Super Bowl ad update

[MUSIC] Hello, my name is EJ Schultz, Assistant Managing Editor for ATH. And welcome to the latest edition of the Marketers Brief Podcast. On today's episode, we are going to be talking about the Super Bowl. The big game is about a week away or a little bit more, depending on when you're listening to this podcast. And things are starting to come into view. On today's episode, I'm happy to be joined by Janine Pogey, who is our lead Super Bowl reporter at ATH, as well as Jessica Koal, who has done plenty of Super Bowl reporting herself. >> Hello, hey EJ, hi Jessica. >> It feels like we were just doing this, but here we are, another Super Bowl. And like everything this year, the game is obviously severely impacted by COVID. So I want to start out by taking sort of a high level view. In terms of what we know so far, what we think is going to happen, how the pandemic has affected things so far. Can you set the stage for us? >> Yeah, well, the big news this week is that CBS announced it is. And I'm using air quotes here. Virtually sold out of commercial inventory in the game. They like to say virtual it is a phrase that they have used in the past. Essentially meaning if you have money and are giving them a good offer, there's always room for you, but pretty much there are no spots left in the game. So that's where we stand, you know, as of what's today Wednesday at 12 o'clock when we're taping this. So, you know, despite COVID challenges, it still seems CBS was on track pacing way in similar years. But of course, the game is going to look a bit different with the actual Super Bowl commercials. You know, as you reported, as Jessica's reported, some of the big brands that we are used to singing in the game, Budweiser, Coke, Pepsi, Hyundai, Audi, and some others won't be in the Super Bowl this year. And they'll be replaced by a whole batch of first-time Super Bowl advertisers, including Huggies, Scots, Miracle, Grow, Room, Chipotle. So some big brands, some newer brands that will be in the game for the first time. So it's poised to look a whole lot different this year. So we're going to have mayonnaise and diapers, but no soda. Essentially is what you're telling us. Pretty much that looks like the way things are shaping up. Dippers is certainly the interesting one. Do you, I mean, the categories themselves? I mean, I know every brand has their own reasons for sitting things out. I've done so reporting on this. Budweiser, you know, obviously, Aniser Bush is going to still be having their normal slate of ads about four minutes or maybe even more. They're going to be promoting Bud Light, Michelobaltra, which are two bigger brands than Budweiser. The first time in like 37 years I haven't run an ad for Budweiser. They got a lot of attention when they announced this earlier this week. What they've done is tried to say we're going to spend that money instead on COVID vaccine awareness in partnership with the ad council. So in a sense, I guess if you believe them, they're still going to spend the money, but they're going to bundle it into a more of a charitable effort. Are we seeing anything else along those lines? You guys have noticed like, you know, obviously, brands have been a lot more cognizant about striking the right tone when it comes to the pandemic. Well, one of the first time advertisers this year is DoorDash. And their ad features characters from Sesame Street as well as David Diggs. But the Sesame Workshop partnership they're promoting with, I believe it's free delivery on Super Bowl Sunday and the day after Super Bowl Sunday. And a donation for every order placed goes to Sesame Workshop. So there's something, there's some charitable donation part of it. Chipotle also has a charitable donation tied to its delivery orders on Super Bowl Sunday. So you're seeing tie-ins that maybe would have existed before the year that was 2020, but definitely take on more prominence now. Yeah, one of the other newcomers to the game is indeed the job search site. They are coming in for the first time and they are going to strike a more serious tone among of what I'm expecting will be a sea of a lot of humor and lightheartedness talking about the millions of Americans that lost their jobs this year, you know, because of COVID. So I think that one will be an interesting one to look at in terms of the messaging and their goal essentially is to bring some hope to job seekers this year and they're doing a bunch of different initiatives around how they're doing that. I guess if you're a brand, I mean, this is a question, you know, we've been reporting on it not just with the Super Bowl, but since the pandemic struck us, do you use your ad? I mean, I guess you are people watching TV? Are they watching the Super Bowl to escape reality, which is, you know, what we've all been living with? So do you just purposely avoid COVID entirely? Do you not show people in masks? Do you just try to use humor and give people what they would always expect to the Super Bowl? Or does that risk looking a little bit toned off? I think we're going to see different opinions on that when we see the ads, right? My one concern with humor is it's super hard to do. And if you think back historically, like let's go back