Having sacrificed a little of our collective dignity by agreeing to treat Super Bowl advertisements as a worthy companion entertainment to the game itself, the least we can expect, it seems, is that those ads be entertaining—dramatic, moving, or funny, but, mostly, original, both by being interesting and, more plainly, by being new. But, by the time that we sit down to watch this Sunday, many of the “must see” commercials will already have been seen—previewed extensively or else released ahead of time online and shared on social media. This might be good for business (more on that in a moment), but it makes for lesser viewing.
This year, a thirty-second spot costs a bit more than four million dollars—and Fox, which is broadcasting the game, had no trouble finding companies to pay for the opportunity. But most of these companies aren’t really buying Super Bowl ads anymore. At least, that’s not all, or even especially, what they are buying. Instead, they have paid for the ability, for several weeks leading up to the big day, to tell people that they’ve bought a Super Bowl ad.
“Many advertisers think of it now as a monthlong challenge,” Tim Calkins, a professor of marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, told me. “It is not about winning the Super Bowl but winning an entire month.”
To that end, the likes of Toyota, Jaguar, Audi, Dannon Oikos yogurt, Butterfinger, CarMax, and others began the Super Bowl ad season by releasing teaser spots for their commercials. Toyota promised the Muppets; Dannon previewed the reunion of the men from the nineties sitcom “Full House”; and Jaguar introduced a trio of British villains who luxuriate in being bad and driving fast. Many teaser campaigns, like those of Jaguar and Butterfinger, have companion Web sites with “making of” and “behind the scenes” footage. If a viewer visits one of these sites sometime in January, that’s a win for the company, and it doesn’t really matter whether the person watches the ad during the game.
Bud Light’s preview campaign has been especially extensive. The beer company has released six thirty-second teasers for its Super Bowl ad, both online and on television. One features Arnold Schwarzenegger playing table tennis in a Bjorn Borg-style track jacket. Another has Don Cheadle and a llama. The tagline promises “Whatever Is Coming,” which itself seems like a winking parody of Super Bowl ad culture—something exciting is on the way, though it might not matter exactly what it is. “It is really a strange place to be: releasing six commercials to tell people that you are going to run a commercial,” said Calkins.
Companies have attempted to generate buzz for their Super Bowl ads for years—often taking out ads in print or broadcast media, as well as online. But only recently has the teaser model, with short ads released in advance, like movie trailers, become standard. Yet what many companies are previewing this year can’t exactly be called Super Bowl ads, because so many of them are released days, or, in the case of Axe body spray, even weeks ahead of the game.
Dannon has already released its complete “Full House” spot, rendering any big reveal during the game moot. The same is true for Kia, whose ad features Laurence Fishburne recreating his role as Morpheus from “The Matrix.” Jaguar has released its villain spot as well. Cheerios, advertising during the Super Bowl for the first time, posted its spot on Tuesday night; it stars the same multiracial fictional family that had attracted wide enthusiasm, but also some racists responses, online after they had appeared in previous commercial. These were the kinds of big splashes that used to be closely guarded—hinted at but not spoiled—and which gave advertising during the Super Bowl its unique dramatic flair.
“The surprise factor doesn’t matter as it once did,” Justin Osbourne, the general manager of brand and marketing communications at Volkswagen of America, told me. “Our goals are about how many total views we can get. To assume that that is going to happen within forty-eight hours is cutting yourself pretty short.”
Volkswagen helped pioneer the early-release model, in 2011, when, along with the ad agency Deutsch, the company got Lucasfilm to license the character Darth Vader—shrunken down to kid size—for a commercial titled “The Force,” which highlighted the features of the Passat sedan. Rather than keep it a secret and reveal it during the airtime for which the company had paid, it didn’t just tease the ad, but put the whole thing out early, leading to blanket coverage online, and nearly twenty million views before the game had even started. Volkswagen has been releasing its Super Bowl ads early ever since—the company posted a teaser for its 2014 ad a few weeks ago and, on Tuesday, released its completed commercial.
