Big Game, Bigger Expectations: Breaking Down Super Bowl Advertising

Heather Riexinger: It’s official, Bob. I’ve taken over the podcast.

Bob Burch: I know.

Heather Riexinger: Just kidding. Here we are. Just kidding. So this is a special edition today. It is the morning after the Super Bowl. Clearly both of our teams did really well this season.

Bob Burch: Hey, we made the playoffs. And that is a rarity for my team at least.

Heather Riexinger: Yeah. My team likes to make the playoffs. They just don’t go anywhere in the playoffs. So we’re used to it.

Bob Burch: For sure. And it ended up with another Patriot Super Bowl, which of course living in Western New York, and we’re both in family of Bills fans. There was not a soul that I saw rooting for the Patriots other than Chris and Katie Flynn. So apologies to them, but we’re not upset.

Heather Riexinger: No, not at all. We’re not upset at all. Not at all. Drake May kind of choked there, so.

Bob Burch: Good job, Seahawks. Pretty boring game though.

Heather Riexinger: Yeah, yeah. Overall, pretty boring game. How’d you feel about halftime?

Bob Burch: I mean, it was entertaining. I mean, that’s what it usually is. I would say it’s generally like 50-50 that I like the musical act, and that it’s, but I’m also of the opinion that not everything has to be catered to me specifically. And so, yeah, I mean, it was entertaining. It kept my attention. And it’s always fun trying to pick out all the different cameos that happen in that. Because even in there, I’m, wait, was that Ricky Martin?

Heather Riexinger: Well, I was like, “Cardi B!”

Bob Burch: That Peter Pascal just sitting in the background. Yeah, so there were some interesting things there. You know, Bad Bunny, I don’t really know much of his music. Again, I think I mentioned to you, my first exposure to him was actually when he was in WWE as a wrestler. Yup. So, and, you know, but other than that, yeah, I thought it was pretty entertaining.

Heather Riexinger: Yeah, I thought it was really nice from, I didn’t understand, I don’t speak Spanish unfortunately, but still could understand the message of what was going on, and it was really upbeat. My favorite part was actually, I was very impressed by the stage setup. And I’m like, “How did they do this in 15 minutes?” And then I watched the videos afterwards.

Bob Burch: All the videos of the trees? That the trees were people?

Heather Riexinger: Yes! Yeah. I was like, “Oh, that’s brilliant!” Because I just imagined all these stage hands just dragging, like, just pallets of trees or something. And that was hysterical to see.

Bob Burch: Just imagine you’re telling your friends, I’m gonna be in the Super Bowl half tape. What are you? I’m a bush.

Heather Riexinger: I’m a bush. I’m hiding in the middle of a bush. I just have to run waddle on to, so. No, I thought it was great. It was upbeat. And like you said, I don’t know any of the songs, but I don’t always know the halftime performer anyways.

Bob Burch: Yeah, for sure.

Heather Riexinger: Uniting the country was the message. So that was nice. So, Bub, do you wanna talk a little bit about the cost of ads? And everything that goes into the Super Bowl from a media perspective.

Bob Burch: Yeah, so numbers came out, really the last couple weeks of the cost. Generally, the average spot cost was around $8 million. The highest were around $10 million for a 30-second spot. Certainly, you saw a lot of advertisers do more than 30 seconds. Some did 45. Some, you know, there were a lot of one-minute spots. So certainly spending some money, locally here, a spot ended up being about $35,000. So certainly not paying the seven figures that you are on the national scale, but still expensive for local advertisers. And there’s very limited inventory for local. Our advertisers were just in that third quarter break. But, you know, expectations are over 130 million people watched this. Certainly, it gets a lot of play after the game as well. So there’s the part during the game. I think a lot of the best advertisers do a good job of teasing ahead of time. So they’re really getting their money’s worth. And then of course, you know, continuing with the campaign after the fact. You know, if you look at it on a CPM basis, it’s like 60 to $70, which is not crazy.

Heather Riexinger: No, that’s not bad.

Bob Burch: You know, we have live sports type CTV deals that we run that, you know, easily go for 60, $70 CPMs. And it isn’t the Super Bowl. So it does get the viewership. It gets the mass reach. And then of course, just the buzz that goes with being in it. So, you know, is it worth it? Not for everybody. You know, especially when you add on the fact that a lot of these had very large production budgets to go alongside it too. But, you know, certainly, you know, there are a lot of every year advertisers that show up and feel it’s worth spending that.

