Super Bowl Sunday was a couple of weeks ago - one of the biggest sporting events in the US calendar and a smorgasbord of big budget advertising fun for the rest of us. I do not claim to know a whole lot about American football (the little knowledge I do have comes from the brilliant mid noughties TV show Friday Night Lights), but what I do know is that A LOT of ads play during the Super Bowl. There is also normally a jazzy half time show, but we'll save the J Lo praise for another day.
So many ads run in the Super Bowl that last year that they accounted for 49 minutes and 31 seconds of broadcasting time, with a total of 91 commercials airing. Not only that, the cost for a 30 second ad this year was a whopping $5.6 million. This seems like an absolutely absurd amount of money for a 30 second clip of Post Malone drinking beer, but hey, who am I to judge?
I say all this because for a lot of us who live outside the US or don't follow the NFL, the Super Bowl is really all about the advertising, and I have a suspicion that this is also the case for many who do watch the game. In a time where consumers are often fatigued from a near constant stream of advertising on every digital platform, its kind of amazing that we all eagerly await what the corporate giants are going to conjure up next - I don't know if it is brilliant or concerning. No matter your stance on American football, some of the ads are genuinely very entertaining, and provide a lighthearted distraction from the seemingly ongoing chaos of the times we're living in.
As the Kansas City Chiefs triumphed over the San Francisco 49ers at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami for Super Bowl 2020 on Feb. 2, marketers geared up off the field to battle for spectators' attention. And with the cost of a 30-second spot on Fox hitting as much as $5.6 million this year, the stakes were higher than ever. Some advertisers like Facebook and hummus brand Sabra made their Super Bowl debut, joining regulars like Anheuser-Busch InBev, Avocados From Mexico, and Pepsi.
