For the 2006 Winter Olympics, air-time prices varied because of the
different events, and different parts of the NBC networks, showing 416 hours
of Olympic coverage, but the highest rates were $750,000 per 30-second spot.
Superbowl 2007 advertisers were being charged $2.6 for a :30 second chunk
of air time on ABC-TV. Such prices do not include production costs,
perhaps another half million. The purpose of such sporting attractions is to
gather a large audience and deliver it to advertisers.
In May, 2008 Fox reported a record number of viewers - 97.5 million - delivered as the 2008 Superbowl audience; NBC announced that the 2009 Superbowl ads will cost $3 million for 30-second spots.
Advertising: A February in Overdrive:
Super Bowl and Olympics
By STUART ELLIOTT | The New York Times | January 18, 2006
BRACE yourselves, a billion-dollar advertising blitz is coming to a TV set near
you.
Arriving first, on Feb. 5, are the commercials on ABC during the Super Bowl, traditionally
the biggest day of the year for Madison Avenue. Then, five days later, come the
commercials during the NBC coverage of the Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, which
is to run through Feb. 26. Marketers in competitive categories like automobiles,
credit cards, fast food and telecommunications will spend an estimated $1.1 billion
on thousands of commercials during those two sports events.
The concentrated ad onslaught is emblematic of a growing trend. As technology
like digital video recorders makes it easier for consumers to avoid TV commercials,
marketers seek to make spots more memorable by running them during programs that
large audiences still perceive as must-see big events, which they go out of their
way to watch. Such big-event TV includes awards shows like the Oscars and premieres
of popular series like "24," along with live sports events including
the Olympics and the Super Bowl.
The prices for commercials during big-event TV are invariably higher. For instance,
ABC, part of the Walt Disney Company, is charging an estimated average of $2.5
million for each 30-second spot during Super Bowl XL on Feb. 5. That is almost
five times the cost of the highest-priced commercial during a regular program.
Prices vary during the 416 hours of Olympic coverage on NBC and its sibling NBC
Universal networks; the most expensive commercials are $700,000 to $750,000 for
each 30 seconds.
But as TV viewership increasingly splinters, and commercials are increasingly
zipped past or zapped, the rates for such special events may not be too high to
pay, particularly for purveyors of mass-market products.
The Super Bowl, for example, is usually the most-watched show in a given year,
with an audience of 90 million. And more than 120 million people tuned in for
the Nancy Kerrigan-Tonya Harding showdown during the 1994 Winter Games.
"Fragmentation means more and more shows get lower and lower ratings,"
said Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at the Kellogg School of Management at
Northwestern University. "Events like the Super Bowl are arguably the only
places advertisers can reach everyone in the U.S. at one time."
That means the pressure is on to come up with stand-out spots, Mr. Calkins said,
because expectations are very high.
"Some succeed at it," he added. "Some fail."
Indeed, advertisers acknowledge the daunting task that confronts sponsors of big-event
TV.
"Certainly, when you're dropping in excess of two million for a commercial
you've got to pinch yourself to make sure it's the right thing to do," said
Richard Castellini, vice president for consumer marketing at CareerBuilder.com
in Chicago, an online job search service that is owned by Gannett, Knight Ridder
and the Tribune Company.
CareerBuilder made its first Super Bowl appearance last year with three commercials
by the Chicago agency Cramer-Krasselt, all featuring a man annoyed at work by
boisterous chimpanzees. The pitch in all three was the same: Isn't it time to
visit Careerbuilder.com and find a better job? It was a huge gamble, but the spots
and a related online promotion proved tremendously popular among viewers of the
game.
"I recouped the money I spent on the ads in three weeks' time," Mr.
Castellini said, "so it's almost a no-brainer to come back." CareerBuilder
is buying two 30-second spots, with the monkeys again in starring roles, during
Super Bowl XL.
Another first-time Super Bowl sponsor returning for 2006 is Emerald of California
nuts, sold by Diamond Foods, with a brain-teasing 30-second spot by Goodby, Silverstein
& Partners in San Francisco, part of the Omnicom Group.
