The Holy Grail of advertising

The 47th edition of the Super Bowl takes place on Sunday and pits the San Francisco 49ers against the Baltimore Ravens in New Orleans, Louisiana. But as like in previous years the build up to the most watched US telecast is not all about the teams, players and coaches. At a cost of about four million dollars for 30 seconds highly-anticipated Super bowl adverts are creating quite the buzz as companies also look to cash in on the championship game. Ann Mukherjee, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of Frito-La North America, said: ‘‘This is the holy grail of advertising. And so when you get on that stage and everyone is watching, it’s almost a sport in itself, advertising. And when you come out a winner, you are just as big as the team that won the Super Bowl itself right, so its huge.’‘ Due to the stratospheric cost of placing an ad it’s usually the same advertisers involved every year. And although celebrities and humour remain the tried, tested and successful theme businesses are now including social media in the mix not only to promote the product before and after the game but also to gage viewers reactions to the ads during the match. Peter Shankman, Marketing consultant and CEO of Geek factory said: ‘‘You’ll know immediately if your ad has any sort of success by whether or not it’s trending on Twitter. Twitter is a boon for advertisers in the respect that they can see in real time if that ad is working, what people are saying and of course Twitter’s top trending lists right to the right on the homepage of Twitter show you what’s working and what’s not.’‘ Sunday’s game promises a television audience of over 100 million people and despite the cost of some 4 million dollars per 30 seconds most advertisers and viewers will agree that its money definitely well spent.