PJA Blog: The Complex Brand

My most recent inquiry shows that 30-second spots at the 2008 Super Bowl will run you about $2.7 million, up 4 percent from $2.6 million last year.

Coincidentally, $2.7 million represents the entire marketing budget for some of our B2B clients. Granted, if you don’t sell cars, beer, automobiles, movies, lingerie or mixed nuts, it’s probably not the best place to blow that budget.

Of course, the possibility of doing a Super Bowl ad is invariably tossed around in B2B marketing meetings as the ultimate dream: nearly 100,000,000 sets of eyeballs on your ad, especially if it airs in the first half, and all that follow-on Web activity as people make a mental note to / actually visit your site.

But let’s say that price tag is a bit steep. What can all we non-participants learn from the best features of the best Super Bowl ads, versus blowing off a lot of steam the morning after on which ones were the most effective? Here are a few ideas:

1. Take a risk. Imagine your next piece of marketing will in fact be produced as a Super Bowl ad. What would you do differently? What risks would you take? How would the marketing reflect the best creative thinking and personality of your company, versus reflecting all the political anxieties and fears that drive your current marketing?

2. Entertain. This is the marketing equivalent of ‘You’ve only got three months to live, so put your affairs in order.’ When was the last time you sought to really capture the imagination of your audience? If you could only do it once, how would you shake your customers by the collar and get them passionately interested in what you’re doing? How could you use your company’s content to, God forbid, entertain people? If someone wrote your marketing department a $2.7 million check, would you slap up a big logo and add six paragraphs of technical language?

3. Pay tribute to their audience. Content delivered in an entertaining and memorable way is king right now, as it should be. How would you use your content in a Super Bowl spot to honor your customers in a way that allows you to continue the conversation? How would you pay off that attention over time?

Most of us can’t afford tickets to the Super Bowl, much less an ad on it, but we can create a comparable experience in our markets. It’s not all about risking money, but about taking a chance to do something daring, inspiring, and entertaining. We can all afford that.

By the way, I hear Justin Timberlake is booked.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 25th, 2008 at 1:37 pm and is filed under Advertising, Events, Interactive, Marketing, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.