How to Watch the Super Bowl Ads

It's right around the corner: The annual media onslaught that accompanies the Super Bowl.

I'm not taking about the coverage of the game. I'm talking about the coverage of the advertising. Before the Super Bowl, industry rags will be awash with reports of who the big advertisers are, what we can expect from them, and how much they spent. After the game, consumers and industry experts alike will weigh in on the spots they liked best.

You should not be concerned with any of it.

The Super Bowl advertising hype is perhaps the greatest example in the business world of flawed thinking on a grand scale. The ads have come to be seen as an extension of the game itself, as a form of entertainment. And that's exactly the problem.

It's a catch-22 for the Super Bowl advertisers. If the ads don't entertain, they disappoint. If they do entertain, that doesn't mean they actually work – and all that money goes straight down the rat-hole.

Of course, if you're reading this, then I'm reasonably certain that you're not advertising during the Super Bowl. But that doesn't mean you can't learn some valuable lessons for your business and your brand from the whole extravaganza. Here are three things to keep in mind during the big game:

Awareness is a lousy marketing objective. Every year, certain Super Bowl advertisers attempt to justify their multi-million dollar expenditures with the “increased awareness” argument: “Now everybody will know our name!”

Big deal. Charles Manson has great awareness. But I’m not about to buy anything he’s selling.

Remember all the dot-coms who advertised in Super Bowl a decade ago? I didn’t think so. While their awareness shot up overnight, most of them could not compel consumers to take 10 seconds to visit their websites.

It is not awareness that you seek to create; it is action. This leads us to our second reminder…

The purpose of advertising is to motivate, not to entertain. The day after the Super Bowl, survey results will be released, in which consumers will be asked things like: Which ads were most entertaining? Most creative? Most memorable? “Edgiest”?

The correct answers to these questions are, respectively: “Doesn’t matter”, “doesn’t matter,” “doesn’t matter,” and “no, really… it doesn’t matter.”

To the best of this writer’s knowledge, in the entire history of marketing, there has never been a proven relationship between an advertisement's entertainment value and its motivational value. Likeability has never been correlated to effectiveness.

Call me a stick in the mud, but I don't care how funny an ad is. I only care if it works. Hold your marketing to the same standard. You don’t have enough money in your budget to get into the entertainment business. That’s what the game is for.

Be an "armchair advertiser." Instead of looking for laughs, watch the ads critically. Put yourself in the shoes of the advertiser and try to figure out why they made the choices they made.

Ask: What is the brand trying to say or accomplish? Who are they speaking to? What exactly do they want them to do? Are they successful in achieving their objectives?

Look for signs of persuasion. Making a funny ad is actually pretty easy. Making an ad that motivates people to do something is significantly more difficult. That usually requires an articulation or demonstration of product superiority, consumer benefits and compelling reasons to believe. A few brands are at the level where they have different uses for their ad budgets, but these are the exceptions, not the rule.

So watch the Super Bowl ads. Enjoy them, even. But don't learn the wrong lessons. Forget the fanfare, the "fan favorite" polls, the precocious animals and Bud Light's seemingly endless parade of lame gags. Instead, focus on the stuff that really matters in advertising: Motivating consumers to give your brand a shot.

A version of this post appeared in the January 23, 2009, issue of the Business Courier of Cincinnati, in the column "That Branding Thing."

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