In a few hours, the festivities around the biggest American sporting event of the year will take place. There aren’t many opportunities to speak to ~127M+ people at once, hence why the :30sec spot costs between $8-10M this year. When you spend that kind of money, the planning usually starts months and months ahead. In rare cases, companies don’t plan much at all — think Ryan Reynolds with Aviation Gin or Mint Mobile where he uses his creativity and spontaneity to his advantage. For the rest of us, there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes, so here are a few things to think about before the commercials hit the screen and you start writing a Twitter post about the best (and worst) Super Bowl commercials.
First, you need to understand why companies even choose to advertise on TV to begin with. TV is an ‘upper funnel’ channel, meaning the main purpose is mass awareness of a brand, product, or message. Companies usually use the air time in different ways — brand building (Budweiser, Frito-Lay, Coca Cola, etc.), new product launch (Lexus, Microsoft, etc.), or to build anticipation around an upcoming release (Disney). You likely won’t see any “sale” messages or companies trying to get you to go buy their product. The purpose of the commercial is to plant a seed in your brain so they can stay top of mind and you can [hopefully] consider their brand or product the next time you are in the market.
Now, let’s talk about the planning process. Since mass awareness is the company’s goal, they aren’t targeting a specific customer-type. That’s what you do when you are trying to convince someone that your product is the right fit for them. In this case, anyone could be watching — so they have to determine what’s the message that they want to communicate and how do they want to communicate it? I’ve sat in these rooms before, and the process usually starts with a strategic brief. This document outlines the key message they want to get across, why should the audience believe it, what they aim to achieve with the ad, and what the KPIs (key performance indicators) will be. For example, does the company want to “attack” another company while showcasing why their product is better (e.g., Pepsi) or do they want keep things lighthearted, make the audience laugh, and highlight a new product change (e.g., Southwest Airlines)? Does the company want to see a 1-2 pt lift in brand health (awareness and consideration)? How many impressions do they expect to get? Is the goal to drive more traffic to a website or retail store? It also details how the Super Bowl commercial ties into the rest of the advertising in other channels (e.g., social media, etc.) because each piece of creative should work together.
From there, the company builds and delivers a creative brief and the agency does what they do best — get creative and start throwing ideas on the table. Are they going to have a celebrity, humans, animals, babies, animation, etc.? What will be the setting? What’s the script? They will go through idea after idea and build those ideas out until they land on 2-3 great options to present to the company. Once the company approves an idea, the agency then gets to work on the tactical stuff — background music, costume design, actor selection. This goes on for several weeks until they actually go produce the commercial. After recording it, which is not easy, there’s rounds and rounds of edits and leadership approvals needed. Once finalized, the ad is packaged and sent to the media agency so it can be aired on the day of the game. For a day like today, I wouldn’t be surprised if the deadline to hand-off the final ad was several weeks ago.
And now, we wait. Wait to see what these companies have been planning for the last several months. Wait to see how those ideas came to life and what leadership at each company approved to run during Super Bowl LX.
Think about these things when you’re watching the commercials tonight. These ads were carefully and methodically planned out and now it’s time for the ~127M people to watch them.
Which company do you think will do it the best (or worst)?