Super Bowl of Advertising

The past thirty nine years have all had one thing in common, the Super Bowl. This is the National Football League's world championship held in either late January or early February consisting of the two conference champions. Their have been many memorable moments from these games, such as the Lombardi dynasty of Green Bay, then onto the Steelers, San Francisco forty-niners, the Cowboys and to the newest dynasty of the New England Patriots. During these past thirty nine Super Bowls these teams and many other moments have filled our life with highlights and fond memories. The Super Bowl itself is the single greatest sporting event ever but is the game actually the biggest part of the Super Bowl.

In today's modern times the word "Super Bowl" is not only thought of as a championship football game but rather a much larger event featuring television, retailers and companies trying to capture the magic of the Super Bowl. These organizations are all trying to get as much out of the Super Bowl as possible to benefit themselves further. The advertising and the marketing put into the Super Bowl are some of these companies' largest campaigns of the year. The game itself generates money with the league, television networks and gamblers but the amount they generate is not near the amount companies put towards the game. There is a large issue that sparks debate, "is the game more important or the commercials."(Beard) The Super Bowl has become part of American culture and both the game and commercials are important to our modern society.

In an article written by financial times a portion of it is dedicated to showing that a housewife who knows nothing at all about football is just as excited about the Super Bowl as her husband is, who is a large football fan. These contrasts spark a topic of question which is more anticipated the games itself or the vast array of commercials during the games stoppages of play. According to this article forty five percent of American households watch the Super Bowl.(Beard) It would be interesting took know what percent of people specifically watch just for commercials or do a little bit of both. My guess is that the majority of people watch both the game and the commercials, but it would be interesting to find out.

Advertising has been around for a very long time and has endured many changes. These changes could consist of methods our amount of money put into advertising. The monetary figures over time illustrated and prove that advertising has grown drastically. For example the monetary advertising volume was 200 million dollars in the United States in 1880. (Pope) During this time tobacco, health products and mainly manufacturing companies dominated the advertising marketplace. The next forty years was a time of massive advertising growth, department stores (Macy's) and mail order catalogs from Sears Roebuck flooded into the market. The monetary advertising volume increased rapidly to three billion. (Pope) In modern society advertising is the most important thing a company can do to promote their product to the public. It is key that people are made aware of what certain products perform and how much they cost. The monetary advertising volume has increased into the hundreds of billions today.

Advertising has found a new way to in the past ten years to get to people through the internet. The internet which is the greatest modern day breakthrough, next to Viagra has provided a universal advertising portal in which anybody can view advertisements from anywhere in the world. A company in Japan can advertise their new electronic equipment and the consumer in Fiji can see what the product is and learn bout it. This all happens in the blink of an eye and electronic transfer. There are a few methods that companies advertise on the internet, having their own site, paying other sites to have banners on their own web page and then finally those hated pop ups. Advertising and marketing ones product is a key for any companies' success.

The Super Bowl has become the center stage for companies to advertise their product. The article sates that for a thirty second slot of air time during the Super Bowl it would cost around 2.4 million dollars.(Howard) For any company willing to spend that kind of money their must be a large payoff. The article states that the main motive of the company to spend millions of dollars is the simple fact that the Super Bowl is seen by forty five percent of American households. (Howard) This reasoning is explained by a Anheusier-Busch spokesman ny stting "that by getting forty five percent their are getting forty five percent of all beer drinkers" so what a great stage the game is to promote their beer.(Howard) The thought process in the ad starts in October and November. Budweiser hires a few different companies to produce a few commercials. There is a large sum of money given to these companies to produce the commercials so Budweiser is counting on them to put their best effort forward.

It is not cheap by any means to produce a Super Bowl caliber commercial. There are certain that the regular person does not take into effect when thinking about the cost of production for a commercial. The actors in this case are Clydesdales which seems like cheap labor but the daily diet of one Clydesdale consists of twenty five pounds of grain, fifty pounds of hay and thirty gallons of water per day.(Howard) These number are now multiplied by ten when all of the Clydesdales come together to make the commercial. It seems to me that it would be rather tough to get the Clydesdales to the shoot but also supply them with their vast quantities associated with their diets. The production of the commercial takes weeks itself to produce. The writers approach the commercials as a movie with an actual script and plan. These commercials are vital to the company to get their product advertised to millions. Budweiser had twenty five ads made for the Super Bowl this year but only nine made the final cut. (Howard) To make this final cut there is large amount of screening done for these commercials. Not only the production company and the product company look at the ad but Budweiser in fact paid people fifty dollars to screen their possible commercials for the Super Bowl. The people's reactions are carefully monitored to see which ads got the type of reaction they wanted. Budweiser personal claim you can spot a winner with a certain type of reaction. Their slogan is to be clever and creative and the funnier the better. (Howard)

The Super Bowls over the years have given us many thoughts to ponder on but the commercials also have given us just as many memories. The majority of Super Bowl commercials have an icon in them to associate their product with them. For example Budweiser has used Clydesdales to associate with its product. If the question