The 2010 Indianapolis Colts vs. New Orleans Saints will be remembered not just for the game and remarkable come-back from the New Orleans flood by the Saints, but as a turning point for the annual love-fest of funny and insightful commercials.

The Super Bowl attracts an audience of 100 million people (by comparison, 37.8 million Americans watched a full-day of President Obama’s ingratiation).

Many tune in just for the ads- renown for their steep costs to broadcast at prime-time.

A survey  showed that Canadians were more interested in watching Super Bowl commercials than the big game.

Back in 1967, 30-seconds airtime for a Super bowl commercial cost $42,500 (£26,522.72) on CBS and $37,500 on NBC (£23.500).

This year, CBS asked $2.6 million (£1.62m) for 30 seconds.

Super bowl when the biggest brands on the market come shoulder-to-shoulder with biggest names on the field

Many familiar names chose not to pay.  These included FedEx, General Motors and Pepsi.

In Pepsi’s case, the brand felt it would be more prudent to donate the money to its community based social Web 2.0 Pepsi Refresh campaign.

Controversially, CBS allowed a conservative group called ‘Focus on the Family’ to air a 30-second commercial that told the story of the mother of footballer Tim Tebow of the Florida Gators, who chose his life over abortion.  Reportedly CBS charged $2.5m to broadcast the commercial.

However the global publicity surrounding the commercial was so great that by way of coverage, in terms of brand value Focus on the Family received back, several times what it cost to broadcast.

Sharing the love

The community spirit also spread to other brands on the Super Bowl commercial playlist.

Doritos crisps held a competition to produce its iconic Super Bowl commercials.

Four thousand entrants applied.

Six finalists each won $25k.

The top three, featured at the game itself, were rewarded $2m between them.

Rival brand Coca Cola featured a commercial with the Simpsons.

Many brands used the Super Bowl to cross-refer TV viewers to websites in order to complete their brand experience.

Some PR spinners used the Super Bowl to showcase commercials that would never get to the game simply because of CBS’s judgement on what constituted contentious content.

However the last laugh went to the brands, which, thanks to viral ‘web-of-mouse’ received thousands of hits for their ‘banned’ commercials online.

These included GoDaddy: Lola in which Larry Jones played a flamboyant gay man.

Man Crunch: Men Kissing.  Another example of CBS’s bias concerning homosexuals

Doritos: Murder, in which a crisp eater accidently kills a pedestrian.

(Definitely not a pro-life move).

Meanwhile rival sports brand conglomerate NBA, which boasts some of the world’s best-known basketball players who have deals with some of the biggest sport brand icons,  is gearing up for its version of the Super Bowl – the All Stars Weekend.

NBA has muted the idea of spreading its brand deeper into the European market.

Jonathan Gabay

www.brandforensics.co.uk

The Super Bowl commercials for 2010

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