Late January, and it’s typical weather bliss in the desert, while there is weather stress just about everywhere else. Time for the “awards” season—further elevating the TV and movie sectors of our celebrity-obsessed entertainment culture and an end to the professional football season. And that means it is time for an event so big and….ummm…”Super”, that increasingly the Super Bowl is simply known as the “big game”. 
But long before the National Football League became aggressively proactive by limiting the use of its trademarked ”Super Bowl” phrase in everyday idiom, the presumed superiority of the Super Bowl as television event gave rise to something unique in American marketing—the Super Bowl ad. For decades, companies’ perceived heft or success was often tied to whether they might shell out premium advertising rates (an estimated $4M for 30 seconds in 2014) to reach what is almost annually the world’s largest TV program audience.
Long dominated by beer, soda, snack and movie trailer product categories, the television advertisements of the Super Bowl are almost more compelling than the history of the game itself. Television and advertising critics sit on a winter’s Sunday night with tablet in hand recording every fleeting thought about the “advertising” observed and the significance it poses for ordering the corporate world of hot and not so hot companies.
But at rates both high and incongruent with overall media rate trends (the 30-second rate has more than doubled since 9/11) more than the usual risk comes with a company betting on a Super Bowl ad. Consider the not-so-relevant brands anymore like Careerbuilder.com, Noxema and SalesGenie who all staked part of their marketing fortunes to Super Bowl TV promotion. Or the seemingly dubious decisions by groups such as the U.S. Census and the Canned Food Association of America to think a Super Bowl buy were a cost-effective way to achieve promotional goals.
To a large degree it’s madness—although combatants in the cola and beer wars no doubt have a legitimate interest in the whole thing. But too many advertisers don’t. Forking over huge media (and production) costs for a marquee placed ad that unlikely to be repeated within the program is strategically weak. Why then do so many advertisers annually consider this marketing rite of passage?
No doubt a mid-sized company, such as Arizona-based Go-Daddy.com, feels a sense of having “made it” by virtue of its frequent Super Bowl ad placement. But one wonders if the dollars and cents side of this whole thing is justified? Does Go-Daddy facilitate a favorable ROI with its Super Bowl push or is it simply stroking its own ego about the business success it has enjoyed to date? More than simply just evaluating the “effectiveness” or “entertainment value” of the Super Bowl ad, the time has come to critically consider the whole strategic premise of Super Bowl spot advertising.
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John Durante is marketing services director for WordWrite Communications. 