"We are a new brand in a very, very tough category, and being on the Super
Bowl was a great way to tell consumers and retailers that we are here to stay,"
said Tim Cannon, marketing director at Diamond Foods in Stockton, Calif.
The humorous Emerald spot that ran last February, also by Goodby, Silverstein,
contributed to a sales increase of "about 56 percent in the four weeks after
the Super Bowl," Mr. Cannon said, compared with the previous month. The commercial
during this year's Super Bowl will be part of a broad campaign that will also
include online and print ads.
Another brand that was a Super Bowl rookie in 2005, the Degree for Men antiperspirant
sold by Unilever, has also signed up for a second appearance in the game. The
spot for Super Bowl XL is adapted from a successful European commercial, set in
a make-believe city whose only residents are stuntmen. The humorous spot was created
by the London office of Lowe Worldwide, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies.
The challenge for sponsors was summarized by Jay Kolpon, vice president for marketing
and new business at the Bayer Consumer Care division in Morristown, N.J.
"We want to get people to hear our message, but the Super Bowl is not like
typical advertising," said Mr. Kolpon, whose company will run a 30-second
spot for Aleve pain reliever in the game. It is certainly not a brand known for
the humorous or extravagant spots that typically finish high on the Super Bowl
hit parade.
So, Bayer Consumer Care asked its agency, Energy BBDO in Chicago, to produce "a
Super Bowl-worthy commercial," Mr. Kolpon said, "with a bit of a twinkle
in it as it says in an entertaining way that Aleve allows you to be your best
self." Leonard Nimoy, who played Spock on "Star Trek," will appear
in the Aleve spot by Energy BBDO, part of the BBDO Worldwide unit of Omnicom.
The fact that the Olympics starts so soon after the Super Bowl ends has led some
Super Bowl ad mainstays to pass this time, particularly those that spend huge
sums to be official sponsors of the United States or International Olympic Committees.
Among them are McDonald's and Visa USA.
With McDonald's missing from the Super Bowl, Burger King is coming in, for the
first time in 11 years. Credit card companies like MasterCard International may
turn up to compensate for Visa's absence.
The Kleenex brand of tissues prefers to sponsor the Olympics, said Steve Erb,
assistant marketing director for Kleenex at Kimberly-Clark in Neenah, Wis., because
"Kleenex is a global brand with a presence in 175 countries and the Olympics
is a global stage."
Also, the consumers who buy Kleenex - primarily women with children - identify
more closely with the individuals who compete in the Olympics "and the moms,
dads and coaches who get them there," Mr. Erb said, than with professional
football players.
Kleenex will for the first time run commercials during the Olympics with a sports
theme; spots by JWT in New York, part of the WPP Group, show a young hockey player
facing off against a surprising goalie.
The spots are part of a broader campaign that also includes a partnership with
an NBC Web site (nbcolympics.com) centered on three Olympic athletes and their
mothers, whom consumers can follow through a dedicated Web site (kleenexmoments.com);
a sweepstakes with a dedicated Web site (usgoldgame.com); and store displays.
Other major sponsors of the Winter Games include Bank of America, Coca-Cola, Eastman
Kodak, John Hancock, Home Depot, Johnson & Johnson and Nike.
Advertisers that will run spots during both the Olympics and Super Bowl include
Anheuser-Busch, General Motors and Procter & Gamble.
Super Bowl XL advertisers also include Ameriquest Mortgage, Disney, FedEx and
the New Line and Warner Brothers units of Time Warner. The Sprint unit of Sprint
Nextel will sponsor the halftime show, featuring the Rolling Stones, and also
run two commercials during the game.
"The stakes are high and that does raise the anxiety level," said Mike
Goff, vice president for national advertising at Sprint Nextel in Overland Park,
Kan. "We've entered this with our eyes wide open."
To help create commercials that viewers will like and remember, the company and
its agency, TBWA/Chiat/Day in New York, part of the TBWA Worldwide division of
Omnicom, "looked at a reel of recent Super Bowl spots," Mr. Goff said,
"put 13 potential commercials in test and are doing additional research on
4 of them."
