Advertisers hoping for big score
Super Bowl commercials created to target specific viewers must appeal to entire TV audience
The Super Bowl is television's biggest event - and marketers pay big bucks to reach the masses. But what's an advertiser to do when its products are meant to appeal primarily to just part of that teeming crowd?
Kraft Foods' Planters nuts answers that question with its ad for Sunday's Super Bowl: It's going after people who eat salty snacks - mostly males - by featuring a red-headed female with a unibrow running across her forehead. The ads will shoot for the testosterone set, but women won't be left out.
"You want to root for her," said Sandy Greenberg, executive creative director at Draftfcb New York, the agency that created the ad, speaking about the character. "Hopefully she will appeal to women and men."
Welcome to the latest Super Bowl challenge. The big game remains one of the best venues for advertisers to get their message out to lots of people: It reached about 93 million viewers in 2007, according to Nielsen. But marketers are showing more enthusiasm for pursuing niches, a testament to the many websites and cable channels devoted to narrower interests such as history or cooking. With Fox seeking as much as $2.7 million to $3 million for a 30-second ad, marketers are trying to find ways to target specific customers in Super Bowl spots, while still entertaining the broader audience.
"I would tell you emphatically that in today's marketplace, segmentation is very key," said George Irish, president and chief executive of Strategis, a Stoughton ad agency.
There's certainly good reason to get in the game - no matter if you're targeting a niche or a large crowd. With more consumers using digital video recorders, the Super Bowl represents one of an emerging handful of events that viewers actually want to watch as it takes place - so the ads don't get skipped. Additionally, an ongoing writers' strike means advertisers have fewer options to reach consumers: Network TV has less to show to draw millions of people - including, possibly, the Academy Awards telecast.
But is it worth it to run ads that will likely appeal to a subset of the big game's larger audience? If an advertiser is launching a product, has a broader message for the marketplace, or hopes to augment its consumer base, having a Super Bowl ad can make sense, as long as the company can get a message across about a particular product while still entertaining or intriguing the larger crowd. Plus, there's the "water cooler" factor - it never hurts to have more than just your target audience talking about and dissecting your ad hours and even days later.
Still, using a Super Bowl ad to appeal to a smaller group of consumers can seem "like you're looking to kill a mosquito with an elephant gun," said Pete Favat, chief creative officer of Arnold Worldwide in Boston.
For an example of how carefully marketers must tread when trying to appeal to their target audience in Super Bowl spots, ad executives point to a Revlon commercial in last year's contest. Featuring singer Sheryl Crow, the ad aimed to spark excitement about Revlon's Colorist hair-coloring products by showing how they helped the musician's mane look natural night after night.
In the ad, Crow sang a version of the old Buddy Holly hit "Not Fade Away" to emphasize the point. But the spot rated near the bottom of USA Today's annual Ad Meter rankings of Super Bowl ads, a scale taken seriously by many Super Bowl advertisers.
"Hair coloring is just one of those categories that, frankly, not only does it not appeal to men at all, it doesn't even appeal to all women," said Jon Hickey, senior vice president of sports and entertainment marketing at the Mullen agency in Wenham.
This year, along with male-oriented Planters, three other Super Bowl marketers will have to find ways to appeal to the larger crowd even as they woo a particular audience. Procter & Gamble's Tide-To-Go stain-removal product, for instance, has long had a female consumer base, said Kash Shaikh, a spokesman for the company's fabric-care products. But the Super Bowl is a place to generate interest in the product among other demographics, including men.
For its part, Unilever will feature images of Madonna, Shakira, and Marilyn Monroe to promote its Sunsilk hair care for women. But Unilever believes the ad will still appeal to the larger audience, even if the products might not, said Heather Mitchell, a spokeswoman.
Victoria's Secret also is hoping its ads will resonate with the masses - not just women who wear its lingerie. The unit of Limited Brands carefully considered an appearance in the Super Bowl, said Jill Beraud, Limited's chief marketing officer.
While the chain typically aims at women, it sees the Super Bowl as a chance to remind consumers about using Victoria's Secret purchases for Valentine's Day - a message that can be relevant to men as well. Had the company only something to say to women, Beraud said, the Super Bowl "wouldn't be worth it to us."
Mullen's Hickey agrees. Simply put, every Super Bowl ad must swing for the fences, even if the product being hyped isn't for the masses. If a marketer doesn't aim big, the risk is an embarrassing commercial that won't entertain.
"If you do try to appeal to a smaller niche, whether it's ethnic or gender or age, it's going to fall flat in the Super Bowl," said Mullen's Hickey. "The ones that really pay off the investment are ones that have broad appeal. It can be a product that is primarily used by men or women or the old or the young, but, ultimately, it needs to have broad appeal, and a lot of that comes down to the creative execution."
Brian Steinberg is television editor at Advertising Age. 