-By Jonathan Block-Verk
No corner of the media landscape compares with the noise and fanfare of the Super Bowl. And each year, as the biggest names in brand advertising lay down mountains of cash for multiple :30s in the big game, the biggest advertiser on Super Bowl Sunday is always the network that is broadcasting the game.
Last year, the biggest brand advertiser was Anheuser-Busch, with four-and-a-half minutes of airtime. NBC retained more than seven minutes of media at an estimated value of $42 million, according to TNS Media Intelligence.
Even as the stakes grow and the roster of advertisers change, one constant is that the wizards in charge of network promotion have a very, very big day each Super Bowl Sunday. Just as the Colts and the Saints rose to the challenge throughout the playoffs and seek to peak on Feb. 7 as they compete for the championship, the CBS promo team led by George Schweitzer and Ron Scalera are surely doing the same.
Ignoring, for a moment, that a football game is played on Super Bowl Sunday, let’s look back at Super Bowls past. In 2007, the Colts handed the Bears a defeat, but more people may remember the :10 CBS spot featuring Oprah Winfrey and David Letterman curled up on the couch as husband and wife watching the game together. The spot plugged The Late Show with David Letterman and shrewdly played off of the rumors that the two talk stars had an ongoing feud.
Last year, NBC pulled out all the stops in a cinematic spot pitting the cast of Heroes against a real NFL line in a football game. A perky Hayden Pannettiere gets pummeled by a huge linebacker, but quickly snaps her collarbone back into place with her Heroes powers. The top-notch production value and football tie-in make for a clever, funny and visually pleasing promo.
NBC also took advantage of Super Bowl XLIII to promote its other properties including Hulu, Bravo and USA—integrating each subset of the brand into either pre-game coverage or the big show. It will be interesting to see if CBS uses the valuable airtime to promote its other properties such as TV.com.
In 2008, Fox leveraged the game’s biggest star, Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, for an American Idol promo. In the spot, Roethlisberger is caught daydreaming about his aspiration to become a pop music singer as he sings Rupert Holmes' “(Escape) The Piña Colada Song" in a painful—yet endearing—pitch. The spot switches from Roethlisberger holding a football in the locker room before the big game to his fantasy American Idol performance. The tagline? “Even champions can dream big.”
Looking back to the (relatively) old school 1999 Super Bowl, Fox aggressively promoted the series premiere of Family Guy, which aired directly after Super Bowl XXXIII, with hilarious clips of Stewie and the gang customized for the game. How can you resist a cartoon family, when the core messages of its promo are excessive drinking, flatulence and the mispronunciation of ethnic foods? After more than ten years on the air, I’d say Fox’s initial investment paid off. Chicken fa-gi-tas anyone?
Over the years, some common themes across the best network promos and brand ads alike are humor, football and music—often with all three cleverly married together. More recently, the cross-platform call to action (“Check it out online,” “Text this to that”) has proliferated.
This year, try as I might, I’ve been unable to shake loose the inside scoop on CBS’s creative promo plans for this year’s game. So, this being the biggest day not just for advertising but for bookies as well, I’d be willing to wager that their work combines humor, football, music and something about an alternative platform media experience.
File your own predictions in the comments section online and check back on Monday morning for some serious Monday-morning quarterbacking of the promo portion of the game.
Jonathan Block-Verk is the president and chief executive officer of PromaxBDA, the leading organization for marketing and design professionals in the entertainment industry. Follow PromaxBDA on Twitter @PromaxBDA.