"You can assume there is one that features an animal," he added, laughing,
referring to the popularity of the CareerBuilder chimps and a menagerie's worth
of other beasts that have been stars of Super Bowl spots. Copyright 2006 | The New York Times | Top Commercials That Echo
By STUART ELLIOTT | The New York Times | February 2, 2006
Football fans have always enjoyed watching replays, especially during the Super
Bowl. Now they will be able to watch replays of the Super Bowl's commercials.
New technologies are changing how marketers approach the game — typically
the biggest day of the year for Madison Avenue. The roughly 40 glossy big-budget
spots to run on ABC Sunday — at a record average cost of $2.5 million for
each 30 seconds — will also be available on Web sites like espn.com, nfl.com,
video.google.com and video.yahoo.com;
as video-on-demand programs on digital cable; for downloading to PC's and video
iPods, and on Sprint cellphones.
In the past, fans of the commercials could see only pirated versions, posted haphazardly
and clandestinely. Now advertisers, seeking to capitalize on that interest, want
to make the spots widely and easily accessible.
Some advertisers, like Burger King and the Cadillac division of General Motors,
also plan to offer films about the making of the commercials, and include deleted
scenes — features usually associated with movies on DVD. Some spots will
be shown in movie theaters after the game.
With the fragmentation of media outlets, segmentation of audiences and shrinking
ad budgets, marketers are increasingly determined to get their money's worth —
particularly when a commercial on Super Bowl XL is costing an estimated $83,333
a second.
"Engaging consumers these days — in their minds, in their hearts, in
their heads — takes more than advertising on a special event to a large audience,"
said Robert Passikoff, president of Brand Keys in New York, a customer-loyalty
and brand consultant.
Marketers are realizing that a spot during the Super Bowl, even if watched
by some 90 million people, should mark the start of a marketing plan, not the
finale, as most have in the past.
"Spending all that money for a one-day hit is a fool's errand," said
Gary M. Stibel, chief executive at the New England Consulting Group in Westport,
Conn. "If you're smart, you use your Super Bowl presence to feed your business
through the rest of the year."
An afterlife for the ads is especially valuable because more than in previous
years, the commercials will also be aimed at women, who may not watch the entire
game. For instance, Unilever is not only advertising its men's antiperspirant
brand, Degree, as it did last year, but is also adding for the first time a
commercial for its Dove line of products for women.
A company called American Home Health, which makes the P.S. brand of household
cleaners and hand washes, will make its Super Bowl debut, as will the Aleve
brand of pain reliever sold by Bayer.
The Cadillac spot, for the 2007 Escalade, will be set at a fashion show populated
by supermodels as well as celebrities like Jadakiss and Marcus Allen. "If
you're a rock star, a movie star, an athlete, fashion is where pop culture converges,"
said Tor Myhren, executive creative director at Cadillac's agency, the Troy,
Mich., office of Leo Burnett, part of the Publicis Groupe.
And the Burger King spot will present a minute-long musical with a troupe of
"Whopperettes," performing an over-the-top production number more
reminiscent of the Great White Way than the gridiron. The commercial is being
created by Crispin Porter & Bogusky in Miami, part of MDC Partners.
A spot with such broad appeal is intended to "answer the question of how
do we make big bigger," said Russ Klein, chief global marketing officer
at the Burger King Corporation in Miami.
"It gives us the maximum profile in the game space as the initial step,"
he added, "leading to the other forms of media" like the Internet
and mobile phones. Burger King is owned by investors including Bain Capital.
The desire to appeal to women as well as men is also serving to soften the tone
of the commercials, many of which, judging from previews this week, are trying
to be less crude than in previous years. The humor is more often low key, seeking
to elicit good-natured laughter rather than mockery.
Of course, offering an opportunity to watch commercials more than once works
only if they are worth watching the first time. So the spots for Super Bowl
Sunday, which are often the most creative of the year, are ideal for alternative
distribution systems.
As evidenced by the Burger King mini-musical, sponsors are planning a skein
of spots meant to stand out and generate that elusive, ineffable quality known
as buzz. The commercials will be stuffed with jokes, music, stars acting silly,
animals acting like humans, more special effects than "King Kong"
and more surprise endings than an anthology of O. Henry stories.
