Why the Super Bowl? They have their reasons

Martin Wolk Chief economics correspondent • Profile • E-mail

Tune in to the Super Bowl Sunday and you can be certain of seeing the usual quota of slick and humorous ads from mainstays of the game including Budweiser, Pepsi-Cola, Subway and Frito-Lay.

But you might be surprised by little-known newcomers who hope to make a big first impression, including makers of snack nuts, contact lenses and kitchen countertops.

Countertops at the Super Bowl? It’s a natural fit, said Gina Covell, a spokeswoman for Houston-based Cosentino USA, a distributor of quartz countertops that ranks among this year’s crop of lesser-known Super Bowl sponsors.

“Home remodeling has been the rage for the past few years, and kitchens are probably the No. 1 room that is remodeled in the house,” said Covell. “What bigger way to break out than in the Super Bowl?”

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With about $1 billion in revenue last year, Cosentino is no startup, but the Super Bowl plunge still represents a big risk. The company, which has never produced a television ad before, is paying top dollar for its debut: $2.4 million for 30 seconds of air time, plus $1 million in production costs for a spot featuring sports celebrities Dennis Rodman and Mike Ditka. The one-day spending spree is more than double last year’s entire advertising budget, which mainly was spent on print spots in publications like Better Homes and Gardens, Covell said.

Cosentino might strike paydirt with its humorous ad, which portrays macho athletes arguing over who is “Diana Pearl,” one of the company’s whimsically named countertop colors. But inexperienced advertisers need to make the Super Bowl part of a complete marketing campaign or risk fading quickly into obscurity as so many one-timers have done, experts say.

Just think back to the “dot-com bowl” of 2000, which featured 17 dot-com advertisers, many of them obscure names that quickly disappeared from view, like OurBeginning.com, LifeMinders.com and Epidemic.com.

“You really need to have a strong company, have a strong product and be a really good marketer before you consider the Super Bowl,” said Chuck Tomkovick, a professor of marketing at the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire.

What were they thinking?
Stories are legion of one-time wonders who botched their only Super Bowl appearance and never returned.  One memorable failure was a 1999 Just For Feet spot that was so bad that the now-defunct shoe store chain actually sued its ad agency. The ad depicted a squad of white militiamen tracking down a barefoot black African runner, knocking him out with a drug-laced beverage and forcing him into Nikes.

Even well-established companies have fumbled their only Super Bowl appearance. A series of 2001 spots from Accenture, a business consulting company, was widely panned as  incomprehensible. 

“It was absolutely horrible,” said John Antil, a business professor at the University of Delaware who studies Super Bowl advertising.

Of course some companies have hidden motives for wanting to be part of the advertising industry’s biggest event of the year, even if they don’t fit the typical Super Bowl mold of food, drink and entertainment.

In Accenture’s case, Antil said, the company formerly known as Andersen Consulting was desperate to gets its new name in front of a large audience that included CEOs and other high-ranking executives.

Advertisers frequently have a secondary target beyond the estimated 130 million U.S. consumers who tune in for at least part of the game.

For example MasterLock, which famously has blown much of its annual advertising budget on past Super Bowl commercials, uses the big game appearance as leverage to entertain buyers and distributors who are crucial to its fortunes. Similarly, car company commercials in the Super Bowl are rarely memorable but may go a long way toward boosting manufacturer relations with key dealers.

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