like 10 years to some of the ads that were considered at the time the funniest, a whole bunch of them would never be allowed to run it now. What we consider to appropriate or allowed has greatly changed and even more so over the past year. So humor in itself is like really tricky to do and do right and well without like alienating people or angering a whole group of people. So I'm wondering how many of these will truly be funny or sort of just be in that like neutral area where they don't really stand out and they're just kind of all look the same with some lighthearted jokes. So what have we seen so far, Jenny? I know you've been keeping our post and I would point everyone to adh.com. We have a continuously updated post on all the ads that have been released so far. And we're not talking about teasers. We're talking about the actual Super Bowl ads, which I think they're only four out so far, which I suspect is behind the usual pace. And those are from room, which is an online car marketplace, McClub Ultra, McCurry, which, Janine, I'll let you explain what that is and Tripoli. Yeah, I'm not blown away so far by anything that we've seen. You're right, it does seem like and I don't have the specific numbers on this, but it is definitely fewer brands at this point that have pre-released their spots. I'm wondering if that's a PR strategy we're going to see. I assume next week we'll definitely see more, but I'm wondering if we're going to see more holds back into the game itself, but that remains to be seen. The ones that we have seen so far, I think fall into the category that I was kind of talking about where it's, you know, they're fine, their ads, but there's nothing that sort of stands out in a very specific way. The McCurry one, they're a first-time advertiser. They are an e-commerce platform for buying and selling goods, so during the pandemic, they saw an uptick in people looking to declutter their homes. So, you know, people who are getting rid of stuff, making new office spaces for themselves, playrooms for children and all of that stuff, so they came into the Super Bowl this year to kind of promote that messaging. I feel like usually by now we will have done post to the Super Bowl at our site that is just like blowing things away when it comes to traffic and everyone watching it, and unless I've missed something, I haven't seen that yet. You know, whether it's in previous years, you know, Budweiser releasing their cute little puppy ads or, you know, some crazy celebrity stunt thing that comes out. I mean, it's all, should I say bland? Is that overstating it? I completely agree. I think that's actually the perfect word for it. Nothing is bad. It's just bland. I think a lot of brands are playing it pretty safe, and especially if you think about some of the ads that got released early last year, hopefully we don't have a tragedy like we had last year right before the Super Bowl, but remember any ad with a helicopter last year got changed after the death of Kobe Bryant and many others in the helicopter crash, and those ads had already been out, right, where the teasers had been out or the full ads had been out, so maybe they took a lesson from that, and they're not being as risky in the advertising or in how they released the advertising. I think Jessica has like a really good point there, and even if they do take risks in the Super Bowl commercials, I am actually wondering if the PR strategy changes this year because of that. There's so much in the last year that changes on a daily basis that to put out a spot two weeks ahead of the Super Bowl, anything could change really from now until the Super Bowl. So you don't necessarily want to jump the gun and go out there early with some of this, so maybe we will see like the Friday before the game, all of a sudden, and a lot of these drop, but I think Jessica makes a good point about playing it safe and kind of taking those precautions, especially some of the ones that we saw last year that came out ahead of time, even with their teasers, like Mr. Peanut, so that maybe we're gonna already live that again this year. Right, I mean, and we knew our brands knew this year, you know, we have the political, we have a, it's a presidential election year, we had the inauguration, the unguessed thing that was not so predictable or maybe it was depending on who you talked to, was the capital riots, and I'm pretty certain that that changed some timelines for some brands, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, we heard from a lot of PR reps too in the days leading up to the inauguration that brands were holding back until to get out of the inauguration, just in case anything were to happen, and they didn't want to be a part of the news cycle around that, which is why you saw a couple of brands announce things this week instead, and I expect, you know, that was definitely played a big factor in plans this year. Janine, in terms of the ratings expectations, I mean, nothing has really changed there, has it? I mean, we're still expecting the what, 100 million type viewer, I think the advertisers probably lucked out with the matchup, I mean, highly intriguing, Tom Brady is back, and that you have kind of the all-time quarterback, against