Heather Riexinger: Yeah, that’s what I always look at it. And, you know, I don’t know why. Everyone always asks us because we work in advertising. You know, I’ll have friends that will text me and say, “Where do you have a bet going? And how much do you think that this company paid for this talent and I have to do the super obnoxious?” Well, there’s so many factors that go into it. But I always, when it comes to the Super Bowl, I’m like, it has to be mass market products. And that’s where, you know, you have to have a large audience. If it’s a niche product, it doesn’t make sense. Yeah. At all to advertise to everyone.

Bob Burch: I’d also be curious with the celebrities, you know, how much of them, I mean, it’s good exposure for them too. I mean, the Super Bowl halftime show generally, the artist does not get paid because of just the amount of publicity that they get for this. And I would have to think it’s the same way that, you know, do celebrities, I don’t know that they’re discounting what it costs, but, you know, there’s certainly something to be said. Yeah, there’s certainly a reason to be in it. And, you know, they stay top of mind too when they’re showing up in these commercials.

Heather Riexinger: Yeah. So let’s get into it. Cause there were a lot of celebrities in this year’s ads. I think we saw it last year where it was kind of like, come up with a mediocre concept, throw some famous people in it, and maybe people will talk about it. I think there was a little bit of that this year. What was your favorite ad with a celebrity?

Bob Burch: So with a celebrity, I mean, I guess it depends on if you count this, I really liked the tight ends ad. I thought that was so good. So again, more athletes, George Kittle, I just love in general, he’s such a good personality. And I think what was interesting with that, and I know I mentioned this to you before, but I kind of saw the payoff coming. And part of that is we work in healthcare a lot, we work in the prostate cancer space, and we’ve worked in colorectal cancer. So there are a lot of jokes you can make, and it’s not always, there’s not always the right time to be crass like that. But I thought they did it without going too far. And there was a good message to it too, about getting screened, and now there’s a blood test for it. So that was Novartis that put that in there again, it was very little about the brand itself, it was really about the importance of screening. But just the comedy of it, to play off the tight end was really, really good.

Heather Riexinger: I think it was tasteful and relevant. I know another one that I liked, that you mentioned you don’t, is I really liked the Turbo Tax spot with Adrian Brody. And I think that that’s a case where, obviously we talked a little bit before we came on camera here, but Adrian Brody, you need to know him as an actor, I think to really understand the Turbo Tax spot. And I loved it because I thought it was relevant to the product, and he’s always so dramatic. I think in the spot he says, “If there’s no pain, there’s no Adrian Brody.” And that’s the kind of character he’s always playing. But for you, you thought that that one fell flat.

Bob Burch: Yeah, it just, he’s not particularly somebody that I’ve seen a ton of movies with or anything. And I don’t know, it was just, it was kind of meh. It’s, to me, it came off as a little bit of just trying too hard to be funny, but didn’t really pay off and get the humor part of it. So yeah, I didn’t love it, but it was fine.

Heather Riexinger: That’s fair. Another one, we saw multiple spots that utilized the Backstreet Boys, which was actually, fun fact, my first concert, when I was like 10, so going way back, now that the nostalgia’s coming back, and it’s aimed at me, it’s a little hurtful. But T-Mobile, so T-Mobile launched a spot early in the game with the Backstreet Boys in it. And then Coinbase used the Backstreet Boys later on. And I had to look back this morning because when I saw Coinbase, I feel like I already saw the Backstreet Boys. Is this another version of it, what’s going on? How did you feel about, let’s start with T-Mobile. They packed a lot of celebrities in there.

Bob Burch: Yeah, so the T-Mobile one was entertaining. Lot of celebrities, you had the Backstreet Boys, again, hitting the millennials. There was Drew Skeanets and all the T-Mobile spots. There was, Machine Gun Kelly was in there. So, you had a lot packed into it. So it did seem a little bit of the like, we need to get somebody for everybody into that. So that was certainly an interesting one. I feel like they do a good job with their brand and their commercials in general. This wasn’t very different from anything you’ve seen on a normal Sunday or any of their other commercials, but I think that’s true to who they are. And they’re trying to be this very different type of mobile company in an era where Verizon tends to dominate and then you have other things like Mint Mobile and stuff like that with Ryan Reynolds. So, I think they’ve done a good job of finding a way to stand out. And I think that spot was another example of that.

