When Super Bowl ads go bad
By Aimee Picchi
The Super Bowl isn’t just the biggest day of the year for football fans — it’s also the most highly anticipated day for advertisers.
The “Ad Bowl” has become the single costliest day for advertisers, with a 30-second spot fetching $4.5 million in air time alone. Add in production, digital media and a month-long campaign to promote that single ad, and the cost can easily ratchet up to double that amount. But for companies the big game offers an even bigger opportunity: To capture the imagination — and perhaps the business — of the roughly 100 million people tuning in not only to watch the game, but also to watch the commercials.
Indeed, viewers often are more interested in the ads than the game, a survey from Venables Bell & Partners found last year. That makes the Super Bowl one of the rare venues where consumers are actually excited to watch the ads. Because viewers are primed to listen and enjoy the ads, that raises the stakes for advertisers. One bad ad not only represents a financial loss, but could taint the brand’s name for millions of potential customers.
“It’s one of the rare places where the advertising becomes the content,” Carl Marci, co-founder and chief science officer of Innerscope Research, told CBS MoneyWatch. Innerscope taps technologies such as biometrics and “neurometrics,” which involves measuring electrical activity in the brain, to gauge consumers’ responses to media. “You have to take people on a journey, and that starts with a coherent story with aspirational characters.”
Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/media/when-super-bowl-ads-go-bad/