Melanie
The Monday Morning Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Esther of IPA Group, bringing premier online promotion to your business.
Esther
And Melanie of STOMP Social Media Training, who empowers business owners to manage social media and marketing for themselves. And welcome back to another episode of the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast. Today we're talking Super Bowl ads. Are they the gold standard for marketing?
Melanie
So you tell us about Super Bowl ads.
Esther
Oh, I love the Super Bowl ads. They are probably the only reason why I would watch the Super Bowl. I'm not an American football fan. I am a football soccer fan, but they are funny, thought-provoking, emotive. They are, they get you talking. They get you discussing what is happening. There are animals usually involved in some of them, if not all. One that I remember from years ago, I think it was Budweiser ad. I couldn't even tell you what they were selling. Is that bad? But there was a big Clydesdale horse and a little puppy, and it was just the cutest thing ever. It was just adorable. Like I said, it was very emotive. It's a very emotional watching some of the ads. And they are just, I don't know, millions and millions and millions are spent on them because they know that they have a captive audience just before the halftime show at the Super Bowl. So it's probably the one time that marketers, especially advert makers, know that they've got a captive audience and will go all out with their creativity.
Melanie
So how is this going to help our listeners who are based in different countries? How is this going to help them create something that's going to be marketable for them?
Esther
Look at the structure behind the ads that are made for the Super Bowl. And take away the fact that it cost millions because most of us don't have that budget. But look at the format, look at the the way that they add in elements of the emotion and the want and the need and the desire, and try to find a way for you to do that in your marketing. So if they've got animals involved, if you've got pets, use your pets in your marketing. If you've not in a slavery type way, But in a fun way of meet the cat, meet the dog, that thing. Another way of getting people to see behind the scenes, that idea. If they use, I don't know, a granny talking about when she was younger and the emotions and things like that, then think of ways of storytelling. Think of the things behind it. You don't have to have all the elements that they have. You don't even have have the pets or the animals. You could find another way of, well, this is the hobby that I do, and this is what I make, and this is how I do it. The stories are what really will get people captivated.
Melanie
Over the course of the last four years of us discussing this, we've been trying to actively encourage people to storytelling and be more visual. I suppose we're still seeing an awful lot more broadcasting still happening I think people are still putting up static images or short businessy type stories going up, promoting what they're doing. Do you think the only reason why these particular ads are successful is because it doesn't encompass any of that. It encompasses a hook, storytelling, touching on emotion, and maybe some fireworks.
Esther
Yeah, well, the fireworks aren't essential and can always be AI-ed into your stories and there are filters.
Melanie
Yeah, but you don't get people going, Oh.
Esther
But it is that encouraging people to have a response that you want with your marketing, whether it is a response of, oh, that's interesting, or a response of, Hitting the like button, or a response of, I want to know more. You want them to have a response. Obviously, a positive response is better than a negative one, but a response is better than apathy.
Melanie
Now, especially with this huge campaign, they only really have maybe a week or so of letting people know, giving them sneak peeks and giving them a little bit of a an idea of what's to come and maybe creating a little bit of FOMO as well. Then on the day they do their campaign, how much follow-up do they do afterwards that you think a normal solopreneur could replicate?
Esther
Well, in terms of the adverts that go up during the Super Bowl are at most 30 seconds long, and those are the ones that have paid prime time rates. But afterwards, they will reuse them in shorter sections. So whether they're just showing the last 10 seconds or the last five seconds, in some cases, it's not just a one and done. And that's how you should view your own marketing as, I'm not just making this video to be seen once and never to be seen again, or I'm not just putting up this photograph or this image to only be seen once. We can use the same images and the same photographs over and over and over again in the same videos at different places, different times of the day. For example, if you're marketing on X, formerly known as Twitter, then the feed is so fast that if you don't put it up maybe four times in the same week, nobody's going to see it. You have to realise that you're the the only one who sees all of your marketing. So even if you put it up four times on your Instagram feed, people would have to scroll back a long way to see it again. Same with your TikTok videos. Reuse them, repurpose them. You see a lot of on this day, on the date from a year or two years ago on people's TikToks, because unless people are actively scrolling to the very bottom, which let's face it, we're not going to do, then your original videos or your first lot of videos, or even no matter how informative they are, unless they pop up in someone's algorithm, they're not going to be shown. And the way the algorithms work is that the more recent content gets seen first.