the new guy Patrick Mahomes, there's a lot of intriguing storylines with the game itself, which is only going to fuel viewership. Of course, obviously, unknown is, it won't be as many Super Bowl parties, does that, you know, how does that change ratings? I think that could actually work a little bit in brands favor in particular. I don't necessarily think that we're going to see a massive spike in ratings, but what I do think is, there'll be more attention actually paid to the ads because there aren't Super Bowl parties, and because people aren't watching in bars where the sound is off, you know, I think people will be more inclined if they're sitting on their couch with just their families to actually pay attention to the ads more so than if they're at a noisy party or a noisy bar. I agree, and I think Huggies is a perfect example of an advertiser that's going to benefit from that kind of audience. There are plenty of people who are home with their new babies, whether they were pandemic babies, or babies who were born before the pandemic, and now you're not going anywhere because you have a young kid, so buy some Huggies, make some food with mayonnaise. There are some first-time advertisers who seem to be, you know, hitting it at the right time for an audience that's paying attention. Yeah, and from a creative perspective, I wonder if agencies are anticipating that. I know, in the past, there's a huge emphasis on let's get the big visual, crazy-looking things because they recognize that a lot of people might not have, you know, and might not be able to actually hear the ads necessarily depending on where you're watching from. There could be a lot more people like you saying, just picking up more subtle cues as they're watching ads, and maybe it lends itself for a more emotional kind of quieter ad potentially. In terms of the ad productions themselves, what have you guys heard in terms of the complications? I talked with Deborah Wall today, the Global Chief Marketing Officer General Motors, and she acknowledged, you know, GM, we'll be reporting this today, is going to be doing two superbloods, one for their corporate brand, and one for Cadillac, both around their electric vehicle ambitions. She acknowledged that, you know, they were sort of lucky that they got their ad shoot-in before things really got bad and Los Angeles with COVID, and she had told, she told me that, you know, they talked to other brands that really had a scramble as a result of that. Have you guys heard similar stories, or do you think things have been able to kind of proceed as normal? I haven't heard any specific like crises, but what, you know, keeps coming up is sort of like the generic, you know, complications and things take longer, you know, doing the editing process and approval process via Zoom, which adds a level of complication to the process, you know, limiting people on set and things like that, some celebrities who might not want to travel in, or they weren't actually flying certain celebrities out to certain locations, so you really had to pick actors and actresses that were available in the area where you were shooting. So things like that, you know, I heard and I think unsurprisingly we knew that would be an issue this year, but there does not sound like from what I've heard anything that completely derailed a spot, or, you know, took things completely, of course. Jessica, you've been doing some, I think you've probably written about more teasers so far than any of us. What assist the state of Subaru teasers. I am following up all this conversation. I'm kind of wondering maybe it's maybe the brands decided in agencies, let's focus all our energy on the actual ad because of these production complications. Let's not worry about maybe creating the world's best teaser and it, which is questionable how much attention that gets normally beyond ad reporters. I agree. I think the teasers that we've seen so far make the case that commercials for commercials might not be necessary anymore. I think teasers played a purpose years ago to build up expectations and get people interested and excited. And now they try to, I hate to use the word pivot, but the teasers don't necessarily have anything to do with the final spot, right? You're just trying to build attention and build buzz. And as we've said, maybe brands don't want to be in the news right now. So they don't want a teaser out there because they don't want their brand out there during the turmoil that we've had these past few weeks. I've seen teasers from M&Ms put out a teaser today with a reveal gone wrong. Doesn't give me any inclination about what the actual M&Ms spot is. Although I will say M&Ms is thinking a little bit differently than usual and they're going to have a Zoom reveal party for their Super Bowl ad, which is about the most pandemic related marketing I could think of. We've seen teasers from Doritos and Cheetos, which usually have teasers. They like to hint at who their celebrities are in their ads. So now we know that Matthew McConaughey is in the Doritos spot. We know that Ash and Kutcher, Meal Akunis and Shaggy are in the Cheetos spot. So there have been some that are fun. Those both, I felt, were a little bit dark. The Cheetos teasers, I