Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - S6E05 - Judgment Day: Super Bowl Advertising

Episode Date: February 3, 2017

This week, we take a look at the biggest day of the year for the advertising industry: The Super Bowl. The only sporting event where viewers pay as much attention to the commercials as they do the game. We'll analyze a tiny but ambitious brand that bet its entire marketing budget on one single Super Bowl commercial, a website that created a purposefully banned ad to generate free buzz and a company that created the most famous Super Bowl commercial of all time one year, then aired another the next that was such a flop, they sent the ad agency packing. That's why they call it "Judgement Day" - because careers and accounts hang in the balance on Super Bowl Sunday.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly. As you may know, we've been producing a lot of bonus episodes while under the influences on hiatus. They're called the Beatleology Interviews, where I talk to people who knew the Beatles, work with them, love them, and the authors who write about them. Well, the Beatleology Interviews have become a hit, so we are spinning it out to be a standalone podcast series. You've already heard conversations with people like actors Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, and Beatles confidant Astrid Kershaw. But coming up, I talk to May Pang, who dated John Lennon in the mid-70s. I talk to double fantasy guitarist Earl Slick, Apple Records creative director John Kosh. I'll be talking to Jan Hayworth,

who designed the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Very cool. And I'll talk to singer Dion, who is one of only five people still alive who were on the Sgt. Pepper cover. And two of those people were Beatles. The stories they tell are amazing. So thank you for making this series such a success. And please, do me a favor, follow the Beatleology interviews on your podcast app. You don't even have to be a huge Beatles fan, you just have to love storytelling. Subscribe now and don't miss a single beat. We'll see you next time. new locations. What matters is that you have something there to adapt with you, whether you need a challenge or rest. And Peloton has everything you need, whenever you need it. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. From the Under the Influence digital box set, this episode is from Season 6, 2017. that's new, new, new!

You're not you when you're hungry. You're in good hands with all things. You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly. For the past few months, a small plant in Ada, Ohio, has prepared for this very special day. The company is Wilson Sporting Goods. It is the only dedicated football factory in the world. It all started one day back in 1941. The founder of the Chicago Bears stood up in an owner's meeting and proposed that Wilson be the official football supplier to the NFL.

The vote carried. That means for the last 76 years, every single play, every single point has been made with a Wilson football. On a typical day, the company makes 4,000 footballs. In a typical year, it manufactures over 700,000. The small 150-person factory controls 70% of the football market. The plant's workers don't use high-tech equipment to make the footballs. Instead, they use sewing machines from the mid-1950s, and the 16-stitch holes on each ball are laced by hand. It takes three days to make a single football. And while every day is Football Day at Wilson, the Super Bowl is the big day. Each team will receive 108 Super Bowl footballs.

Typically, 120 of those balls are used during the game. That's an interesting stat. A Super Bowl game is 60 minutes long, divided up into four 15-minute quarters. But within a Super Bowl game, there is really only about 12 minutes of actual action. You heard right. Only 12 full minutes are played between the time a ball is snapped

and a play is completed or whistled down. The rest of the three-hour broadcast is made up of replays, the halftime show, players standing around waiting for the next play, the pre-show and post-show chit-chat, and of course, the 50 minutes of commercials. With 120 footballs used in every Super Bowl game,

it suggests a new ball is brought in for every play, which makes those footballs very valuable. Over 100 million pairs of eyes are locked onto Wilson's product on Super Bowl Sunday, and that's why it's Wilson's biggest day of the year for the advertising industry. All the big brands hit the field with their best advertising ideas. There's a lot at stake. The Super Bowl is the most expensive single-day ad purchase of the year because the big game delivers the largest audience of the year.

It's also the only day when viewers pay as much attention to the commercials as they do to the game. Those commercials will be voted on, ranked, reviewed like television shows, and analyzed. There's one thing for sure. NRG Stadium in Houston won't be the only place where there'll be touchdowns and fumbles on Sunday. You're under the influence. The very first Super Bowl game was played the same year the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper, in the Summer of Love, 1967. But the Super Bowl wasn't called the Super Bowl back then.