For example, to introduce its cellphone service under the Mobile ESPN brand
name, the ESPN division of the Walt Disney Company will run an elaborate 60-second
spot titled "Sports Heaven," created by Arnold Worldwide in Boston,
part of the Arnold Worldwide Partners unit of Havas. The commercial shows a
fan flipping open his phone and being surrounded by a phalanx of athletes like
the baseball player Jim Edmonds; the gymnast Carly Patterson; the boxer Jeff
Lacy, known as Left Hook; and the basketball player Stephon Marbury.
"We even have the national spelling bee champion," Katie Lacey, vice
president for marketing at ESPN, said, laughing.
The Pepsi-Cola Company unit of PepsiCo, where Ms. Lacey worked previously, is
to run three spots during the game: two for Diet Pepsi, created by DDB Worldwide
in New York, part of the Omnicom Group, and the third for Sierra Mist, created
by BBDO Worldwide in New York, also part of Omnicom. The commercials will feature
the rap artist P. Diddy, the actors Jackie Chan and Jay Mohr and the comedian
Kathy Griffin.
Among the other familiar faces to appear in Super Bowl spots, wherever they
may be watched, are the comedian Tim Allen, in a commercial for the coming Disney
movie "The Shaggy Dog"; Richard Dean Anderson, reprising his role
as "MacGyver" in a MasterCard commercial; the model Fabio, in a commercial
for Nationwide insurance; Kermit the Frog, in a spot for the Ford Escape sold
by the Ford Motor Company; and Leonard Nimoy of "Star Trek" fame in
the Aleve spot.
The Disney spot is being created internally. The MasterCard spot is by McCann
Erickson Worldwide in New York, part of the McCann Worldgroup division of the
Interpublic Group of Companies. The Nationwide spot is by TM Advertising in
Irving, Tex., also part of Interpublic. The Ford commercial is by JWT in Detroit,
part of the WPP Group.
This year's lineup of advertisers includes long-timers like Anheuser-Busch,
FedEx and Pepsi-Cola; relative newcomers like Ameriquest Mortgage, CareerBuilder
and Emerald nuts, sold by Diamond Foods; returnees like Burger King, back after
11 years; and first-timers that include American Home Health, Aleve, Dove, Mobile
ESPN and Nationwide.
The most crowded ad category is likely to be automakers. In addition to Ford
and General Motors, American Honda Motor and Toyota Motor Sales USA are scheduled
to buy commercials in the game. Movie studios will be close behind; they include
Disney and two Time Warner divisions, New Line and Warner Brothers. | Top
Lifting Super Bowl Ads
Above the Lowbrow Level
By STUART ELLIOTT | The New York Times | February 6, 2006
FOR those of us who watch the Super Bowl for the commercials, effusive thank-you's
are in order the morning after: to Steven P. Jobs, for the video iPod; to Al Gore,
for inventing the Internet; and to Janet Jackson, for the malfunctioning wardrobe.
They deserve the kudos because they could be deemed responsible for the marked
improvement in the commercials during Super Bowl XL last night. The fact that
the spots are to be made widely available — on Web sites, for downloading,
as video-on-demand programs — outside the broadcast of the game on ABC, seemed
to inspire advertisers and agencies to broaden the appeal beyond the typical male
football fanatic, who stays glued to the set to giggle at ads with jiggling cheerleaders
or flatulent horses.
And the pledge by most Super Bowl sponsors to steer clear of crass, frat-boy humor,
made after Ms. Jackson's halftime mishap of 2004, remained largely in effect.
To be sure, some spots were aimed at the lowest common denominator — after
all, the game usually draws 90 million or more viewers — but refreshingly,
they were outnumbered by spots reaching for a higher form of hilarity or trying
to tug at the heartstrings.
What follows is an assessment of some of the best and worst commercials during
the game. The spots described below are among 35 provided to reporters before
the game, out of the total of about 50 that were scheduled to run.
AMERICAN HOME HEALTH A commercial evocative of the 1995 film "Safe"
presented the P.S. line of cleaners and hand washes made by American Home Health
as the alternative to wearing hazmat suits in public. Creepy but clever. Agency:
the Ronin Advertising Group.