don't know if you guys saw those. But the Doritos ones were a little bit more lively, I guess you could say. And then the other one would be Door Dash, which actually put a teaser out during the AFC game on Sunday night. And they have David Digs and Grover. Grover's getting a delivery of paper towels. So that was a little bit more lighthearted. My one year old perked up when she saw that. So it's working with at least one person. It feels like to me that like these teasers seem brands feel like they have to do it versus there's a real business reason or real creative reason to do it. It's also like almost like, well, we do this every year. So we have to do something. Well, and I was going to follow up with the one that made me question what was going on was Pringles. Janini and I talked about that one when it came out yesterday. That six second spot that seems like it's from Rick and Morty, but the brand says they're not at doing a Rick and Morty ad this year. So who knows? So in a similar category as teasers when it comes to I guess Super Bowl fluff you might call it is brands that are not actually advertising in the game, but are trying to ride the co-tales of the game. So what we commonly call is crashing the Super Bowl. Most of the time we ignore these things because we're plenty busy writing on actual Super Bowl ads. But I was sort of I bit on a couple of things on this front so far, both in the beer category and both brands are sort of taking on the global behemoth of Aniser Bush, which of course has the exclusive alcohol advertising rights for the game. We reported yesterday on a Santa Adams ad that's going to be running just I think in Boston, New York and they're spoofing the Clyde stales. And I think that was fortunate timing for San Adams. I'm sure they probably didn't know Budweiser's plans to sit out when they put this thing together. But by doing an ad that spoofs the Clyde stales in a year where Budweiser is not putting the Clyde stales in the game is probably a really nice good luck turn of events for San Adams. The other thing is one of the more crazy things I've seen is we're again reported on this today. Course flight is actually which of course is owned by Molson Corps. They're another brand that cannot do an ad in the game because they be controlled. They're using a Harvard psychologist who consulted them on this idea of inducing dreams and specific things and dreams. And so their whole stunt was creating this video that supposedly if you watch will induce you to have a dream that has core light imagery in it, mountains, dreams, snow, etc. I think that will probably get some attention just because it's kind of really outside the box. I know just a couple years ago you were was it last year two years ago? Skittles did the whole Broadway stunt a couple years ago. Yeah. And then they also did the ad for one person. Skittles has done some stuff. I haven't seen anything from Skittles this year. I've seen plenty of around the Super Bowl not necessarily as hard to be called Crash the Super Bowl from plenty of food brands that are trying to get their food thought of as a game day snack, things like that. Nothing nothing that's going to induce any dreams. I know Chabani is going to be running an ad in a bunch of markets, but it's an ad that's already been out there. We'll see. The course one is interesting for sure. Have you have you tried it yet, EJ? Have you watched it and then taken an ad to see if it works? They haven't released the actual full stream yet, the video yet. They swear that it works. They did a pilot study with like 26 people and they put them in a sleep lab and woke them up in the middle of their REM cycle. And they see people claim to be in terms of course. He didn't have time for an ad to do that. It makes me wonder though, would that have existed if course could advertise in the Super Bowl? Or are they just trying to be so out there so that people like you will write about it? That is a good question, Jessica. I think if they had the opportunity to advertise in this year of all, they certainly might give it a serious thought. But even for the Super Bowl advertisers themselves, I think there's more pressure than ever to do things that are not by the book. And so even if you have a Super Bowl ad, I could see, most of course, Michelle St. Jacque, who you know from your covering craft, when she was there. I mean, she does tend to think outside the box. And so I think that even if they were in the game, they'd be trying some different things around the ads. I wonder how much more tested the Super Bowl ads are this year. Consumer tested, are these going to be the right kind of buzz or are people going to be talking about them in negative ways? I feel like with the rise of social media the past few years, people want to make sure they're hitting the right note, especially if they're spending $5.5 million to put this out on the air. And piggybacking off that, I actually wonder what checks were in place to make sure that there was nothing that could be controversial or like hit the wrong note in terms of things that they could do wrong. I wonder like were DNI officers brought in on the conversations? And what are the various different people that these ads