SuperBowl XLIV will provide another interesting event for Marketers to think and talk about. While always designed to be entertaining, the advertisements that make the the SuperBowl “the” marketing event of the year are rumored to be even more entertaining due to the “Great Recession,” and will hopefully lift viewers’ spirits up. But this year, The Marketing Consigliere will not critique the ads; he is not as pleased this year regarding the advertisements, but not because of their famed jocularity.
The reason he is not as pleased this year is because this year, based on AdWeek’s list of SuperBowl XLIV Advertisers, the only ad that could be considered B2B is GoDaddy.com, which has a B2C edge to it since any drunk football fan can buy a domain name. And the rumored Google ad will probably be B2C. Ever since the “Herding Cats” ad by the old EDS (now HP Enterprise Services), a bar was set for B2B Marketers. They have every right to market to the SuperBowl audience, just like B2C Marketing professionals do. But over the past few years we’ve seen less and less B2B ads.
Why is this? Certainly large B2B companies have the budgets, but perhaps not the justification. The Herding Cats ad was primarily a branding ad, and The Marketing Consigliere understands that the branding folks, while bright and creative, are not aligned with the “hunters” of a company – that is, Sales. It is hard to measure the effects of branding initiatives and ultimately those initiatives do not directly impact the top line, which most executives find rather important.
The truth is, even with all the social media and Internet tie-ins that contemporary SuperBowl ads are incorporating, the main medium is broadcast televeision, which is still a mass medium. Ultimately, the most successful B2B marketing efforts using a mass medium are not necessarily that of branding, especially for complex intangibles such as IT consulting. No, just like soft drinks and snack foods, B2B products that are transactional, frequent, and not complex are probably the best suited for SuperBowl commercials.
So please, Staples, FedEx, Pitney Bowes, et. al., surprise The Marketing Consigliere and his audience next year.
Having now seen the game, there was a B2B advocacy ad that did not make it to the AdWeek List, and it is a mystery why. the Association of American Railroads’ ran an ad last year and this year “Freight Rail Works” (http://freightrailworks.org/freight-rail-works-campaign.php) was run again.
Not to be a downer, but the ads did anything but lift my spirits. I finished watching the game thinking, “If this is how we’re responding to the recession, we’re screwed.”
I felt nearly all ads featured the same, tired punchlines we always see, catering to an aged demographic (no offense), sexism, unimaginative creative and a focus on the disenfranchised, self-loathing American male.
The ads said to me that America is out of ideas and missing our opportunities.
I still believe our country is better than what I witnessed last night.
I think you’re on target and in line with the conventional wisdom crowd that is scratching their collective heads.
Why did GoDaddy.com rely on the same tired schtick? Why did brands have to revert to an insipid form of sexism, insinuating that all relationships with women are intrinsically dysfunctional and must be replaced with *their* product? These are indeed legitimate questions.
On one hand, we could be snobbish and say that low-brow products (beer, junk food, American muscle cars, etc.) require low-brow messaging to keep low-brow customers salivating like Pavlov’s dog until they rush out and buy more, more, more of their product. Only 1 in four American adults is a college graduate, and perhaps it only that 1 in four who are “offended” by the status quo.
On the other hand, you could indeed say there is a bankruptcy of ideas on the creative side, an unwillingness to pay for better ideas on the buying side, and the general complacency in an otherwise sophisticated audience. Except in the case of some user-generated content that gets “voted” into the superbowl, you’re probably not going to get the status quo changed unless those people find other things to do on a cold Sunday night in January/February. That would get the attention of the NFL and the advertisers, who would probably do flips to get them back.
Anyone else with an opinion out there?