian Michaels also scored well.

"Advertisers this year are playing it very safe," Tim Calkins, a professor of marketing at Northwestern University, told The Associated Press. "They're running spots that are clearly designed to appeal to a broad audience and not to offend."

"It's a typical Super Bowl, funny carries the day," Calkins added. "Advertisers are driving for attention and likeability."

Brands that failed to follow these strategies didn't garner much social media buzz. For example, a Lexus ad featuring a car breaking out of a mold was "uninspired" according to Forbes, and was one of three companies (along with Cadillac and Century 21) to generate fewer than 1,000 tweets, TheStreet reports.

Another trend business owners should be aware of is the sneak-peak aspect. Of the 70 Super Bowl advertisers that had commercials during Super Sunday, nearly 50 percent placed previews of their spots online in the days leading up to the event, according to the AP. This was a nearly unprecedented move, as only a few companies opted for this route last year.

By utilizing YouTube and creating a social media buzz prior to the actual spot (most previews didn't feature the "big reveal"), marketers were able to make their brands more visible than ever before.

USA Today notes that "the very purpose of most Super Bowl broadcast spots is to drive folks to socially tweet, like, share or even rant about their spots."

"People don’t want to be told what they like; people want to tell you what they like," Ann Mukherjee, chief marketing officer at Frito-Lay, told the media outlet.

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