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Super Bowl Sunday is just around the corner. That means good food, stiff drinks, a halftime show featuring Bad Bunny and some of the most expensive advertisements on television. (Courtesy of Scout)<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\tSuper Bowl Sunday is just around the corner. That means good food, stiff drinks, a halftime show featuring Bad Bunny and some of the most expensive advertisements on television. (Courtesy of Scout)<\/p>\n
One of the biggest sporting events of the year is upon us this weekend, with the Seattle Seahawks taking on the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XL.<\/p>\n
While the game and the halftime show<\/a> are spectacles in and of themselves, the commercials are nearly as famous \u2014 like the iconic Budweiser Clydesdales, for instance.<\/p>\n But are Super Bowl ads effective enough to warrant the huge price tags?<\/p>\n KERA\u2019s Ron Corning spoke with Dr. Yilun (Ivan) Li, University of Texas at Dallas marketing professor, about why brands still pay millions of dollars for an ad spot during the big game.<\/p>\n This interview has been edited for length and clarity: <\/p>\n I\u2019m sort of fascinated at this notion that the Super Bowl still remains the holy grail for advertising. What\u2019s at play here?<\/p>\n Well, the Super Bowl is the most watched television program in the United States and advertisers care about that massive reach. It\u2019s sort of one of the only monocultural events left where everyone is watching.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also predominantly watched live, so there\u2019s no fast-forwarding through the commercials. Does that put a particular pressure on advertisers then to produce a commercial that tells a story, has a cliffhanger, lures them in, leaves them with something\u2026 whether it\u2019s something to laugh at, something to cry at?<\/p>\n So, my colleagues over at University of Virginia\u2019s Darden School of Business, they\u2019ve actually looked into the trends that have been appearing in these Super Bowl ads. They found that the main trends are star power, so using celebrities that people recognize. Animals are actually a big one, too. Last year, Budweiser\u2019s ad was the highest rated on USA Today\u2019s ad meter. They also use nostalgia, these companies want to tug at your heartstrings and bring you back to the good old times, right?<\/p>\n I also know 40% of the ads we\u2019ll see will be from companies that have never advertised before. That means that 60% of these companies are brands that many of us already know of. I\u2019ve often wondered why Pepsi, for example, would spend the kind of money they would spend on a Super Bowl ad when everybody knows what Pepsi is? Is that a waste of money for them? What are they gaining from it?<\/p>\n This is a really interesting observation. Pepsi and Budweiser have historically always advertised at the Super Bowl and they don\u2019t need the brand recognition from the nearly 128 million people watching, right? A lot of these viewers already know what Pepsi and Budweiser is.<\/p>\n What research from Stanford University has suggested is that Super Bowl ads generate associations between brands and future sports viewership occasions. For example, a legacy brand that advertises at the Super Bowl today will see effects in post-Super Bowl sporting events. So, you [may] see increased consumption of Budweiser during March Madness and this is why these brands decide to advertise at the Super Bowl, because they want the consumer to form these associations between that brand and sporting events.<\/p>\n As far as Texas brands, it looks like we can expect a national commercial from Toyota at the Super Bowl and a local commercial from H-E-B. Anything you\u2019re looking forward to in particular based on what you\u2019ve seen preliminarily rolling out?<\/p>\n There is discussion about how a lot of tech firms have purchased one of these expensive advertisements for the Super Bowl and it\u2019s always interesting to me how tech firms try to reach the consumer, right? OpenAI is rumored to have purchased a Super Bowl ad. How do they create an advertisement that gets to the consumer? It remains to be seen but it\u2019s interesting to see how these tech firms or these newer brands will adapt to the advertising models that already exist for the Super Bowl.<\/p>\n Ron Corning is a host at KERA. Got a tip? Email Ron at rcorning@kera.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n