AMERICAN HONDA MOTOR The Ridgeline truck sold by American Honda Motor played Cupid
to two cartoon characters usually found on mud flaps. A delightful spot that mashed
up Looney Tunes and the Pep Boys. Agency: RPA.
BUD LIGHT Commercials for the Bud Light beer brand sold by Anheuser-Busch were
centered on sight gags that ranged from slight to superb. The weakest reprised
a tired tale of two friends confronted by an angry bear. The standout showed a
"magic fridge" inspiring an urban cargo cult. Agency: the Chicago office
of DDB Worldwide, part of the Omnicom Group.
BUDWEISER Never mind stupid tricks, pet or human. The performers in three commercials
for Budweiser beer, also sold by Anheuser-Busch, were smarter than the average
Letterman guest. The best spot asked this offbeat question: What do you call a
shorn sheep that disrupts a football game played by the Bud Clydesdales? Why,
a streaker, of course. Agency: DDB Chicago.
BURGER KING The Burger King Corporation offered a twisted, over-the-top tribute
to Busby Berkeley, the movie musical maven, by way of "Springtime for Hitler"
from "The Producers." The hilarious spot presented chorus girls dressed
as Whopper ingredients, piling atop each other to simulate the making of a sandwich.
Let's hope there is a sequel next year honoring Berkeley's big number from "Dames,"
retitled "I Only Have Fries for You." Agency: Crispin Porter & Bogusky,
part of MDC Partners.
CAREERBUILDER The chimpanzees that were so (inexplicably) popular in spots last
year for the job-search Web site CareerBuilder, owned by a consortium of publishers
that includes the Tribune Company, returned in two commercials, much to the dismay
of animal-rights activists and many viewers with I.Q.'s in the three digits. But
in the end, it is difficult to hate party animals when they are actually animals.
Agency: Cramer-Krasselt.
FEDEX A far-out spot for FedEx, giving a goofy glimpse at the dangerous life of
prehistoric man, was among the funniest in the game. But fans of the current crop
of Geico cave-man commercials, Monty Python or the 1981 movie "Caveman"
may cry copycat. Agency: the New York office of BBDO Worldwide, a unit of Omnicom.
GODADDY A risqué commercial in the game last year for GoDaddy, the Web
site registrar, worked because it used the stereotype of a buxom babe to mock
the hypocrisy of the hysteria over Ms. Jackson's halftime performance. But the
spot this year brought back the babe without that higher purpose. As a result,
it seemed trite and sexist. Agency: in-house.
MASTERCARD Another sign that the phrase "witty Super Bowl spot" may
no longer be oxymoronic came in a commercial for MasterCard, which simultaneously
celebrated and sent up the TV series "MacGyver." The star, Richard Dean
Anderson, returned to parody how he used random items to help save the world.
Among his purchases: an air freshener, tweezers, nasal spray and a turkey baster.
Agency: McCann Erickson Worldwide, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies.
NATIONWIDE A commercial for Nationwide Financial showed there is some life left
in a Super Bowl ad mainstay: the surprise ending. The spot seemed to be selling
"Shampoo di Italia," endorsed by the model Fabio, but the "aha!"
moment revealed the pitch to be for retirement planning. Agency: TM Advertising,
part of Interpublic.
PEPSICO Two commercials for Diet Pepsi, sold by the Pepsi-Cola division of PepsiCo,
followed the company's Super Bowl ad playbook so closely that watching them seemed,
to quote a former Pepsi-Cola spokesman, like déjà vu all over again.
Celebrities? Check. Music? Check. Frantic pacing? You bet. Knocking Coke? Uh-huh.
Still, there were some cute touches, like a rap-music spoof that renamed the brand
"D. Pepsi." Agency: DDB New York.
PROCTER & GAMBLE The creation of the new Gillette Fusion razor, sold by Procter
& Gamble, was compared to the effort of master fusion, the process that powers
the sun. Really. No kidding. This smug, self-important spot may be the most bombastic
since a campaign that peddled the 1957 Mercury as "dynamite from Detroit!"
Agency: BBDO New York.
