I’m an NBA gal. I’ve never been an NFL person, and the league’s only pushed me further away from caring about it in recent years. But I’ve also worked in advertising for a decade. And for those of us in advertising, the Super Bowl is like… well, the Super Bowl!
Since the first Super Bowl was played in 1967, the game’s commercials have been a huge part of the experience. Of course back then, a minute-long spot would cost an advertiser $75,000—adjusted for inflation that’s about $585,000 today. Last year you had to cough up over $5.5 million to run a 30-second ad!
But despite decades of celebrated commercials behind it, with Super Bowl LV, the buzz this year feels different. It’s much more centered around what’s not going to show up than what is.
Already, Super Bowl favorites like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Hyundai, and Budweiser have announced that they will not be airing ads this year. And it took until Wednesday, January 27th for all available slots to sell out—way later than normal.
So why are advertisers less eager to plug their brand in front of millions of captivated viewers? There aren’t many events out there where people tune in just to watch the ads, after all.
For starters, this obviously won’t be a typical Super Bowl. From a simple, bottom-line-driven standpoint, television ratings are down for sports. Plenty of reasons why that might be the case, but advertisers are thinking they can get more bang for their buck by pushing their marketing dollar elsewhere.
Then there’s the fact that threading the messaging needle is basically impossible right now. Over the past year, people have really been hurting. We’ve been through an ongoing pandemic, an insane election cycle, mass protests we haven’t seen since the Vietnam War, a crappy economy, and who knows what else. Simply put, advertisers are afraid of striking the wrong tone, and it’s better to say nothing than the wrong thing.
And then there’s a more positive reason: Budweiser is putting some of its would-be advertising spend toward the Ad Council’s vaccine awareness campaign. (Anheuser-Busch will still be running ads for some of its other beverages, though.)
But there’s something I feel is just as important: a Seventh Level alignment of brand values—where a brand’s values fully align with those of its audiences, inspiring lasting loyalty. Right now, more and more brands are aligning themselves with messages of social justice, which—to put it bluntly—makes it tough to also align with the NFL.
There’s the issue of racist franchise names (including one of the teams playing in today’s Super Bowl!). There’s the NFL’s attempts at hushing up scientists studying CTE. There’s everything that’s happened with Colin Kaepernick. The list goes on!
So for social-justice-minded brands, promoting their message and products through the NFL might seriously turn away their audiences who have come to trust and admire them for their stances on important issues.
This is something the NFL knows, too, and is trying desperately to address, now that there are financial consequences.
The league invited the breakout star of the recent presidential inauguration, poet Amanda Gorman, to read a poem before kick-off. And The Weeknd—an outspoken advocate and financial supporter of Kaepernick’s charity—will be the star of the game’s halftime show.
I’ll be interested to see if prospective partners continue to press the league into behaving better by holding out on buying up advertising. Compared to Super Bowl commercials, there are less expensive, more values-oriented ways to connect with audiences, especially right now when the entire world seems to be upping its social media usage.
All that said, I’m excited to tune in and see what brands are able to get it right, despite all of the challenges in place. This is going to be a tricky year for a Super Bowl commercial to really resonate with its intended audiences at the Seventh Level, but it’ll be interesting to see who can pull it off!
Also shout-out to Sabastian Brinkenfeldt for the image above! We like to give credit where it's due.