Super Bowl brings pressure for advertisers as well as teams

By Sydney Emberm, New York Times News Service

Friday, Feb. 5, 2016 | 1:16 a.m.

On a recent Sunday morning, actor Eugene Levy crouched next to an industrial fan at a sound stage in Queens. A nearby smoke machine cloaked Levy and everyone else on the set in a gray haze.

“How many shots do they need to blow some air up a dress?” Levy asked, peering at the actress standing on a platform above him.

The line was among those Levy was trying out as part of the script, but it was also the question many on the production team were likely asking themselves, as the director ordered take after take to make sure every detail was just right.

Levy was not on a movie set, however. He was filming a Super Bowl commercial for Snickers.

The work being put into the ad — which riffs on the classic scene in “The Seven Year Itch” when a gust of air from a subway grate blows Marilyn Monroe’s dress up — underscores the lengths to which brands are going to make the most of the staggering $5 million it costs to buy 30 seconds of commercial time during the Super Bowl, which will be shown on CBS on Sunday.

The average cost of a 30-second Super Bowl ad has increased roughly 50 percent in the last decade when adjusted for inflation, according to data provided by WPP’s Kantar Media. And this year is more expensive than ever, putting blockbuster-level pressure on brands to produce ads that justify the hefty price tag.

Advertisers are reticent about how much they spend to produce Super Bowl ads, but an average commercial during the game costs more than $160,000 a second for the commercial time alone. In a loose comparison, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” cost roughly $25,000 a second to produce.

“It’s a mind-warping amount of money,” said Andrew Florance, chief executive of the CoStar Group, which owns Apartments.com, another Super Bowl advertiser.

Advertisers have sought for years to milk more attention from their Super Bowl spots, releasing online teasers and creating contests on social media, among assorted bells and whistles. But with the media landscape undergoing constant change and becoming ever more varied, there is also an underlying anxiety about how best to reach people.

Even as advertising dollars shift online, television commercials — particularly during live events like the Super Bowl that draw huge audiences— are still in many ways the surest way to get in front of the most eyeballs at once. The Super Bowl also appeals to advertisers because many viewers are just as eager to watch the commercials as they are to watch the game.

The high price and high pressure can be worth it. Lesser-known brands like Avocados From Mexico, a first-time advertiser last year, boast of increased awareness among consumers and significant bumps in sales.

But it also comes with a big risk: If the ads flop — or worse, create backlash — they can be an embarrassment and a big waste of money. A commercial for Nationwide insurance during last year’s Super Bowl that showed a young boy lamenting the things he would never be able to do — “I’ll never learn to ride a bike. I won’t get cooties.” — because he had died from a preventable accident was quickly derided for being too morose. The executive who oversaw the spot has since left the company.

The high cost of Super Bowl ads also comes at a time when many brands are looking to cut their overall advertising budgets. So the decision to hand over millions of dollars for a single commercial is not one advertisers take lightly.

“Obviously, everyone takes a look at the cost of the Super Bowl investment,” said Matt Montei, senior marketing director for Wrigley confections, which includes Skittles.

To justify that spending, many brands are looking for more ways to hold consumers’ attention once the commercials go off the air. Nearly every brand has a social media strategy. Google and Facebook both introduced new Super Bowl-related offerings in recent weeks to help advertisers further infiltrate viewers’ second screens.

“We have a whole war room set up at the agency,” said Dean Evans, the chief marketing officer for Hyundai Motor America, which will run two 30-second spots during the game and two 60-second spots before the game.

Some brands have decided that the frenzy is not worth it. GoDaddy, whose provocative ads have run during the Super Bowl since 2005, decided not to make a TV appearance this year. Instead, the company is placing targeted online ads and running a 30-second spot during the live stream of the game on CBSSports.com. It is also advertising on Facebook Sports Stadium, a new offer from the Web giant in which users can follow information, comments and posts about events in real time.

“We don’t need to use TV and the Super Bowl to get our name out there,” said Phil Bienert, chief marketing officer of GoDaddy. He said advertising during the Super Bowl was like “playing Powerball” because there are so many ads that it is difficult to stand out. Last year, 39 companies, some with multiple brands, ran ads during the Super Bowl.

Snickers, however, is willing to play the lottery. At the Queens soundstage, actor Willem Dafoe — playing the part of a cranky, hungry Marilyn Monroe — wore a white dress and heels, which gave him some difficulty as he stood on the subway grate reading his lines. At one point, he yelled that someone in his line of sight was distracting him, sending the production team scrambling to remove the offender so that shooting, which was scheduled to take all day, could resume.

“There’s a lot of pressure,” said Peter Kain, executive creative director at BBDO New York, the ad agency working with Snickers. “They spend so much money on it, and they want their money’s worth.”