Are you ready? It’s that time of year again…the SUPER BOWL! This year the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers will play in the 47th NFL Super Bowl. Even people who aren’t exactly “sports nuts” get excited about the big game. You can feel the energy around “water-coolers” everywhere… talk of Super Bowl parties, bowl history, the half-time performances, and, of course, those unforgettable Super Bowl commercials!
Do you remember that the Rams punted Pittsburgh back on their own 25-yard line in the 1980 Super Bowl? No? Hmm…well, neither do I! But I bet there’s a pretty good chance most of us remember the commercial that aired during the game that same year featuring “Mean Joe Green” tossing his jersey to a young fan and “Had a Coke and a Smile”. And, if you are old enough to have been around for the 1975 Super Bowl, you may not even remember which teams played but probably recognize “Two all beef patties special sauce lettuce cheese pickles onions on a sesame seed bun” from the McDonalds’ commercial that aired during the big game that year. Those Super Bowl commercials get our attention!
With an estimated 150 million people watching the big game, the Super Bowl is one of the most watched television broadcasts of the year. And because many of us do not turn our attention from the screen during the commercials, it is no surprise advertisers will pay big money to promote a product during one of those time slots. According to an article in the Huffington Post, a 30-second commercial during the game will cost the advertiser around $4 million!
Here are some interesting facts about Super Bowl commercial history:
- Anheuser-Busch, PepsiCo, and Walt Disney Company have aired commercials in each of the past 10 Super Bowls, collectively spending $487 million on advertisements!
- Anheuser-Bush alone has spent $239.1 million. http://www.mediabuyerplanner.com/entry/109678/a-decade-of-super-bowl-ad-stats/
- From 1996-2010, Super Bowl advertisers topped the S&P 500 by an average of 1% in the 2 week period around the game.
- 80% of the time, when an “original” NFL team won the Super Bowl, the Dow Jones finished the year in the black.
(http://investorplace.com/2012/01/5-super-bowl-side-effects/
Whether or not the game will prove exciting enough for Monday morning talk around the “water cooler” is yet to been determined…but one thing we can be sure of is that there will be talk of those commercials!
By the way this may not have been a Super Bowl commercial, but it is still the favorite in our house:
