The Strategy Behind Super Bowl Ads

How brands succeed and fail in the big game, and what you can learn from them.

In the newest episode of the Brand Sauce Podcast, I go in-depth on the different strategies brands will use to stand out during advertising’s biggest and busiest night - the Super Bowl.

Some strategies work, some fail, but there’s a few key takeaways that brands of every size can learn from Super Bowl advertisers to help their own marketing efforts succeed short term and long term.

You can watch on YouTube, or listen through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts using this code to subscribe.

If you have a question for a future episode, please send it to me at brandsaucepod@gmail.com!

Episode transcript:

Welcome to Brand Sauce where we make strategic marketing simple and a little bit spicy.

I'm your host, Joe.

Let's get into it.

Super Bowl is coming up.

Advertising's biggest night.

I don't want to talk about the ads.

No, I'm not interested to talk about the ads.

There's gonna be plenty of places to talk about the ads, but instead, let's talk about why people advertise there.

And then for anyone who works on behalf of a small business or you're an entrepreneur, you have a side hustle, let's talk about the principles of what makes a Super Bowl ad work or not work so that you can apply that to your work that you do as well.

As always, if you have questions or follow ups, you can send me an email at BrandSaucePod, all one word, at gmail.com.

Leave a comment on TikTok, on Instagram, on YouTube.

I would love to chat.

Let's get into it.

Why do brands advertise in the Super Bowl?

I want you to imagine you're a carnival barker for a speed pitch booth.

Now imagine you are the only game on an entire block and people are walking by.

You probably don't need to do a lot to get people attention to make them come over to your booth.

Now I want you to imagine that you are one of 20 booths on the same block, but you're still the only carnival barker, so you don't need to work a little bit harder to get people's attention, but still you have a pretty good shot at getting people to come over, see what you're doing, and maybe give you a couple bucks.

Now I want you to imagine that that street in your carnival, this hypothetical carnival, is lined with 200 other booths, and they all have their own carnival barkers.

You could either decide, well, it's maybe not worth it to be here because there is so much competition, or I need to be here because this is the day where everyone in town is going to be coming through and everyone is ready to spend money.

So I better do what I can to make sure I grab as much of that attention as possible, even though it's going to be very steep competition.

This is a tortured metaphor, but this is essentially what the Super Bowl is.

In the United States, because I realize I have plenty of viewers across the world who may not be familiar with gridiron American football, this is the championship game and it's the biggest night of the season.

And this is sort of a tradition for a lot of Americans, a very high percentage of Americans, to get together with friends and family to have snacks and to watch the game.

The game itself is going to be three and a half, four hours, and there are plenty of ad breaks built in.

So people are going to see probably more than 50 commercials in the course of those three to four hours, and every brand is going to try to break through the noise and make sure that they are doing something that's going to be memorable.

So when someone is going to the store the day after, the week after, they remember that ad that they saw for that one brand, and they buy a purchase.

I don't remember what the exact stat is, but I think for the brands, especially ones in the first half of the game, if they have a successful ad that people connect with, that they see their short-term sales jump by as much as 20 or 30%.

Also, there are plenty of brands throughout the years who have had complete duds and gotten nothing out of a multimillion-dollar expenditure to advertise in the biggest night in live television.

The Super Bowl didn't always used to be this huge collection of ads where everyone knew I need to pay attention to what's going on, not just during the game if I care about football, but also in between because the ads are gonna show me something fun.

I think this phenomenon of Super Bowl advertising didn't really come to start to grow to what it is until maybe like the 1980s, when American football started to become more popular, as well as advertising became a little bit more interesting, sophisticated compared to what you think of, of like a 1950s style ad that might just show you here's a product, a name, and here's the benefits of it.

Throughout the 80s and the 90s, we started to see more brands investing more time and more money, driving up the media costs and turning that itself into a news story that people would talk about in the Super Bowl.

You'd see more brands understanding that there are going to be people who are not only watching the game but now understood that a big part of the game was going to be watching the advertising in between all of the action.