It was called the World Championship. That championship was the result of a merger between the National Football League and the eight-year-old American Football League. The game was broadcast on both CBS and NBC. And get a load of this. Neither network kept a copy. It's said both erased the tapes to record soap operas. Tickets cost $6, $10, and $12,

and 30,000 seats went empty that day. It would be the last Super Bowl not to sell out. The big game didn't get its big name until 1969. According to Time magazine and the terrific book The Super Bowl of Advertising by Bernice Kanner, the owner of the Kansas City Chiefs was telling an NFL owners meeting about a Super Bowl his daughter owned that bounced incredibly high. Then he paused and blurted out, Super Bowl. The other owners weren't bowled over by the name, and NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle thought it was hokey.

But the name. And NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle thought it was hokey, but the name stuck. It costs a lot of money to advertise in the Super Bowl. In that first game back in 67, a 30-second ad was priced around $40,000. This year, the price is $5 million, or about $166,000 per second. That will rake in about $2 billion in sales for the Fox network. There is always a lot of talk about whether spending $5 million for 30 seconds is worth it. Well, it all depends on how you look at it.

First, there's the size of the audience. The most-watched Super Bowl ever attracted over 114 million viewers. It all depends on how you look at it. First, there's the size of the audience. The most-watched Super Bowl ever attracted over 114 million viewers. Of the top 20 most-watched TV broadcasts in the history of television, can you guess how many of those were Super Bowl games? Answer? 19. The only non-Super Bowl entry in the top 20 was the final episode of MASH,

which clocked in at number 8 at the time of this writing, with 106 million viewers. The Super Bowl attracts the largest viewing audience of the year. And the one thing advertisers covet most of all is the opportunity to put their product in front of the largest audience possible. This is also the one television event of the year where people don't run to the bathroom during commercial breaks. In 2011, Nielsen found that 51% of people polled tuned in to watch the commercials more than the game itself. Many advertising creative directors call the Super Bowl Judgment Day because it's the one day of the year where a commercial lives or dies on the world's biggest stage

and the pressure to create a memorable one is dialed up to 11. And when it comes to memorable Super Bowl commercials, there have been some incredible highs and some very amusing lows. Believe it or not, there was a time when Super Bowl commercials were nothing special. Advertisers just ran whatever commercials they had on hand. Nothing was done specifically for the big game. That said, some interesting commercials still aired in the early days. During Super Bowl VI in 1972, this commercial aired.

That famous commercial wasn't created for the Super Bowl, as it began airing three months before. But when it did air on the big game, it found its greatest audience, helping it become one of the most famous commercials of all time. Five years later, this Coke commercial aired in Super Bowl XIV. It showed 6'4", 270-pound defensive tackle Mean Joe Green limping down an arena tunnel on his way to the locker room when a kid offers Green his Coke. Want my Coke? It's okay.

You can have it. No, no. Really, you can have it. Okay. That's when Mean Joe Green downs the whole Coke in one gulp. As the kid starts to walk away, Green utters his famous line. Hey, kid.

The whole world is smiling with me. And throws his jersey to the kid. Thanks, Mean Joe. Smile. That ad is considered one of the best Super Bowl commercials of all time. Yet, it wasn't created specifically for the Super Bowl either, as it began airing four months before the big game. But all that would change during Super Bowl XVIII in 1984.

We'll be right back to our show. New year, new me. Season is here here and honestly, we're already over it. Enter Felix, the healthcare company helping Canadians take a different approach to weight loss this year. Weight loss is more than just diet and exercise. It can be about tackling genetics, hormones, metabolism. Felix gets it. They connect you with licensed healthcare practitioners online who'll create a personalized treatment plan that pairs your healthy lifestyle with a little help and a little extra support. Start your visit today at felix.ca. That's F-E-L-I-X dot C-A.

Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton.

Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. Today we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the information purification of victims. Apple launched the Mac computer in a famous commercial titled 1984 in Super Bowl XVIII. We've mentioned this historic ad many times before. The title was borrowed from author George Orwell's dystopian novel predicting the tyranny of Big Brother. But Apple's commercial made a different promise. On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh.

And you'll see why 1984 won't be like 1984. The commercial didn't even show the Mac computer, yet it drove $4.5 million in Mac sales within six hours. 72,000 people bought one in the first 100 days, exceeding Apple's goals by 50%. Apple's 1984 is often cited in my industry as the best commercial of all time, for its impact, for its storytelling, for its epic production values, and for the way it launched Apple into the stratosphere.

But 1984 is considered the best of all time for one other reason. It marked the beginning of made-for-Super Bowl commercial extravaganzas. Creating commercials explicitly for the Super Bowl now became a pressure-filled, anxiety-ridden task for advertising agencies and their clients. But the results could make the pressure worth it. In Super Bowl II, Xerox ran a commercial about a monk who is painstakingly

hand-scribing a document. When finished, he takes it to the abbot who says, Very nice work, Brother Dominic. Thank you. Very nice work, Brother Dominic. Thank you. Very nice. Now, I would like 500 more sets. The monk panics, then runs out to a Xerox store and asks for 500 copies,

which are then run off on Xerox's new 9200 photocopier. When the monk rushes back to the monastery with the 500 sets in hand, the abbot looks up and says, it's a miracle, just as the word Xerox appears on the screen. But before Xerox aired that commercial in the Super Bowl, it suddenly fretted the idea was blasphemous. So it showed the ad to the Archbishop of New York. He laughed and gave it his blessing. The commercial was so popular and effective that Xerox aired the Monk campaign continuously for the next five years. When Master Lock aired its now famous commercial during Super Bowl VIII in 1974, it showed a marksman firing a bullet through one of its padlocks.

The Master Lock model number 15 sustained considerable damage, but did not open. Master Lock was a small advertiser in Super Bowl terms. The big game is usually reserved for blue-chip brands with the deepest pockets. But Master Lock was a small brand with big ambitions. The primary target wasn't consumers, by the way. It was distributors. Masterlock wanted to remind hardware wholesalers that by building a brand,

they could justify charging a premium for the locks. Masterlock spent virtually its entire marketing budget on one Super Bowl ad every year for 21 straight years. And it ran that same bullet commercial for nine of those years. It paid off. Master Lock gained almost 70% market share and huge brand recognition. Quick, name another lockmaker.

In 1999, Monster.com founded self-competing with HotJobs.com for supremacy in the online employment industry. So the CEO of Monster bought two 30-second slots in Super Bowl XXXIII, even though his company didn't have any TV commercials and had never advertised on television before. But his advertising agency quickly came up with a powerful one. When I grow up, I want to file all day. I want to climb my way up to middle management.

Be replaced on a whim. I want to have a brown nose. I want to be a yes man. Yes woman. Yes sir. Coming sir. Anything for a raise sir. When I grow up.

When I grow up. I want to be underappreciated. To be paid less for doing the same job. I want sunshine blowing up my dress. Then words appeared on the screen that said, What did you want to be? Monster.com. There's a better job out there. Immediately, the number of resumes posted on Monster.com's site

jumped from 1,500 a day to 8,500. The commercial generated over $3 million in free press and the company was seen as the leader in the category. But along with Super Bowl successes, there have been some advertising fumbles, too. When Holiday Inn wanted to advertise the fact it was updating its hotels

with a $1 billion renovation, it ran an ad in Super Bowl XXX. The commercial takes place at a high school reunion. A beautiful woman walks into the room, and the announcer starts reeling off some interesting stats about her body parts. New nose, $6,000. Lips, $3,000. New chest, $8,000. Then the woman bumps into a former classmate who tries to guess her name.