The idea is straightforward: the window to reach fans before the game is big; the one after it is very small—no more than a day or two, according to several people to whom I spoke—after which people stop caring about Super Bowl ads. Last year, the early release of Volkswagen’s ad, about a Midwesterner turned Jamaican-cool by his red Beetle, generated a different kind of attention, sparking criticism in some quarters that it was racially insensitive. Some suggested that the ad should be pulled—speaking as if the “real” Super Bowl ad existed in some future tense. VW ran it, unchanged, during the game.
Since 2011, more companies have released their ads early, diminishing the importance of Super Bowl airtime itself, at least to a point. More than a hundred million people watch the Super Bowl, many more than the number who watch ads online before the game. Many people will see an ad for the first time when it runs on television, on February 2nd. But, for others, especially the kinds of people likely to spend the game with a laptop or cell phone in front of them, ready to tweet about what they see, the ads might already be a bit stale. In this way, the ads themselves have become another kind of on-demand entertainment, watched when and as often as the viewer wants. Bathroom breaks have gotten much easier to schedule.
Yet no one has found a way to release the Super Bowl itself ahead of time. It remains one of American culture’s great live events, and there is something cheering in the idea of being confined in a moment with millions of other viewers. As more companies circumvent the constraints of time with built-up preview campaigns and the early release of full ads, there is something to be said, from a viewing perspective, and, perhaps, even from a business one, for those that continue to value the dramatic possibilities of surprise.
Over the past few years, Chrysler, working with several creative agencies, has embraced the liveness of the Super Bowl, as well as its role as a de-facto national holiday. Last year, it ran a pair of polished two-minute advertisements—one for Jeep, in which it celebrated, with the help of Oprah, the homecoming of American troops, and the other for Dodge Ram trucks, in which it celebrated, with the help of the late Paul Harvey, the strength and ingenuity of the American farmer. These were both appeals to a blue-collar, patriotic identity—in line with Chrysler’s “Imported from Detroit” campaigns from the two previous years, the first, in 2011, featuring Eminem cruising 8 Mile Road and the second, a year later, showcasing Clint Eastwood’s manly whisper as he observed that it was “halftime in America.”
These felt less like ads than like public-service announcements. That trick was aided by the fact that the ads appeared unexpectedly, without weeks of hype prodding us to get ready to be moved. Their form connected directly to their message: everyone saw them for the first time at the same moment; we were all in it together.
Yet in what, exactly? Each of these ads could put some dust in your eye but then leave you, a few moments later, not quite sure who had been doing the selling. Here, then, is the risk of débuting an ad during the game, without the so-called “seeding” of teasers or an early release: viewers might be compelled by what they see, but rather confused about what commercial transaction they’ve been prodded to consider. Be a farmer? Support the troops? Had they seen the ad beforehand, or read coverage about it in the press, they might be more likely to identify the brand with its message.
Still, the ad industry has cheered these campaigns. Advertising Age named Chrysler its 2012 marketer of the year, citing specific sales gains following its Super Bowl promotions. Last year, according to Crain’s, sales of Ram trucks “climbed three percent in February and twenty-six percent in March over 2012 in the two months after the Super Bowl spot was broadcast.” Perhaps Chrysler’s old-fashionedness will turn into a new fashion. (On Tuesday night, Billboard reported that Bob Dylan would appear in a Chrysler ad on Sunday, though the company would not confirm it.) Heinz Ketchup, for instance, advertising during the Super Bowl for the first time in sixteen years, has been very quiet about its plans. (Update: Until Thursday, when it released its ad early.) “It will be interesting to see if someone else tries it this year, after seeing the success of Chrysler,” Calkins said. “I bet they will.”
As for its plans this year, Chrysler is again being coy in the days leading up to the game. I e-mailed Rick Deneau, a Chrysler spokesman, to ask whether the company would run an ad this year, and whether it would be again be a surprise. To both questions, he responded, “There’s something to be said about being consistent.”