Heather Riexinger: Yeah, I think they were very true to their brand, but it was kind of what we’re used to with them, I think. What other spots, we’ve got so many. We both have so many notes here that we’re eager to chat about.

Bob Burch: So I really liked the Pepsi spot with the Polar Bears, the choice. I thought it was good in general. I thought it took it up a notch when they played off the Coldplay concert thing and they caught them on screen at the very end. So I thought that was a good one. Obviously, they’re very consistently, they do go after Coca-Cola directly. They’re the big brand. So they always tend to do these type of attack ads, but I thought it was a clever one to play out the Polar Bears, especially with all of the negative publicity that came from them going full AI on the Polar Bears more recently. So I did like that one. I thought that one was funny. I know you didn’t love this one as much. I really liked the Jurassic Park one. I love that movie. Xfinity is not a brand that’s gonna stand out. And I thought they found a way to kind of bring it all in and say, “It’s just all about the network connectivity and now the park’s working great.” And there were a lot of just iconic shots. I love Jeff Goldblum. I think he’s great. And they even found the way to do the little laying on the couch shot, but he was laying by the pool. So I enjoyed that one. I thought that was a good one.

Heather Riexinger: And Craig behind the camera made a comment about the shrimp.

Bob Burch: Yeah, yeah.

Heather Riexinger: He loved the shrimp line.

Bob Burch: Yes, yes.

Heather Riexinger: Yeah, a lot of throwbacks, I felt like two movies or TV. So one of those that I know we both, I didn’t love. You seemed to like it a little more than I did Duncan.

Bob Burch: Yeah, it made me laugh. I love George Costanza. You had Urkel, obviously Jennifer Aniston showing up in there too. So I liked Joey Tribbiani. I liked that they pulled that all in. Again, it looked very, very choppy with, like it almost looked like it was deliberately trying to be bad AI. But I thought it was funny. And then just the line at the end with the Ds nuts. With the Ds nuts, with Tom Brady. That was just, it was a great payoff. It made me laugh out loud. That was about it. Not all of them are gonna make me laugh. I haven’t loved their commercials in previous years. Like I thought the “Dung Kings” was stupid. But I thought that one was funny.

Heather Riexinger: it better when it was just Ben Affleck being Boston Ben. And that to me was hilarious. And now I feel like they just try to find any connection they possibly can to New England and just push it into the spot. So they feel overdone to me in the past couple of years. But I did love the like Ben Boston type of shtick that they had going when it first started.

Bob Burch: others I had. I mean, we talked a lot about humor. I think on the emotional side, which I think what’s interesting is it does feel like humor is the overwhelming number of spots. So I do feel like when you get a more emotional message, it does seem to stand out a little bit more. I really liked the Google, the new home one. I think they always find a way to pull at the heartstrings a little in their commercials and kind of evil tech company and they’re talking AI. But I thought that one with them talking about moving into a new house and designing the room and here’s what the backyard can look like. I thought that was really cute. And I thought that one stood out. I liked the rocket mortgage and Redfin one too. That was another one that like, it was dramatic and I think the payoff at the end with them helping out their neighbors and stuff like that too. Was it trying a little too hard? Probably, but it wasn’t bad. And then I love the NFL champion one.

Heather Riexinger: We’re both in that stage of life too, where like the nod to the youth coaches is in what they do for kids is so huge. Yes, both of us coach. That one got me.

Bob Burch: And we’ve all been in locker rooms and heard the locker room speech and watching that it’s like, I want to run through a brick wall and I haven’t played a sport in years. And it was, you know, bear’s fan. Like there were a lot of Ben Johnson, good, better, best videos that came out this year and same thing, like I love the coach speech and I loved the idea of the kid kind of rehearsing it into his room and repeating it all on his own. Like I thought that was great. So I really liked

Heather Riexinger: that one too. Yeah, I thought that that one was great. And then the other one that I love is Lay’s. They’ve done a similar ad both years and I think it’s just so nice that they’re showcasing whether it’s real family or not, but it’s getting across the point that they are a big conglomerate company, but that they’re buying from these small farms and this is who they’re affecting. And so I thought that that was a nice authentic spot, similar to what they did last year. And I don’t know that people will really talk about it much, I didn’t see it in a lot of the chatter this morning. So it’s one that probably people said that’s nice and moved on from.

