An Analysis of Super Bowl Commercials

Super Bowl Sunday is an important day not only for the NFL, but also for advertisers. Considering that over one-hundred million viewers watch the annual championship game, it’s consequently one of the most highly sought events for advertisers. Giving companies the opportunity to immense exposure comes at a cost, however. Not only does creativity needs to be at its peak, but so do budgets. The cost to air an ad is about $5 million per thirty seconds, which doesn’t include the cost of production and any other required marketing activities. Although this Super Bowl LI has proven to be a lackluster year with advertisements, there were a few noteworthy commercials that exhibited a strong understanding of consumer behavior.

Every parent's biggest fear is losing their child, and Nationwide knows that. The well known car insurance company aired their annual super bowl commercial that left viewers feeling scared for their children. Nationwide uses a scare tactic to leave its viewers feeling as if they don’t have this car insurance their children will die.

In a commercial shown this past Sunday during the super bowl featured what is described as a political statement. Although, the owner of the company 84 Lumber which produced this commercial is saying otherwise. Making the statement “My intent was to show that through struggles we will do anything we possibly can to make the world a better place for our children,” 84 Lumber’s CEO Maggie Hardy Magerko said. While she had said, many people are of course taking to social media to express either love or hate towards the company. Some even going as far as to cancel orders with 84 Lumber, because of the commercial. Nonetheless, the commercial aired during the super bowl but was only 90 seconds long and ended

This was my least favorite as well as effective commercial for me from this year’s Super Bowl ads. It starts off with a bunch of body builders running led by Danica Patrick, the race car driver who’s wearing a black and neon green top and shorts muscle suit running towards a spray tan salon. She knocks on the window of the salon and the ad ends with the punch line, “it’s go time.”

Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company’s Super Bowl advertisement, “#makesafehappen” released on February 1st, 2015, has received negative attention because of its morbid yet practical depiction of a young boy who has passed away due to a “preventable accident” before experiencing the life in which a teen or young adult would otherwise. The advertisement also uses the death of a young child to appeal to parents; especially the mothers, largely using pathos to raise awareness of deadly accidents which could otherwise be preventable. Logos and ethos, although weak in this advertisement, also raises awareness on preventing avoidable accidents.

Every parent's biggest fear is losing their child, and Nationwide knows that. The popular car insurance company aired their annual super bowl commercial that left viewers feeling as if they had lost a child as well. Nationwide puts in place a scare tactic to leave its viewers fearing that if they don’t purchase this car insurance their children will die too. Advertisers in general use manipulating tactics such as fear, to scare certain groups into buying their products.

During the Superbowl people usually enjoy the some what famous commercials. Some are very good and others are not that good. This year's Superbowl contained both the good commercials and the not so good commercials. The two Superbowl commercials that were very entertaining was the Skittles commercial and the Febreze commercial. Both were very entertaining because they wanted to catch the audience's eye on how funny they were plus to get people to buy their products. Both of these commercials were very entertaining. But, which one was a better commercial?

The Superbowl is the perfect time for businesses to advertise their product. There are over 100 million people who watch the Superbowl yearly which means most of those 100 million will watch their commercial. Because of all the businesses out there along with movie producers that want their movie to be put in the big event, it is quite hard to get a commercial on the Superbowl. It costs businesses quite a bit of money to do so and that is why it's almost a war between companies. Superbowl commercials have become a tradition of the Superbowl every year because fans like watching the commercials, and the businesses like getting money out of them.

A Superbowl commercial I thought was good was a Mountain Dew Kick Starter commercial. They made it very entertaining to watch. In the commercial they used a strange made up animal called a "puppy, monkey, baby." They combined 3 things that people liked, or thought was cute. They took all "three awesome things combined" and made it one. The puppy,monkey, baby just said it's name through out the entire commercial.

The most recent sports advertisement I have seen and paid attention were the Pepsi, ‘Hyped for Halftime. The only reason these billboards stuck with me is because there was a billboard everywhere you turned in downtown Phoenix for several weeks leading up to the Super Bowl. Otherwise, I do not watch much in the way of advertisements.

The Superbowl Commercial I thought was good was the one with Antman and the Hulk. In this commercial Antman had a mini coke and the Hulk was chasing Antman for it. They both stopped on a buildings roof and the Hulk told Antman that he wanted it. Antman gave the mini coke to the Hulk and he could not get it open because his fingers were to big. Antman jumped onto the coke and opened it for him.

Some people say the best part about the super bowl is the commercials, here are some compared to each other. The first commercial is called the 'Honda Yearbook'. In this commercial, it shows old pictures of celebrities as young adults. They all tell you something to do that is related to chasing your dreams. For example, Jimmy Kimmel says, "If you want to play the clarinet, maybe don't dress like this, but play the clarinet." In the picture, Jimmy was in his band uniform from high school holding a clarinet. Tina Fey started making fun of a red rose that she was holding in her picture. The people who created this commercial were trying to persuade you to chase your dreams by having celebrities as the main characters to catch someone's attention.

On Sunday, February 5, 2017 Super Bowl LI was played by the Atlanta Falcons and the New England Patriots. At half time, the score was 3-21 with the Atlanta Falcons in the lead. By the end of the game, the New England Patriots came back by 25 points plus 6 more in overtime, winning the Super Bowl LI 34-28. This was the first Super Bowl for anyone to come back from more than a ten point deficit and also the first Super Bowl to go into overtime. According to Wikipedia, “…each league was redesignated as a "conference", and the game has since been played between the conference champions to determine the NFL's league champion.” The Super Bowl was first played in 1967. Some Americans even say that the Super Bowl is an unofficial American holiday. The Super Bowl is the second largest United States food consumption day falling right under Thanksgiving. In 2015, the Super Bowl XLIX became the most watched television program in history. The average came in at 114.4 million viewers. International Business Time states,

I have completed my research regarding the advisement of our clients investing in super bowl commercials, and my results are conclusive. I took one main statistic into account by calculating the number of viewers per ad dollar spent and paired that with the overall price of the ad. I have also come up with a cheaper alternative investment for your consideration that will be aimed towards our middle market to small clients.

The consumers are convinced that the product being “advertised” is of high quality that is being aired during the Super Bowl is because consumers assume companies spending high dollars on commercial during Super Bowl relates to high quality product and seller with that are unable to spend the money during Super Bowl must have low or lower quality product. I do believe the super bowl ads for big name brands might not show an impact on sales but it keeps the brand name in top of our minds when a consumer are shopping for a product or service. Also, the consumer’s behavior towards smaller firms advertising during Super Bowl could interpret the high cost ads messages as they want to gain market shares through high quality product with low prices