What that has turned into, especially now in our digital space, where everyone has a million different websites to go look at, they're scrolling through all the different feeds on social, the time before the Super Bowl, for months even, you will see little teasers and hints of what might be advertised during the big game.

Everyone's going to be watching it in the big game.

People will be talking on social during the game about the ads, and they're going to be breaking down all the ads the week or two afterwards.

It's whole entire little ecosystem, but still the principles of it, of what will break through and what will be successful for a brand, that does not change even though the mechanics of the night are a little bit different.

What you might see now in some of these teasers, I think the Sarah V example is a really interesting one, where Michael Cera was photographed walking around with bottles of lotion, and people are just like, is he okay?

Is this a Super Bowl thing?

Because this is like January and this is happening.

This year, in particular, there was one teaser that I was really disappointed to find out was a Super Bowl ad, and that was the Walton Goggins Google, the Walton Goggins goggle glasses thing, which I feel like I've been seeing on TikTok for at least two months.

I was really disappointed two weeks ago to find out that's actually going to be a part of a GoDaddy commercial on Sunday.

I thought it was just Walton Goggins who I understand to be a charming, nice guy, just being a little weird and goofy.

And I'm sad that it's not that.

I'm glad he's getting paid.

But I'm sad that this very long kind of weird, enjoyable, curious little, little weird thing he was doing was a part of a Super Bowl ad.

That's just kind of that's the reality of where we're in.

You're probably going to see a couple of different styles of ads both this Sunday, but also throughout all the different Super Bowls that you're going to see from here on out.

You can see a Super Bowl ad used as a campaign launch.

So that'll be something where there's going to be a whole new creative direction for a brand, and this is going to be the anchor.

They're launching it at the Super Bowl.

You're going to see that ad for six months or 12 months or 24 months, however successful it might be.

You might see a Super Bowl ad be a button on the end of a campaign.

So actually, before we started this podcast, I was talking with folks on TikTok about how the Tim Robinson and Sam Richardson Totino's ad that's kind of a riff on ET, that's actually the end of a campaign that's been running for several months.

I don't know how much longer they'll keep going with that particular campaign after this ad airs, but it was interesting to see that there's an ad that's been building to this moment.

You might see a Super Bowl ad be used as a payoff of a creative strategy.

So this year with Walton Goggins, that is a payoff to something that's been building sort of more organically over the last couple of months.

Or a couple of years ago, there's a big splash with Planters doing the van crashing off the cliff and killing the Planters' peanut.

And then the Super Bowl was him being reborn as basically baby Yoda.

So that was a payoff that had been established weeks and months before the actual game happened.

I'll get into this a little bit more, but here's the problem I see with a lot of Super Bowl ads is that you'll see a launch, you'll see some sort of a continuation of a campaign, but there's going to be a lot of ads that are just there for only the Super Bowl.

It'll be mostly a one-off.

You might see it a few more times in the weeks after, but for the most part, is it intended just to get attention that one night and get the kind of buzz and the PR follow through that you get from a Super Bowl ad in kind of this day and age.

So example of that is going to be the Hellman's ad that has Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan reprising their characters from When Harry Met Sally, a film that I don't know if anyone under the age of 30 is even aware of or cares about.

I guess I'm in the Target mayonnaise demographic, and that's a sad thing to say out loud and realize, but I think that's the reality.

I understand that film.

I have fond memories of that film.

And so Hellman is going to try to get me to buy some more mayonnaise because of the memories of that movie that I have.

You're going to see a lot of commercials in that sort of same vein where they're either borrowing something from pop culture or they're trying to pack as much like celebrity interest into a finite amount of time, but they're only paying those celebrities for that amount of time.

They're not paying to keep that campaign continuing over the next like six months, the amount of time you need to build up memory in people to actually have a successful brand.

Because keep in mind, like, yeah, you might have a successful ad in the Super Bowl, but you're competing against how many others in that same night.

If you're not repeating that over time, you're not building that consistency, you're not building that muscle memory for people, so to speak.

Did you actually do anything long-term for your brand, or did you just spend a lot of money to make yourself feel good?