Bob Burch: It did get, so looking at the USA Ad Meter, I think it was number two in the list. So it did get some good scores, at least from the general public. So that did, it did seem to resonate well there.

Heather Riexinger: It’s number two to Budweiser, which I know you said you felt like was a little stereotypical, but.

Bob Burch: Yeah, the Budweiser one, it felt a little forced. I know it is authentic to who they are. It felt like you asked JWPT to give me the most American spot ever. And that’s what it came up with. I do think that there were elements of it, just the shot of the eagle on the back of the horse with the wings coming out when it’s jumped, that was cool. But yeah, other than that, it was, I don’t know. It felt a little unoriginal. It was very stereotypical Budweiser, Clydesdale type, American nostalgia.

Heather Riexinger: It kind of gets into when we talk about the Ad Meter, it was safe. And I think that that’s a good conversation for us to have too here, and that there are a lot of brands use the Super Bowl to take a big swing, and then others go completely safe. And I think Budweiser, Lay, it’s those that perform really well, just kind of stay safe, but they’re not the ones that people are necessarily talking about a month later or cringing as they bring up. So it’s always that fine balance. And I don’t know the answer of what works better or what doesn’t. It’ll be interesting to see sales numbers for those different products as the months go on.

Bob Burch: Yeah, and it does go back to the, is it going to resonate with their core audience? Yes, it will. And that’s what they’re doing. I don’t drink Budweiser, so that’s,

Heather Riexinger: You’re not their audience, that’s fine.

Bob Burch: Yeah, hipster IPAs over here. So that’s not gonna be what I’m gonna have. But I think they know who their audience is. And I think same thing with Bud Light. They’ve kind of pulled in Post Malone and I’m blanking on the comedian right now. But again, yeah.

Heather Riexinger: Oh, I know who you’re talking about, yeah. And then McUltra, that spot, I thought it was a decent spot but it had been airing prior to the Super Bowl. So it didn’t feel like it hit as much because I’ve seen it several times already.

Bob Burch: Yeah, I think that’s also the, there’s a few of those too. There’s benefits to the tees, but then there’s also a lot that just get fully released before. And part of it is we’re in the ad community, so we’re gonna watch some of these before. I mean, we watched that one specifically in our SMT meeting because we were watching a few of them and they get traded around in the chat. So yeah, we had seen that one. It was okay. It wasn’t anything that is gonna be memorable. I know it made us go in Google and say, “Hey, who is the number one beer brand now?” Because it had been Bud Light forever and it’s McUltra.

Heather Riexinger: Yeah, we had to verify that.

Bob Burch: Yeah, so.

Heather Riexinger: Yeah, so it’s interesting. There was a lot of others that were just kind of in the middle for me too, that one that got me, but in a weird way was the Alexa ad, gave me so much anxiety while it was going on because it was like all of my fears in life they were showing on screen and I actually was having a physical reaction to that spot. But it was a really interesting way to approach the idea and hit on that insight that people do feel very anxious about technology taking over and essentially killing us is what it was doing to Chris Pratt. Chris Hemsworth. Chris Hemsworth. But yeah, how do you feel about that?

Bob Burch: I thought the same. I thought it was weird. So kind of the same deal, the ring one. Like the ring one with like, “Hey, we can monitor the entire neighborhood and it’s with AI.” And there were a lot of AI spots. And again, I think we’re all a little conflicted about it because I think a lot of us are like, “Who asked for this other than the people who are gonna make a lot of money off of it?” But I think with that, there is that fear of it taking over and doing things. And they made it into a joke. Ring tried to do it in a serious like, “We’re gonna use it to find pets.” And it’s like, “Yeah, but you could also.” In the wrong hands. Like that could be used in certain ways. And it also reminded me a little in movie reference, but in the Dark Knight. It’s kind of how they track the Joker was the same idea. They were kind of using everybody’s cell phones to find it. So it’s a little creepy. And to kind of position as a good thing, I think a lot of people might go, “How do I turn that off on my ring device?”

Heather Riexinger: I don’t want that. I don’t love that. The one that got me that I actually laughed out loud was Anthropic. And I think for us, it hits real close to home because we’ve been having these conversations already with clients about advertising within the GEOs and different things. So, or the LLMs and everything. So what do you think of that one?