Little does he know that woman used to be a man. Don't tell me. I never forget a face. Don't help me here. It's, uh... It's amazing the changes you can make for a few thousand dollars. Bob? Bob Johnson? Hi, Tom. Imagine what Holiday Inns will look like when we spend a billion.

Holiday Inn, on the way. The ad outraged the Southern Baptist group who protested its use of, quote, perversity. Holiday Inn pulled the spot off the air 48 hours later. Long before Snickers hit on its award-winning You're Not You When You're Hungry campaign, it ran a commercial on Super Bowl XLI. An auto mechanic sticks a Snickers bar in his mouth.

Another mechanic working beside him sees the bar and bites the other end. They both nibble the bar until their lips touch. I think we just accidentally kissed. Quick, do something manly. Then they both rip open their shirts and tear out some chest hair. LGBT organizations called it homophobic. Parent company Mars suddenly found itself in the hot glare of the media. The commercial never ran again.

But one of the biggest Super Bowl disasters involved one of the most successful Super Bowl advertisers of all time. After Apple aired its groundbreaking 1984 commercial, it prepared to wow the world again in the 1985 Super Bowl. Apple was so confident, it ran full-page newspaper ads leading up to the Super Bowl that said, if you go to the bathroom in the fourth quarter, you'll be sorry. The commercial was titled Lemmings.

To a funereal version of Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to work we go, it showed a long line of blindfolded business people walking off a cliff one by one. On January 23rd, Apple Computer will announce the Macintosh Office. You can look into it. Or you can go on with business as usual. The commercial was aired on the Super Bowl broadcast and shown on the stadium screen during the game. When the ad ended, there were no cheers.

Apple CEO John Sculley later said it must have been the only completely silent moment in Super Bowl history. Where 1984 was upbeat, heroic, and hopeful, Lemmings was dreary, insulting, and depressing.

The press hated it, consumers hated it, and it ridiculed the very people it wanted to reach. Not long after, Apple would close down half a dozen factories, Chiat Day would be fired, and Steve Jobs would be gone. Groundbreaking one year, booed the next. That's how tricky Super Bowl commercials can be. While some Super Bowl commercials are failures, some are just plain strange.

Take Ed McMahon and M.C. Hammer shilling for a website called cashforgold.com. Usually the Super Bowl is reserved for the biggest brands, but the punishing 2009 recession Usually the Super Bowl is reserved for the biggest brands. But the punishing 2009 recession opened the door to some unusual pitches. Here's money with gold at an all-time high. Now's the time to send your unwanted gold for cash, like these gold cufflinks. I can get cash for this gold medallion of me wearing a gold medallion. MC Hammer said he was trading in his gold records for cash.

And McMahon said he was trading in his gold hip replacement. Another strange commercial aired in Super Bowl XLVII. There are two sides to GoDaddy. There's the sexy side represented by Bar Raffaele. And the smart side that creates a killer website for your small business represented by Walter. Together, they're perfect. Then the Victoria's Secret model intensely kisses, and I'm struggling for the right adjective here, a very geeky looking guy. The sloppy kiss lasted a full 10 seconds with what Time magazine called, quote, some of the most unsettling wet sound effects this side of a walking dead zombie killing.

The message? When sexy meets smart, your small business scores. The ad came in dead last in the USA Today Super Bowl ad meter. Yet, GoDaddy said the following Monday was the biggest sales day in its history. Some interesting end runs have been made around the official Super Bowl broadcast. A search engine called Subjects.com

once announced a contest asking Super Bowl ticket holders to hold up signs containing its website address at the game when cameras panned the crowd. And Subjects.com would pay people $1,000 for every second the sign was on screen. NFL lawyers slapped a cease and desist order on the website and the contest was on screen. NFL lawyers slapped a cease and desist order on the website, and the contest was scrapped. But Subjects.com said the resulting controversy

generated more publicity than the contest ever would have. Companies like Ashley Madison and Pornhub created Super Bowl commercials that the NFL banned. The bans got those companies more attention than if they had paid the $4 million price tag, which was the strategy all along. One of the most interesting end runs was done by Frito-Lay during Super Bowl XXVI in 1992.

