Predicting Super Bowl Ad Performance

It's Super Bowl sparkle time! This weekend is about the 4 C’s of our annual NFL American football climax: Calories, Company, Competition and Commercials. It’s like a diamond in the rough of winter.?

If the Super Bowl and Puppy Bowl don’t satisfy your need to watch cutting edge Competition this weekend while finishing those Calories with your Company of friends and family, there is also the annual cavalcade of Commercials that should. Heck, even DraftKings is going meta-dimensional on us this year with, wait for it…

*** A COMMERCIAL ABOUT BETTING ON OTHER COMMERCIALS ***?

Yes, umm, that’s correct. DraftKings is literally advertising to use DraftKings to bet on Commercials’ aspects like how many people with facial hair will show up in a series of beer commercials for Coors beer or Miller Lite. But is this effective in driving short-term consumer engagement and long-term brand equity? Clearly it got my attention.

Engagement and brand equity are dimensions that EMOTION plays an outsized role in, which is why we leverage Data Science to model emotion as a predictor for effectiveness of advertisements.

It is pretty commonly accepted that GM and Mike Meyers ran away with the best advertisement bragging rights at last year’s 2022 Super Bowl for their Dr. Evil spot(s) for GM’s line of EV vehicles. What will happen in 2023? While not all commercials have been released pre-game yet, we’ve still analyzed what has been released to the public to-date and have a few observations to share ahead of the bowl game.

3 PRE-GAME WINNERS

1. Busch beer’s survival ad with Sarah McLachlan has the most unique emotion fingerprint of those pre-released and analyzed. It pulls on the emotion of our primal fears to leave a lasting impression, but does so with irony, surprise and a touch of humor that blunt the typically negative emotion of FEAR. I predict this will leave a lasting impact on consumer recall and is my nominee for best [pre-released] ad going into the contest.?
2. Oikos Yogurt and the Deion Sanders family take my number 2 going into the big game for their simplicity of emotion that is centered on one of the strongest emotions in the marketer’s tool belt… DOMINANCE. Consumers like established winners and the Oikos brand capitalizes on this one dimension. In an Ad market full of clutter and noise, this has the potential to cut through with a simple emotion message that is intense yet easy to recall.?
3. Experian’s Happy Guy spot with John Cena is also largely one dimensional like the Oikos commercial but with a focus on JOY. While Joy is not as intense an emotion as Dominance, Expedia drives it to such a monochromatic extreme with a purple cow of SURPRISE to drive the recall home. Another commercial full of Joy to watch is Bud Light’s Easy to Enjoy spot, which narrowly missed the top three.?

3 PRE-GAME LAGGARDS

It’s too early to fully assess how these spots will benefit from the ROI uplift driven by Context Effects that may be gained from the emotion fingerprint of the Super Bowl content itself. However, on emotional merit alone, these spots may struggle to achieve their desired ROI.

1. Pepsi Zero Sugar with Ben Stiller and Steve Martin packs a powerful celebrity punch but the emotion conveyed strikes a nerve across emotions typically associated with negative lift in ROI such as SHAME and CONTEMPT. The minimal focus on the product itself in scenes will only make short term engagement and longer term recall harder to associate with this creative.?
2. Heineken 0.0 with Paul Rudd as Ant-Man in a contemptuous conversation with his little ant friend will surely draw in fans of the Marvel franchise but the emotion conveyed here, similar to Pepsi Zero Sugar, seems to miss the mark with their heavy use of the emotion of DISAPPROVAL.?
3. Popeyes with the Meme Kid packed little emotional intensity overall, instead focusing on more factually based information. By listening more closely, LOVE and SENTIMENTALITY may be picked up. However, the low emotion intensity coupled with a barely known celebrity will likely make recall harder to achieve on this one.

Check back after the Super Bowl airs next week for a deeper analysis and look at Year Over Year trends.?

Enjoy the big game, and Go Chiefs!

Nate

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Nate Rackiewicz is Chief Data Officer of Reset Digital, an ad tech and marketing tech firm offering the world’s first Neuro-Programmatic platform for the advertising marketplace.?