I think that's going to be part of what we see on Sunday night, is some brands who have brand managers that just wanted to do something they feel good about, and it doesn't matter what happens long-term.

We'll see.

We'll see what happens.

A few other things to keep in mind as you're watching Super Bowl ads specifically, you're going to see a lot of playing with form.

So there are things like length.

Most ads are typically 30 seconds, or if there are 15-second versions, you might see some 15-second ads kind of squashed in, especially towards the end of the quarters or around the half.

There's usually a minute-long ad or sometimes even a 90-second ad that will run right before half-time.

You'll also see things that are maybe, like I said, packed with celebrities or referencing a pop culture thing that may not be directly related to the brand, but the brand is betting that you're going to recognize that other thing and then watch the ad instead of just like going to get more snacks before the game starts over again.

You'll probably see maybe some Lo-Fi production.

So think of some of the crypto ads from a couple of years ago that just looked like a screen saver, like an old DVD screen saver bouncing around.

There have been ads that have done things like that that have been very successful and very interesting.

There's been slight level up of Lo-Fi.

So think of the Will Ferrell old Milwaukee ads, ads that I love, by the way, and mainly only ran during the Super Bowl.

But those got a ton of extra legs on YouTube and other websites because they were so enjoyable and legitimately funny, unlike a lot of the ads that aired during the Super Bowl.

Ah, I used to do a little hand fishing here in the Mississippi.

I haven't got any catfish yet, but I did catch this little piece of America.

Old Milwaukee.

Yeah, I know you remember a Davenport.

I sure do.

In fact, when are you going to try yourself on?

Well, I go look for some more.

You'll also see a lot of very high production value.

So, I'll go back.

Low concept and high concept.

This is something that...

This is a terminology that comes from the world of entertainment and movie making.

A low concept idea, that's two people talking in a diner about their feelings.

A high concept idea, that is two people who are battling aliens who traveled through time.

There's a giant spaceship blowing up New York City or something like that.

Low concept, high concept.

You're going to see a lot of high concept ads that have a lot of computer graphics, a lot of celebrities packed in, a lot of action, a lot of movement to try to make sure that they are grabbing people's attention and getting that brand message through.

And then you're going to see other ads that take the more lo-fi approach to see if they can't with a little bit of quiet or something that just stops and pumps the brakes on the momentum of the evening to get people to pay attention to.

A slightly more recent example of that would be the Oatley ad from a couple of years ago where the CEO is just playing a piano in a field.

A lot of different ways that brands might approach trying to break through all of that noise that's happening and grab some attention from people as they're watching the game.

So how does someone who works in this industry and thinks about not only the creative itself of the ad, but the strategy behind the campaign, how do they judge and think about different Super Bowl commercials?

A clip that I used a lot last year on social to kind of coach people on how to watch Super Bowl is I pulled a clip from Mad Men and Don Draper pushing back on an ad from his creative team who were trying to get Joe Namath in an ad for Samsonite Suitcases.

And he said, Celebrity endorsements are lazy.

The secret to victory on the road is Samsonite.

I carry it because it's tough.

And no matter what comes at me, I know I'm protected.

As they fall, the competitors will bust open clothing flying up.

Touchdown Samsonite.

I got it, honey.

You sure do, Joe.

Samsonite.

It's tough.

Endorsements are lazy.

And that is true.

I think celebrity endorsements in the Super Bowl are lazy because it's a great way to maybe grab a little bit of attention, but you have to bridge so much distance between here's a celebrity over to the brand and what that means and make sure that people are thinking of the brand at the end of the commercial and not the celebrity.

It's a really hard thing to do, and most brands don't do it well.

You'll still see a lot because it may get a little bit of attention, it may get a little bit of press after the fact, but for a short term or a long term advertising strategy, I'm not sure it's the smartest way to go.

Outside of that, totally fair when you're watching these ads and commercials.

First and foremost, did it make you laugh or did it make you emotional?

Did it make you think?

That's a sign of success, especially when it comes to humor.

A lot of these ads try to be funny and do not hit the mark, not even close.