Melanie
I can agree with all of that. Are we raising people's expectations, though? I mean, the very the title of this podcast is Super Bowl Ads, the Gold Standard for Marketing. That's quite a heady height. Is it possible to still achieve these results without spending all that time and manpower?
Esther
Yes, but the results will be slower and maybe less frequent. Obviously, if you've got the thousands or millions to spend on an ad campaign, you'll see results faster. If you've got the manpower of a thousand people working in your office making phone calls, making follow-up, then you'll see the results faster. But it's not realistic for everyone to have that. But that's not to say that one video that you make where you are being your true authentic self and showing your true authentic nature and telling a story about what you make and what you sell There's nothing to say that that home made video or that home made post won't go viral. So the way that the market has opened up in terms of using social media and using traditional marketing for everyone, it has levelled the playing fields in a lot of places where previously it would only have been the big guys that you would have seen talked about on the local news or on the national news. Nowadays, there's people that I follow that have 10,000 followers on TikTok that are making it into their local radio stations, their local news programmes, the morning show on ITV that people love to hit here in the UK. People that I started following on Instagram, making videos of recipes, etc, are now selling books and best sellers because they as Joe Wicks told us last year at AtomaCon, they were an overnight success, 10 years in the making.
Melanie
A very good way to remember it, actually. I think people just expect that we're going to be getting there faster because we're throwing all these bucks at the beginning. But it's not always the case, is it? It is like a slow boil unless you get very lucky and you go viral for any reason.
Esther
Yeah. And in Joe Wicks' case, for those who don't know who he is, he was the PE teacher of everyone during lockdown here in the United Kingdom and Ireland because he had a YouTube channel where he taught exercise programmes and he went live at the same time, same place every morning. The local news picked that up, the national news in the UK picked it up, and he got added into a lot of schools programmes for, here is your at home school timetable. Do PE from 9:00 to 10:00, watch this YouTube channel with this guy called Joe Wicks. And from there, he really took off. But he was slogging away in the background, and he still answers all his own messages. So it is possible with even a small team or even just one person to make it. But like I said, it will take longer.
Melanie
So I suppose the crux of this is, although we may aspire to have the money that they have to spend at the Super Bowl, you can emulate that with a bit of forward planning, budget, and maybe a good team of people that you can bring all the elements together. Understanding your audience, bringing them through to a direct call to action, whatever that may be, and throwing the bucks at it. And the Super Bowl doesn't just do online ads either, do they? They do the traditional marketing elements as well.
Esther
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the guys that are able to advertise during halftime at the Super Bowl, and the adverts that we would see here in the UK during Super Bowl are totally different to the American ones. I will actually go and search out the American channel to watch the American ones because the original idea of the Super Bowl ads is always better. And just to get ideas of what people are interested in, because they do a lot of research before they make the videos, before they make the adverts. Like you say, they know their audience. They know what is selling well, what is not selling well, and they know not to promote something that would go against their company values and also go against what people that they have surveyed or talked to would want in this day and age. So the same adverts that maybe worked 10 years ago might not work today. So they're constantly evolving, which is something that we as well have to always do in our marketing.
Melanie
We have to own that better, don't we?
Esther
We do, we do. But that's it for today, guys. Would love to hear your feedback. If you are a fan of the Super Bowl ads, if you're not a fan of the Super Bowl ads, we would just love to hear how your marketing is working for you. And if you want any help with anything, do reach out to us. We'd be more than happy to chat. That's it. We'll be back next week with another episode of the Monday Morning Marketing podcast. Until then. Bye bye.
Melanie
Have a great week.