went through to ensure also like inclusivity and things like that? I'm predicting even though we've seen plenty of ads since the pandemic where people are not in masks, just because brands just, you know, some brands say different points of you on this, right? I mean, some of them just say, listen, we don't, you know, we don't think we have to put people in masks. I think people understand that these are advertisements. But because the super well, such a high profile stage, I'm predicting on social media, you might have some like, it could be journalists, it could be people that are just critical by nature starting to comment, oh, look, there's an ad people are close together, they're not wearing masks, shame on that brand. And I'm just kind of wondering if that picks up some steam just because the nature of the moment thoughts? Or are the plots of the ads done in such a way that you have a self-contained group, maybe they're all in their house, so they don't need to be in masks? So Markari, the one that I mentioned before, they actually did it in a way that they took a real couple who lived together and in one scene, you saw them and then a real group of roommates that lived together and in another scene, you saw them. So they did, that was one of the things that they did do, getting people who already lived together to shoot the ad that way. But even in the TV shows we're seeing now, just using this as us as an example, don't you remember, do you guys watch it? The first episode of the year, they're all kind of like diligently wearing their masks and then it was just kind of like forgotten, 'cause I've seen scenes, right? Well, they drop in comments, they're like, oh, we got tested. Right, I mean, I just, people are maybe used to that on TV now, I don't know, I just think it's going to be interesting to watch. It's going to be interesting to watch on the sidelines, what kind of mask you said you see from the refs from the coaches. Andy Reed. Andy Reed got some new masks recently. He's actually got things that cover his whole face now. So, as Noah's and his mouth, it's pretty impressive. We're bad at a time where we're going to violate the brief description of a marketing brief podcast, but I do want to give you guys one last chance to bring anything up we haven't talked about regarding the Super Bowl. I just want to reiterate the thing that I just said, because we don't really get to spend much time on it, but about inclusivity and we'll be very paying very close attention to how brands incorporate diversity and inclusion in their ads this year. That doesn't mean, you know, we're expecting to see like all of these social justice messages or things like that, but even in just some of these humorous ads, how are they thinking about casting storytelling? Who is working behind the camera? That will be really important in something at age, will be following closely over the course of the next week. And on that same topic, I think it's going to be interesting to see the NFL themselves. Obviously has had sort of a checkered history with dealing with these things going back to the Colin Kaepernick stuff. You know, what kind of messaging will the league put out during the game? What will CBS do? How will they address it? Absolutely. Just any any any final thoughts? No final thoughts on the ads, although it was just reported today that Amanda Gorman, the poet, is going to be doing a poem at the Super Bowl, the one who spoke at the inauguration. So I'm excited to see that and excited to see what else we know about the halftime shows, especially since Pepsi's not doing a commercial. We didn't really even talk about that. Although, EJ, I know you wrote about the lack of Pepsi and Coke Coca-Cola ads during the game. So I'm curious to see how the halftime show looks with a limited audience and all of that, the live spectacle of everything is going to be quite different this year. And it is the first Super Bowl. We should note in a city where a team playing is is the home team. So the box get to play at their home stadium. And of course, the irony of that is it's not going to be at full capacity. So the people in Tampa, how much can they really enjoy it? You know, I hope that the the workers who get to go enjoy it, the the healthcare workers. And I hope that everybody stays tuned and watches all the stories that we've been covering on adage.com. And of course, joins us on February 2nd when Janine hosts the adage Super Bowl, capable in depth. Yes, we have a great lineup talking with some of the first time advertisers in the game, talking about humor and the complications and challenges in creating humor sads and talking more on diversity and inclusion in the Super Bowl. And Jessica will also be on deck talking about this year's anatomy of an ad. So stay tuned, register for that on February 2nd. All right, Jessica Janine. Thank you so much for joining me today. I know you guys both have to get back to work and write more Super Bowl stories. I want to thank our producer, Max Sternlecht, and also invite everyone to subscribe to this podcast on your favorite channel. And one last reminder, to keep checking adage.com for all the Super Bowl news you can handle. Thanks again, everyone. Catch you next time.