Did you stay up to watch the superbowl last night?
If you went to bed at half time when the game was done and dusted with the Patriots down 21-3, then hard luck.
It was the most incredible sporting performance, sporting comeback, and sporting story of the year, in US terms perhaps of all time.
If you don’t get the sport though and we’re just tuning in for Lady Gaga and the ads you a might have been a little underwhelmed that the advertising we saw on the BBC was… well there wasn’t any, and that the ads on Sky were more to do with cleaning up the kitchen than lighting up the night sky.
Sky weren’t selling ad slots for €5.5 million though as was the case in the US, and while the global viewing numbers are huge, north of 100 million tuned in last night in the domestic market alone.
In an era of protectionism and the tearing up of free trade that becomes even more important. On Friday we brought you a selection of what were this year’s biggest and best Superbowl ads.
They featured immigration, equality and the allure of Mexican avocados. Today we offer a look at why big brands spend such an inordinate amount of money to make sure they are part of the Superbowl experience. We have nothing remotely similar in terms of cultural reach, stopping the nation every first Sunday in February or getting ads talked about.
From a psychology point of view though it is still interesting to look at why the spend, unjustifiable on so many levels, is actually makes sense.
Over to the Harvard Business Review who carried this article on Friday in which everything is explained…
And here was the video created by Under Armour that went live at the moment of triumph. Impressive timing.