It didn't advertise in the big game, but advertised heavily before the Super Bowl, telling viewers to tune in to a special live edition of the popular show In Living Color it was sponsoring on the Fox network during the halftime break. For all you Super Bowl fans, I'm Wiz, Mr. Iceman. Chillin'. Yo, welcome to our Super Bowl halftime set. 22 million viewers jumped channels.

At that time, halftime Super Bowl shows were boring, consisting mostly of marching bands and high school drill teams. But that ambush by Frito-Lay had a lasting effect on Super Bowls. The very next year, the NFL beefed up its halftime show. As a matter of fact, Frito-Lay sponsored the Super Bowl 27 halftime show. As a matter of fact, Frito-Lay sponsored the Super Bowl XXVII halftime. But instead of a marching band, the musical guest was Michael Jackson.

Halftime shows would never be the same again. Often what the ad industry thinks is the best Super Bowl commercial differs greatly from what viewers think. According to the USA Today Ad Meter poll of TV viewers, the best commercial from last year's Super Bowl 50 was for Hyundai. In it, comedian Kevin Hart plays the overprotective father of a daughter going out on a first date. Oh, you look good. Thank you. Hey, see the guy taking my little girl out, huh? Yep. Huh. You know what, why don't you go ahead and take my new car? Thanks, Pop.

To the tune of Another One Bites the Dust, Hart uses Hyundai's new Car Finder feature to follow his daughter on her date so he can keep an eye on the boyfriend, and comedic hijinks ensue. You messing with the wrong daddy! But according to the advertising press, the best commercial of Super Bowl 50 was the one celebrating the 75th anniversary of Jeep, saying it was

the only meaningful message in the circus that is the Super Bowl. I've seen things no man should bear. And those that every man should dare. From the beaches of Normandy to the far reaches of the earth. In my life, I have lived millions of lives.

Whatever your opinion, the Super Bowl is serious business for the advertising industry. And if you're still wondering how serious it is, this may help you understand. When Super Bowl Sunday is finally over, the Anheuser-Busch advertising team meets on Monday morning to start planning their commercials for next year's Super Bowl, which is only 364 days away. It's the biggest one-day sale in advertising.

Over 100 million people will watch the Super Bowl, 1.5 million of them will call in sick on Monday, and all of them will have an opinion on which commercials were good and which ones sucked. The pressure to create a memorable Super Bowl commercial probably shaves a few years off the life of an advertising creative director. It's a huge gamble on the biggest stage, and many ad agencies have been fired the day after Super Bowl Sunday. They don't call it Judgment Day for nothing. Then there's the ever-present gremlin in the machinery, the elusive X-factor.

The GoDaddy commercial was voted least liked by consumers, yet it produced a record amount of sales for GoDaddy the next day. How do you judge an effective commercial on Super Bowl Sunday? If the ad is voted the best of the game but does modest business? Or if it's voted the worst and does great business? Is it short-term gain or long-term loss? And why the gulf between what the advertising industry thinks is the best Super Bowl ad and what consumers think?

It's a conundrum. Yet the cost of a Super Bowl commercial has increased 75% over the last decade. And it's estimated that the cost of a $5 million Super Bowl commercial could double by the year 2025. An astounding figure. I guess you could say it would be first and ten when you're under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly. Under the Influence was recorded at Pirate Toronto. Series producer, Debbie O'Reilly.

Sound engineer, Keith Oman. Theme music by Ari Posner and Ian Lefevre. See all the Super Bowl commercials from this episode at cbc.ca slash under the influence. Follow us for some fun content on Twitter and Instagram

at Terry O'Influence. See you next week. This episode brought to you by Super Bowl Sunday! Sunday! Sunday! Um, do you wear clothes when you listen to our show? If so, have we got a t-shirt for you. Go to terryoreilly.ca slash shop.