Copyright 2006 | The New York Times |Sports Business Network
Headline CentralDecember 25, 2003
"It would appear corporate America can't get enough of the bowls. As the
NFL regular season winds down, the college football bowl season takes center stage
-- a record-setting 28 games beginning with the New Orleans Bowl last week, expanding
in earnest with the Mazda Tangerine Bowl on Dec. 22, and ending 20 days after
it begins with the Nokia Sugar Bowl to crown the BCS national champion. The business
facts have remained fairly constant over the past three years:
The 28 bowls have a record collective payout of over $202 million.
Thirteen of the "niche bowls" pay less than $1 million to their respective
schools (though above the NCAA mandated minimum of $750,000); 11 bowls pay between
$1 million and $2 million; the SBC Cotton Bowl pays $3 million; the Capital One
Bowl pays $5.1 million per team; the four BCS bowls pay $14 million-$17 million
to the eight participating schools and their respective conferences.
The year marks a period of relative corporate sponsor stability. Twenty-one of
the bowls have corporate names attached. New sponsors such as Gaylord Hotels (Music
City Bowl), PlainsCapital (Ft. Worth Bowl), EV1.net (Houston Bowl), and Sheraton
(Hawaii Bowl) have been added to the corporate roster.
Only the Humanitarian Bowl (the bowl with the unique Jan. 3 niche and a minimal
$750,000 payout) and the Rose Bowl remain without corporate affiliations.
Four sponsors have effectively taken over the brand of their respective bowls:
GMAC, Insight.com, Continental Tire, and Outback.
Four bowls receive substantial money from the tourist industry and public sector
in exchange for public naming rights: New Orleans Bowl; Las Vegas Bowl; Motor
City Bowl; Silicon Valley Bowl.
The categories of "Corporate America bowl naming" break down like this:
The finance category leads the way with seven bowls:
PlainsCapital Ft. Worth Bowl
MasterCard Alamo Bowl
Wells Fargo Sun Bowl
Pacific Life Holiday Bowl
AXA Liberty Bowl
MainStay Independence Bowl
Capital One Bowl
The car category is close behind with four sponsors:
Mazda Tangerine Bowl
Toyota Gatorade Bowl
GMAC Bowl
Continental Tire Bowl
The food category is next with four:
Diamond Walnut San Francisco Bowl
Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl
Tostitos Fiesta Bowl
Outback Bowl
The phone and service industry category is next with three:
SBC Cotton Bowl
Nokia Sugar Bowl
FedEx Orange Bowl
The high-tech industry has reduced its commitment substantially over
the past five years, with two bowls remaining:
EV1.net Houston Bowl
Insight.com Bowl (Phoenix)
Thankfully for cynics and pundits, Poulan Weedeater remains on the outside
looking in after a glorious run as sponsor of the Independence Bowl. Diamond
Walnut is hanging in there with its San Francisco Bowl sponsorship, earning
the title as the bowl with the most bizarre name.
The 28 bowls with 56 teams invite mediocrity, at least statistically. Four teams
have six losses; 10 bowl qualifying teams have 5 losses; and the combined record
of all bowl participants is 482-200 (the 200 losses being the most in recent
memory).
Clearly, the 21 sponsored games demonstrate that Corporate America can be happy
with various levels of investment in their respective bowls. Joyce Julius &
Associates research reveals that the recall of bowl titles is one of the
most successful corporate investments through a sports calendar year.
In addition, the local and national exposure over the period leading up to the
bowl is substantial for Corporate America as well. The Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl,
for example, earned $2.6 million in exposure last year, up 250 percent from
two years before.
The SBC Cotton Bowl had $22.8 million in exposure, up from $6.5 million in 2002.
At the other end of the scale, Tostitos enjoyed $76.6 million worth of exposure
in last year's Fiesta Bowl, compared to $27.4 million three years ago (and easily
justifying its six-year, $30 million deal as bowl sponsor).
