SUPER BOWL COMMERCIALS: JUST BRING IT!

The super bowl has laid a foundational opportunity for advertisers to exhibit their best talent on one of television's biggest stages.  Commercials get possibly the largest viewership from this event and have proven in the past, even before Facebook and Youtube, to have a viral effect among consumers.  Advertisers are granted the opportunity to reinforce their brand with memorable commercials.

Past

Who can ever forget the old Budweiser commercials.  The Budweiser frogs might jump into your mind, Carlos Mencia teaching a U.S. citizenship class, or football kicking Clydesdale horses.  The old Budweiser campaigns had longevity, repeatability, and was so memorable that the Clydesdale is what defined the brand.

The oldest of the super titan of ads I can remember is the Coca Cola commercial from the 1980 Super Bowl starring "Mean Joe Green".  This was a time when Coca Cola capitalized off of the "Have a Coke and a Smile" campaign.  Coca Cola has always had the knack to produce commercials that give consumers that warm fuzzy feeling.  They play strongly on the emotion of consumers to wan that harmonious world where the world just all makes sense.  Take for instance the Polar Bear commercials. These were amazing, and again had the ability to define what the Coca Cola brand was all about.

Present

In the past few years many ads have begun to take a major shift from selling a product and producing brand longevity to selling sex and showing a lot of skin.  Car's Jr. has been at the spearhead of this subject, always treading the line between what is NC-17 and air-able on national television.  Let's begin with the sultry and controversial Paris Hilton ad aired about 5 years ago. If we fast forward to last year, Carl's Jr. again decided to treat a thin line by airing the  Kate Upton backseat burger commercial.  Now this year Mercedes-Benz has chosen to use Kate Upton in another sultry commercial that seems to not so much sell a luxery vehicle, but instead uses sexuality as a ticket to more viewers.

Does Sex Sell?

 

Photo from http://www.autoblog.com/2013/01/22/kate-upton-mercedes-benz-cla-super-bowl-video/

Using sexuality to sell a product or produce a calling to a brand seems like a weak attempt at targeting only a male audience, which narrows product opportunity severely when we consider that the larger market is women.  Most ads that make an attempt to sell sexuality miss the whole explanation or benefits of the product, therefore leave the consumer only thinking about one think that the product surely can not guarantee.  According to http://www.inc.com, "when you begin to rely on tricks for marketing, it's a sign that perhaps you lack the insight into and relationship with your customers that should really drive a business."