Some ads try to be a little bit more emotional.

There was one particular Super Bowl like three or four years ago where there were a ton of insurance ads, and there was one in particular about a little kid like not being able to grow up, and it was like, it was a weird ad to watch.

It was emotional and it was successful in that, but people are just like, why?

Why did you put this into my living room?

My kids haven't gone to sleep yet.

Why would you put that onto our screens?

If you have an emotional reaction to an ad, that's probably a good thing.

Usually a good thing.

Sometimes it's a good thing.

Next, from that first level down, did it succeed in getting the type of emotional reaction that it wanted to get from the audience?

Next down, think about, is there a clear usage occasion presented in this ad for the brand?

Here's an example from maybe 15 years ago.

There was a website, this was back in the.com era.

There's a website called outpost.com.

And their business model was, this is a place, this was kind of before Amazon was a big thing or Newegg was a place.

This was a website you go to buy computer components or computer peripherals, computer pieces, parts, full computers.

It doesn't exist anymore.

It didn't last long after this ad.

And what their ad was, was saying, hey, we're going to try to get your attention.

So what we're going to do is we're going to put some gerbils in a cannon, and we're going to launch them at a bullseye, paint it onto a wall.

And if you are mad about this commercial, come to our website and tell us so.

So in some ways, kind of an interesting way to try to maybe game a little bit of traffic and capture some contacts so they can do some re-marketing off of it, as well as maybe probably with a surge in traffic, help their SEO ratings.

But on the other hand, your entire commercial is not about how you have everything you need for a home computer, or we got better prices somewhere else, or we got fast shipping, or we got more selection than anyone else.

It was about, look at these animals being put into harm's way, and we're going to put a humor spin on it, and we're just trying to make you have a reaction.

No clear use education demonstrated in that particular ad.

Any ad where you can't tell what it's an ad for until the payoff, that's going to be an ad that maybe is not the most successful, unless everything that you're seeing throughout is a logical build.

There was one a couple, maybe 10 years ago now, it was, I think, I want to say it was a Mountain Dew ad, but it was like a monkey baby monster thing.

There was a monkey and a baby and something else.

It was all one little creature, and it was just running around an apartment for 30 seconds.

And it was an ad for Mountain Dew, but no one remembered it was Mountain Dew because it's about this random little horrific CGI thing bouncing around the screen for 30 seconds.

Not a great ad.

Sure, maybe it got some attention, but it didn't tell you anything about the product, what it was, how are you supposed to use it.

It did maybe a little bit gear towards, this is our audience.

If you like this CGI horror running all over the place, maybe you'll like Mountain Dew.

The thing is, I don't even remember if it was for Mountain Dew.

That's how ineffective an ad was.

Granted, it was 10 years ago, and I'm a little bit old, and maybe all the neurons aren't firing anymore, but still not the best possible example.

Did you get an emotional reaction?

Is there a clear use education demonstrating the ad?

Next, think about is this distinct?

Now, what that means is outside of the end card, where you have the brand or you have the product on screen, would it be easy for you to confuse that brand with a category competitor?

I would argue that a lot of Pepsi ads and a lot of Coke ads, aside from the colors used, are maybe a little interchangeable, especially when you look at social.

A while back, I did a little bit on Pepsi and Coke and Dr.

Pepper.

When Dr.

Pepper in the US became the second most popular soft drink, I thought that was interesting because Dr.

Pepper, I think, functionally, in the way it tastes, compared to the other sodas, is actually a little bit different.

And I've made the argument that a lot of Pepsi and Coke ads, especially Pepsi ads, can be confused for Coke ads, were it not the Pepsi can and the Pepsi logo in the actual piece of advertising collateral.

Ask yourself, is it distinct?

And if you want to show off to your friends or maybe probably just get them annoyed, you'll be like, yeah, that ad was okay, but I don't think it's actually distinct from the category of competitors.

You could easily confuse that with someone else.

That's a true way to think about an ad.

It's also a way to be kind of annoying, unfortunately.

But you know what?

If you work in advertising marketing like I do, you don't care about being annoying or a little pompous.

It's actually fine.

It's not fine.

I'm making a joke, but it's fine.

Okay, next.

Semi-related to the distinction and the emotional reaction, is the ad itself memorable because of the ad, or is the ad memorable because it tells you something about the product?

I recently talked about the Apple 1984 ad that was back in 1984 promoting the Macintosh.

And I think that is an incredible piece of filmmaking.

It was directed by Sir Ridley Scott, Alien, House of Gucci, Blade Runner, Napoleon, Gladiator, Gladiator 2.

A lot of classic films, a really accomplished filmmaker, and he made an incredible 60-second spot.

But I would argue that 1984 is good at getting attention, but maybe wasn't a very good ad for the Macintosh, because it does kind of talk about the computer at the end of the ad, but everything within that ad could be an ad for basically any product or any category, because it's so far removed from what a person's computer can do or how it fits into someone's life.

I don't think the thread's actually connected too well.

There's a great bit in the Steve Jobs biopic, not the one with Ashton Kutcher, the one with Michael Fossbender, where Steve Jobs and Scully, Jake Scully, Jim Scully, Jeff Daniels.

They're arguing before the launch of the next computer.

And what Jeff Daniels says is that people loved the ad, but they only talked about the ad.

They didn't talk about the Macintosh.

They didn't talk about the Apple.

You agreed with the board.

I understood the board's concerns, but I certainly did not try to-

The board's concerns that we didn't show the product?

Among other things.

But my question was-

What other things?

Honestly, I'm just asking because I'm curious.

You said among other things.

Among other things, it was set in a dystopian galaxy.

It took place on a planet where we don't live.

It was dark and the opposite of our brand.

And we didn't show the product.

People talked about the ad, but most of them didn't know what we were selling.

And I think that line is incredibly true.

Aaron Sorkin was cooking when he wrote that bit of dialogue.

He cooks when he writes a lot of dialogue.

He was cooking with that one in particular.

That ad is very memorable.

It's very distinct, but it's not very closely related with the product.

Another similar one would be that outpost.com example I just shared where it's distinct, it's memorable, but it's not at all related to the product itself.

Those are a lot of ways that you can effectively kind of think about an ad and judge an ad the way that someone who works in advertising and marketing would.

Now, if you are not able to afford a Super Bowl ad for the brand or product you work on behalf of, or you're an entrepreneur, you have a side hustle, or you're starting a small business, you're not going to get in the Super Bowl.

But what are some of the key concepts of what makes an ad work or not work in that platform that you can take with you and use for whatever next campaign you're going to be doing?

For any piece of advertising collateral, you want to make sure that what you're doing has some amount of breakthrough.

Is it going to be noticeable?

Are people going to stop and look at it when they're scrolling through their feeds or when they're watching a show and the ad break comes on and they know it's time to go get a glass of water or go to the restroom while that free roll pays through that they can't skip?

Is there something in it that's going to make them stop?

You can't afford a celebrity, but can you do something interesting?

Can you start with a provocative kind of question, the way that you see so many people within social, talk about a good hook?

Do you have a good hook in your commercial?

Something's going to make people want to see how it plays out.

Next, is it distinct?

Is it going to be noticeable, first of all, but is it going to be distinguishable from other similar products that you are in competition against?

If your ad or piece of collateral is going to be easily confused with your competitor, you need to go back to the drawing board and think through, how can we make this a little bit more distinct and ownable to us and us alone so that we're not accidentally promoting one of our competitors with our ad?

Because this is very, very true.

People will watch a lot of commercials and they'll see a lot of ads.

We see literally, I think, hundreds of ad impressions a day throughout just like walking through town, TV, radio, social, digital, pre-roll set.

We see things so often.

And if something is not distinct and we don't see it that often, it's going to be very easy for us to confuse it with a category competitor.

So is it breakthrough?

Is it distinct?

Is it relevant?

This goes back to the usage occasion.

Is the ad that you were putting out there, that message that you're putting out there, is it going to be important to people or relevant to people who are seeing it?

