3,080" Which Fly in the Face of Precision.

A view of the Super Bowl from a Brit

Last night the New England Patriots defeated the Los Angeles Rams by 13 points to 3 in the 53rd Superbowl, earning the Patriots a record sixth title. The game was played at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia with an attendance of 70,081.

In 2018 the Superbowl had a TV viewership of 103 million in the US, which was down 7% on 2017’s 111 million viewers and was the lowest audience for the game since 2009. While official 2019 figures have not been calculated yet, it seems to have been on the decline since the 2015 record of 114.4 million.

Although viewing figures are down, Netflix noticed a 32% drop in viewing figures, showing that people are still leaving on-demand platforms to linear viewing for big events.…..and this year the average cost of a 30-second TV advertisement came in at a whopping $5.25million, a 5% increase on last year.

Interestingly all against the grain of a precision/personalisation focused marketing world and taken up by some of the world’s biggest digital hitters – Microsoft, Google and Amazon.

Arguably no other stage offers the implicit signalling that an expensive spot in the Superbowl does, it simply says ‘I’m Super and have lots of power’, it also offers real eyeballs, not bots, as Mark Ritson in Marketing Week suggests. He also points out that a realm of digital comparisons have been made but still came across a little try hard and metric calculations fell flat, not quite having any punch… ‘A #SuperBowl ad costs the equivalent of 2.6 billion Instagram impressions "and at 2 cents per view, you could get 260 million video views." Check what else you could buy in digital media with $5.2 million: https://digiday.com/marketing/5-2-million-super-bowl-ad-can-buy-digital-media/ …’

No one quite discusses a home page take over or an MPU in the same way. We don’t discuss what we saw on search yesterday. Nothing quite offers the cultural imprinting or stature of a big TV spot.

As we can see here, there are two big peaks of the year when it comes to event ad ‘releases’: Christmas and the Superbowl, neither of which are showing marked decline YOY:

‘Ads’ interest over time worldwide last four years, Google Trends

This year, advertisers took the biggest issues out there, on the biggest stage, moving beyond product to purpose heavy work around mental health, masculinity, female empowerment and democracy.

A relook at masculinity from ads to pitch

Last night’s event was the first time ever male cheerleaders were included. There's never been a ban on male cheerleaders in the NFL, and it's pretty common to see men cheerleading alongside women at college and high school football matches in the US. But it wasn't until the opening game day of the 2018 season that a man first stepped on to the field during an NFL game as part of a cheerleading team. Men have been involved for some NFL teams, but were called stunt men and performed different moves to the female cheerleaders.

In Pampers’ ‘Dads vs. Nappies’ Star of the half-time show, Maroon 5's Adam Levine, joined John Legend in a nappies advert which also featured Legend's children Luna and Miles.

Legend, who lucks out on 'Stinky Booty Duty' as he attempts to tackle Miles's dirty nappy, soon breaks into song and is joined by a throng of fellow dads and babies for the chorus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9A9Uw9e2p8

Empowering female copy

Despite the fact that nearly half of the NFL’s fanbase is female, only a quarter of Super Bowl advertisements are directed towards women, Olay noted this and placed an ad for the first time.

…And whilst the happily married tennis star Serena Williams definitely has no need to join Bumble - the dating app where women make the first move - she was happy to share an empowering feminist message for its quarter-time ad. "So make the first move. Don't wait to be told your place. Take it."

Toyota 'Toni' tapped into female empowerment and "shattering perceptions". It stars Antoinette "Toni" Harris, who wants to be the first female player in the NFL.

These brands aren’t just featuring women in the ads, they’re finding new ways to portray women, and their power.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-LRLub6m5A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_FWKLpoGBc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KuQ4i_VSso

Ads don’t just stop at TV

This incredibly impactful ad from the Washington Post 'Democracy dies in darkness' communicates the importance of journalists and journalism in keeping democracy alive. It’s already been attacked by Trump Jnr and conversation mushroomed on Twitter.

Narrated by Tom Hanks (who played Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee in 2017's The Post), this spot praises quality journalism and the truth, featuring other publications such as The Sunday Times. The spot showcased journalists who were killed or missing in the line of duty. Jamal Khasoggi, who made waves when he was brutally murdered, was featured at the end of the spot, as was The Post's line, "Democracy Dies in Darkness."

Spots like these often reap the rewards in the conversation generated afterwards on social channels.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDjfg8YlKHc

Social media and TV worlds – a blurring of boundaries

Last month, a picture of an egg became the most popular image ever on Instagram, attracting 52 million likes and beating the record set by Kylie Jenner's announcement that she'd had a baby. The stunt was concocted by a British ad creative Chris Godfrey and on Sunday night, the egg was seen using its new-found fame to talk about mental health.

"Recently, I've started to crack, the pressure of social media is getting to me," said the egg.

"If you're struggling too, talk to someone. We got this."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YIw3lcTUq0

We can’t see the hole filling for the physics of the excavation

We’re losing sight of the woods for the trees.

In an age where we’re preoccupied with efficiencies and the infrastructure, we’ve forgotten the importance of what’s in the holes. As Ritson too points out ‘We have become so obsessed with the pipes of advertising, their location (in-house, out-house?) ….. that we rarely worry about what is actually being pumped through them. The Super Bowl’s extravagant cost and critical spotlight forces brands to be content-led rather than media-obsessed.’

3,080 seconds of blockbuster creative, of work which is thought through, of work people are proud of.

Refreshing, in this noisy world, to still see some really Super creative.