Bob Burch: Yeah, I mean, they’re saying like, “Oh, we’re not gonna have ads.” And they’re hitting at, obviously chat GPT on that. And it’s the, “Yeah, sure.” I don’t believe that.

Heather Riexinger: You’re going to in a year.

Bob Burch: You don’t have it yet. Everything kind of starts even with a little bit. And even like chat GPT, they’re very early on in the ads in terms of what they’re releasing. It’s really high minimums. It’s like 200K to get in. They’re expensive CPM, $60 CPM. So close to Super Bowl level just to pilot it out. So it is interesting that they’re going that way because I think all of us go, “Yeah, sure.” Yeah, that’s the same thing. It was, it kind of reminded me a little like very beginning of the football season, anybody who watches Red Zone, commercial free. And they were like, “Well, we’re gonna have like one 15 second commercial.” By the end of the year, it’s like there were way more than one 15 second commercial in an eight hour period. So, work in the industry, but ads are gonna be everywhere if they can monetize it, they’re gonna do it. So Claude just hasn’t figured out how to do it yet. And they tried to spin it as a benefit, but if the money’s there and when push comes to shove and they have to start actually showing that they’re profitable, cause like none of these things are like generating profit yet, it’ll change.

Heather Riexinger: Yeah, I just love the personification of chat GPT though. And perfect. South Park did a really good one if you haven’t seen the South Park chat GPT episode.

Bob Burch: I haven’t.

Heather Riexinger: Great, well, as we kind of, we’ve been rambling here for a while. So if we wanna end on, what was your favorite, give me like your top three favorite ads.

Bob Burch: So I think I mentioned them. I think Pepsi, so the Polar Bears and the Relaxed Your Tight End from Novartis, I think those were probably my top two. And then outside of that, I would probably go to the NFL, the champion spot. Those were probably my three favorites that I had there that I’ll kind of remember the most there.

Heather Riexinger: The one that I loved that we didn’t talk about it all was Manscaped. So at first that one hit me and I went, ugh. And then by the end, I was actually laughing. It was very un-brand for them. So I felt like that was a good example of something that went with humor, maybe pushed humor a little too far, but it was so un-brand for them that it actually made–

Bob Burch: It will turn a lot of people off.

Heather Riexinger: Made sense.

Bob Burch: Because I don’t think people expected to see the clumps of hair in there on the school. And it’s late in the game after we’re all full of food.

Heather Riexinger: Yeah, what’s going on here?

Bob Burch: It was definitely, it was interesting for them to go there, but like you said, anybody who’s seen their ads, whether on TV or like, I see their ads online too. And yeah, they are not shy about what that product is used for and trying to stand out.

Heather Riexinger: Yeah, it’s defective. That’s one way to do it. The other on the humor side that I really liked was Raisin Bran. I thought that was incredibly clever. And there was a lot leading up where William Shatner was walking around with Raisin Bran. People thought he was just a crazy old man walking around with his cereal before people figured it out. So I thought that that was really effective and a good use of humor with product relevance. And then like you, I think that NFL ad is one that just got my heartstrings as well as the Dove female athletes one, which I think everyone on this podcast has heard me rant about

Bob Burch: more than once. And it’s a message that they’ve gotten out there and they continue to hit on it, but it works for them. And so another good place to put that in and get the eyeballs on that message.

Heather Riexinger: I think overall there was some good ads, a lot of meh in there. But if these were ads that had come out at any other point in the year, we probably would have thought that they were great. It’s just the bar is set so high.

Bob Burch: Yeah, and there’s so much of it. And it’s also hard to know how much of these we’ll have, we’ll continue on. It’ll be interesting. Like sometimes people just abandon. Like one of my favorite spots, I don’t know if it was last year, it was the Michael Serra from the SerraV. Oh the SerraV, that was so good. It kills me that they did. I thought that was so hilarious. And then they just completely abandoned it afterwards. It was a Super Bowl spot and nothing else.

Heather Riexinger: And– Yeah, that was one that, I don’t know that they saw the immediate lift, but because they let it go, who knows how their sales and everything have gone.

Bob Burch: Yeah, and that’s a good point. We’ll see who, we’ll start to see over the next few months who gets a lift and who actually saw the benefits of this and did it deliver the ROI. Hard to know.

Heather Riexinger: Yeah, exactly. So, all right, well we’ll be back I’m sure talking more often with Katie gone. We’re gonna take over and everybody