Instead of talking about, here's our product, it works really well, we're very proud of it.

People don't care about it when they're talking about itself.

You instead need to say, here's our brand and product.

Actually, don't even start there.

You start, we know what your day is like.

You go through this, you have to deal with this, you have to deal with that, this is frustrating.

Hey, there's a way you don't have to deal with that anymore.

Our product fits in there.

Actually, a great example of this is kind of the genre of bad infomercials that we always associate with the late 80s, early 90s, of like, there has to be a better way, and someone falling with a giant sack of bowls in the kitchen or something like that.

Those ads are actually incredibly effective because they very clearly demonstrate, here is a challenge in someone's life, and now, here's the solution that we have and how it's going to fit in.

And then we can talk about the product benefits of like, oh, it works so well here, we're going to send you two, it's going to be a great value.

You can't start with those things because people are not going to care.

You can't talk about yourself.

You can't be a dog and sniff your own butt, okay?

You got to sniff the other dog's butt.

That's how you make a dialogue.

Is that what dogs do?

I don't have a dog currently.

Our kid wants a dog very badly.

So maybe I'll learn more about this, and I can make this metaphor a little tighter, but we might cut that, we might not.

This podcast is still early days.

There may not be a lot of people to get annoyed at me for that, or think I'm too weird, or turn people off.

So maybe we'll just leave it at.

Okay.

Breakthrough.

Distinct.

Relevant.

If you're relevant and distinct in your breakthrough, hopefully you should be memorable too.

Can people remember your brand or product?

Is there some sort of earworm in there?

Another lost art in advertising is the loss of the jingle.

A Mentos ad.

In like the late 80s, early 90s, it would be a 30 second song.

That'd be very common in a lot of commercials because songs are memorable.

You got a little jingle or a little stinger.

Now, in ads, you'll get just like the ba-da-ba-ba-ba.

But for everyone who just heard me say that, you know exactly what brand that's associated with, because that musical cue is a very strong earworm.

It's very memorable.

And if you are memorable in that way, and you've done everything else, you've made sure you are distinct and made sure you're relevant.

When someone is in a position where they are going to maybe purchase from the category, they're thinking about purchasing from the category that you're within, it'll be easier for them to remember you and give you a better chance of succeeding at that point of decision that they make to either buy or not buy from you or from someone else or buy from the category at all.

And then lastly, for any brand you want to be repeatable, can you tell that message over and over and over again?

Can you use that same creative, that same idea over time so that people can internalize it and recognize it and come to that conclusion organically when they are in the decision space of buying from a category?

Will they remember enough of your ad and enough of your marketing to choose you versus choosing a competitor?

So, Super Bowl is a couple days away.

I'm sort of interested to see what ads are going to be there.

There's one or two I've seen already that maybe laugh, and I'm sure a lot of them I'm just going to not want to think about ever again.

The game itself, we'll see.

I'm not holding out hope for a very exciting game, but maybe the ads will be all right.

But keep in mind, one, you can talk about ads in a smart, clever way that's maybe going to impress your friends or maybe annoy them.

I don't know.

But it's fun to talk about them beyond, I liked this, I didn't like that.

Get into not only why you like something, but what do you think it's going to do for the business?

That's an interesting way to talk about it, at least for me, someone who works in marketing and thinks about this stuff all the time.

And lastly, if you are a part of a smaller business or a medium-sized business or a startup that doesn't have Super Bowl style revenue and Super Bowl style media budget, I want you to think about some of those things that help those brands not only succeed on the night of the game, but also succeed over time, because you can have a winning campaign without being there on that big Sunday night.

My voice is going, so we're gonna wrap this one up, but thanks for listening, as always.

If you have any questions, please feel free to send me an email to brandsaucepod at gmail.com, all one word.

I try to put these out every two weeks.

You can find me on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram.

Wherever social stuff is found, I'm probably there.

Thanks, as always, for listening.

Keep your marketing a little spicy to keep it interesting.

I'm your host, Joe.

Thanks so much for joining.

We'll talk to you next time.