Superbowl Marketing

I'm a baseball fan. I grew up watching the Mariners (don't get me started about recent years). As a 14 year-old, I remember waiting outside the King Dome for a peek at Alex Rodriguez. I played competitive softball all my life. The World Series should be a religious holiday, in my opinion.

But football, especially the Superbowl? Pssht. I always say, "I'm rooting for the commercials". In years past, I watched Michael Jackson and Coke commercials in 3D, seen the "Superbowl Shuffle" by the Bears, and been inundated by the barrage of Budweiser commercials with horses, and tree frogs.

This year, I was shocked!

With the economy in the proverbial tanker, marketers and advertisers have probed the "penny pincher" or out-of -work market to the full degree. I've never seen Monster or Careerbuilder.com have such an immediate audience! They each (mostly, careerbuilder.com) had imaginative ads, that made relative sense to their market. Ads now need to be much more creative than in the past.

Gone are the days when Michael Jordan can twirl a basketball on his finger in order to sell some Wheaties. This generation is different. We want to check things out before we will totally commit to a brand or product. That's why, I think I saw so many websites featured in the commercials this year: Monster.com, careerbuilder.com, nfl.com, nfl.com/play, and yes, cash4gold.com! Before you buy, you can check it out and choose whether to utilize their services/products or not.

This year, because the ad rates for Superbowl were so expensive, they offered a one-second ad. It was Miller High Life. It was a guy standing in front of a bunch of casks saying, "Miller High Life!" with a big grin. One second! That probably cost them somewhere around $300,000.

Most of the big ads were synergy propelled from new movies coming out of production studios owned by GE/NBC, which was disgusting. But when you have a mass market event, with hundreds of millions of viewers, and have the money, it can be worth your while.

I guarantee people without income or are laid-off will go to careerbuilder.com to see if they can save them from being called a dummy and screaming in the car before they go in to work. Although times are tough in the U.S. right now, there are places that thrive in times like these, and companies who can figure out how to connect in creative and sensitive ways, will flourish.

I still like those Clydesdale's Budweiser commercials, though. They always do such a good job...