Marketers Open New Venues for Super Bowl Ads
Marketers plan to make hay with the big bucks spent on each Super Bowl ad this Sunday by extending the creative well beyond Game Day. With spots costing an average $2.4 million, plans call for spreading the message across multiple channels, including iPods and cell phones.
Burger King is making content from its 60-second spot available to Sprint subscribers who have video capabilities on their cell phones. The content will show exclusive behind-the-scenes footage of the making of the ad. The spot introduces the Whopperettes, a group of young women who represent all the ingredients in a Whopper. The troupe sings, dances and swims in scenes reminiscent of the Ziegfeld Follies. Sprint subscribers will receive a text message within 30 minutes of the spot airing, inviting them to view the content. The content is also featured on the “coming soon” channel on Sprint cell phones.
The ad will also appear on Whopperettes.com—launched simultaneously with the airing of the Super Bowl spot. Burger King, which hasn’t run a spot during a Super Bowl game in 11 years, will further extend the creative to packaging, POS materials and in-theater ads this month. The Whopperettes will make in-restaurant appearances.
“It’s about making something big even bigger and maximizing the exposure and extending it beyond just 60 seconds,” said Burger King spokesperson Adrienne Hayes.
Sprint, the sponsor of the halftime show, which features The Rolling Stones, is using its phones to tout its services to subscribers. The company will let subscribers vote for their favorite Rolling Stones song and Sprint ad.
Unilever’s Degree Deodorant will air an action-oriented 30-second spot called Stunt Men. The ad, set in a town full of stunt men, shows guys busting through the mirrors on their bathroom medicine cabinets to get to their Degree deodorant and jumping on the trunks of taxicabs to catch a ride. The ad, along with a 60-second “director’s cut” will be posted on guy-oriented sites like gaming site Ign.com and at Degreedeodorant.com for online viewing, or to may be downloaded to an iPod. An email blast to 250,000 Degree users on Monday alerted consumers to the Web and downloadable versions of the Super Bowl commercial.
Degree, which ran an ad during last year’s Super Bowl for the first time, made that ad available online and drove viewers to the site via banner ads. But this year, the company wanted to extend the creative even further.
“Guys are consuming media in many different ways, and making great work available in various mediums is important if you want to get your message out,” said Kevin George, VP-general manger of Unilever deodorants.
Anheuser-Busch, which runs multiple ads during the game, will post its ads on Budweiser.com that can be downloaded to video iPods. The ads will run for a total of five minutes.
The NFL Network channel, which will air its own 60-second commercial paying tribute to the players, fans and families, will also air the Super Bowl spots on various networks after the game.
