Super Bowl LV: What We Know and What to Expect
After an NFL season like no other, the Super Bowl is finally upon us. For marketing teams across every company, this usually means they have been preparing a compelling spot to capture the eyes of viewers nationwide. But things are a little different this year. Perennial Super Bowl advertisers such as PepsiCo, CocaCola, and Anheuser-Busch, will be adjusting the strategies for many of their brands this year. For instance, Anheuser-Busch's
Budweiser will be sitting out for the first time in 37 years and will instead be
donating money and advertising COVID-19 vaccination awareness during the Super Bowl. Although PepsiCo will be running ads for their other brands, Pepsi is opting out of a commercial and will be solely focused on sponsoring the halftime show. Many of these companies rely on stadium sales or other in-person events and have experienced significant losses in revenue due to the COVID-19 pandemic and have opted to allocate their budgets in other meaningful ways.
After the unprecedented year 2020 was, companies are trying to carefully navigate their approach to this years’ ads.
Dartmouth Professor Paul Argenti stated, “We have a pandemic that is casting a pall over just about everything. It’s hard to feel the exuberance and excitement people normally would.” This is why some companies are trying to be sensitive to the times we are living in and changing their traditional marketing pushes
However, some spots and marketing campaigns have already been launched from brands such as Bud Light, Chipotle, and Tide. Bud Light will be switching things up this year, debuting their
Seltzer Lemonade with this year's ad in an effort to help them propel the new product into the highly competitive hard seltzer industry. There will also be a few newcomers during this year’s Super Bowl. Despite the toll the pandemic has taken on many brands, some have taken advantage of more consumers being at home,
including Mercari and Scotts - both of which will be advertising for the first time this year. Mercari, an e-commerce company, will be airing a short 15 second ad focusing on the idea that you can “buy almost anything from home,” an important concept that keeps consumers safe during these times. Scotts, a miracle gro company focused on lawn care and maintenance, will be making their Super Bowl debut using some of the extra revenue earned in 2020.
It should be interesting to see if the trends and brands of this year’s Super Bowl advertising will remain in years to come. However, if the world returns to a sense of normalcy, we still may see major brands choosing to pull back on Super Bowl marketing efforts and allocate toward important social causes. In an age where digital marketing is on a meteoric rise, companies may no longer need to spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads in order to reach mass consumers, especially as streaming and non-traditional TV viewership increases. Consumers can now be reached through websites and social media apps such as TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter. However, this now opens the door for new companies to reach one of the largest audiences and purchase airtime during the Super Bowl for the first time.
Check back next week for our full report on the Super Bowl Ads and their corresponding digital marketing efforts!
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