Specific case studies seem to prove this trend as well. MasterCard took over
for Sylvania as the title sponsor of the Alamo Bowl, with a three-year deal
estimated at $1.5 million per year. Texas-based financial services company PlainsCapital
signed a two-year deal to launch the inaugural Ft. Worth Bowl this year. This
last week, Auto Zone signed a multiyear deal to become title sponsor of the
Liberty Bowl, committing approximately $1 million annually beginning next year
.
On the other hand, MainStay declined its option on the fourth year of its agreement,
meaning that the Dec. 31 Independence Bowl will be the sponsor's last (maybe
Poulan Weedeater will be back after all). Sega Sports exercised its option to
void the final year of its three-year contract to sponsor the Las Vegas Bowl
this year, though bowl organizers seem optimistic about finding a replacement.
While "sponsorship musical chairs" is not as prolific as with naming
golf tournaments, the branding of college bowls becomes a significant chore
for sports marketers.
Games like the Outback Bowl and GMAC Bowl have "sold their branding soul"
in order to generate substantial income. Obviously, bowl organizers seek the
longest-term deal with the least intrusion on their history and tradition; corporate
marketing directors attempt to leverage their situation into a larger involvement.
Overall, Corporate America seems happy, and the business is destined to stay
that way unless or until there is a major BCS-driven shakeup from above before
2006.
Of the 21 games that existed in both 2001 and last year, 14 saw ratings declines.
Bowls like the Silicon Valley Bowl (down 42.9 percent), Motor City Bowl (down
40.6 percent), and the Music City Bowl (down 28.1 percent) were hit significantly,
though bowl organizers are especially sensitive to honoring their conference
tie-ins this time around.
Obviously, team payouts are almost directly related to the nature of the television
commitment, and bowl organizers covet the long-term stability that ESPN and
ABC seem to create. That family of networks televises all but two of the 28-bowl
roster (with CBS televising the Sun Bowl and Fox televising the Cotton Bowl).
Corporate researchers agree that bowl games provide a unique opportunity
to reach the high demographic viewer.
According to Scarborough Research, adult bowl game viewers are 14 percent more
likely than the general public to buy a car, 33 percent more likely to have
mutual funds, 28 percent more likely to have a money market account, and 20
percent more likely to do online banking. As long as this trend continues,
even relatively insignificant TV ratings by normal standards would very well
satisfy most bowl organizers.
Many cynics argue that these bowls serve little useful purpose. They note
that attendance has decreased across the board; the Alamo Bowl attendance dropped
22.3 percent; Silicon Valley Classic down 66.7 percent; New Orleans Bowl down
29.6 percent; the Houston Bowl down 16.4 percent; and the Tangerine Bowl down
24.1 percent.
More to the point, however, realists understand that the "niche bowls"
serve an incredibly useful purpose for smaller conferences and non-BCS teams
(especially in fundraising, team morale, and other intangibles)
.
As long as the ratings are arguably stable, look for ESPN Regional Television
to continue to take equity interests in staging more and more bowl games (they
operate the Las Vegas Bowl, Sheraton Hawaii Bowl, and PlainsCapital Ft. Worth
Bowl now). Also look for Corporate America to continue the broad level of sponsorships,
after the inevitable individual "sponsorship musical chairs" continue
over time.
Most important, as the Dec. 31 Diamond Walnut San Francisco Bowl ushers in the
New Year on the East Coast, the wacky bowl season proves once again that Corporate
America is a critical underpinning in the business of sports.
PRNewswire
News media stories provide Super Bowl XLII advertisers with free publicity worth tens of millions of dollars
Ever since Apple Computer aired its groundbreaking “1984” advertisement in Super Bowl XVIII, the news media have scrutinized the ads almost as intensively as the game itself. In 2008, news coverage of the ads broadcast on the world’s most-watched sporting event reached an all-time high, with 6,846 broadcast news stories about the ads in the weeks before and after the event, according to an analysis by Cision’s broadcast monitoring group.
Cision, a leading provider of premium broadcast news monitoring and management applications, estimates that news stories on 34 advertisers’ Super Bowl XLII ad campaigns this year reached more than 750 million viewers, beyond the game-day audience for the ads themselves. Cision estimates these broadcast news placements provided tens of millions of dollars worth of free publicity to the advertisers, even before additional valuable exposure in print and online news media.