management blog

US brands traditionally use the Super Bowl as a platform for lavish television adverts. But will recession dampen the marketing sideshow attached to American football’s premier event?

The Super Bowl draws about 140m viewers and will take place on February 1. Two Kellogg School of Management marketing professors — Tim Calkins and Derek Rucker — are diligently blogging about the behaviour of key marketers in the run-up to the game.

Prof Rucker says advertisers face two big challenges if they want Super Bowl exposure in the current economic climate:

First, can advertisers successfully deliver a message with the right tonality to resonate with consumers’ current emotions? This feat requires a strong understanding of the consumer mind and an ability to tailor a message to speak to the consumer. Brands might seize the opportunity of the day to accomplish this task, but I also suspect many will play it safe by ignoring the issue all together.

Second, can brands walk the tightrope of spending an approximate $3 million on a 30-second spot without looking wasteful?

At least two long-time Super Bowl advertisers — General Motors and FedEx — will be absent from all the hoopla this year. Prof Calkins thinks the troubled carmaker is making a “huge mistake”.

What GM really needs, now, is to get people to buy its cars. And the only way GM will get people to buy its cars is to give them a reason to buy. Simply put, GM needs to explain to people why this is a great time to buy a car.

More importantly, GM has to project confidence. The company has to be confident in its products and confident in its future.

The best way to project confidence and get the company moving is to invest in the Super Bowl and portray GM as a refocused, determined, confident company.

However, he is intrigued by talk that PowerAde has cooked up a risqué ad to lighten the gloom, saying that it would be a bold move given the fuss caused by Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” in 2004, which ensured that subsequent Super Bowls have been “about as titillating as reading Newsweek”.