Playing to the Crowd : Advertisers Pull Out Stops to Bowl Over Viewers

The Super Bowl is more than a football game: It’s the world’s longest-running commercial. The championship event attracts record-breaking TV audiences, making it the advertising showcase of the year.

Advertisers have paid extravagant sums to air commercials during Sunday’s game--but the spectacle doesn’t end there. They’re handing out samples and trinkets to fans attending the game at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Ariz., hoping roving TV cameras will catch sight of the freebies.

The hoopla doesn’t end when the game does. On the morning after, Pepsi will flood grocery stores with Wile E. Coyote displays while memories of its Super Bowl spots are fresh.

In the quest for America’s attention, advertisers have pulled out the stops.

They are paying more than $1 million for 30-second spots in the game, an amount that would fetch four spots on the highly rated show “Friends.” Some marketers are paying hundreds of thousands more for the right to call themselves official Super Bowl sponsors, a designation they believe bathes their products in the glow of the game.

For their money, advertisers get a chance to parade their products before an expected audience of 100 million Americans, primed to watch TV. Ever since Apple Computer aired its eerie Orwellian spot for the Macintosh in 1984, Super Bowl viewers have looked to commercials to enliven what is typically a dull game.

Indeed, some spots have become Super Bowl traditions. Sometime during this year’s game, a bullet will pierce a Master Lock padlock for the 21st consecutive year. For better or worse, the Bud Bowl is back.

“People have an appointment to watch advertising,” said Karen Sophiea, marketing vice president of Kinko’s, which is making its first Super Bowl appearance Sunday.

With more than 60 commercials during the game, sponsors are vying to be the best-remembered. Kinko’s sunk more than $700,000 into making its 30-second Super Bowl commercial, close to three times what the company typically spends. In the spot, heavy with special effects, an office clerk sprouts a long, rubbery neck in order to reach the top of a towering file cabinet. The slogan: “The new way to office.”

“It’s a big game and we have a big idea,” said Sophiea.

Similarly, the maker of Breathe Right, a tiny company with 37 employees, is gambling that its spot rating snores on a “snore meter” will hit home with viewers.

“A lot of people watch the game with family and friends,” said Kirk Hodgdon, consumer marketing vice president for Breathe Right manufacturer CNS Inc. “We hope snoring will become a topic of conversation.” (Especially if the Dallas Cowboys trounce the underdog Pittsburgh Steelers, putting viewers to sleep.)

The commercial is only part of Breathe Right’s game plan. A number of players in the game are expected to wear the strips. And the company is placing samples on seats in the stadium, hoping fans will try ‘em on before national TV cameras.

Other companies are aiming for the small screen. Oscar Mayer is distributing wiener whistles to fans attending the game. America West Airlines is handing out 8,000 inflatable Cheesehead-inspired headpieces shaped like airplanes.

“We are hoping to get on television when the cameras pan the crowd,” said airline spokesman Mike Mitchell.

Pizza Hut purchased space on the stadium’s instant-replay board, confident TV viewers will see it. The PepsiCo unit has carved out a share of Super Bowl air rights: A plane towing the Pizza Hut flag is scheduled to fly over the stadium.

Anything that can be sponsored, is. Viewers will be treated to the “Oscar Mayer Half-Time Show,” featuring the winner of the hot dog maker’s talent search, and thrill to the post-game presentations of the Miller Lite player of the year, the Visa coach of the year and the Tru-Value man of the year. (Sorry, it’s a football player.)

Preparations for the Big Game get underway well before kickoff and continue down to zero hour. As Pepsi bottlers premiered finished Super Bowl spots for bottlers at their convention in San Diego on Thursday, the company’s advertising agency rushed to complete a spot featuring Warner Bros.’ Wile E. Coyote cartoon character and Dallas Cowboys defensive back Deion Sanders.

Unlike the game itself, the Super Bowl of advertising doesn’t produce clear winners. Immediately after last year’s game, the National Pork Producers found that 17% of Americans were aware of its Super Bowl spot. But the hog farmers aren’t sure how that translates into sales.

Exposure doesn’t assure success. PepsiCo’s Taco Bell restaurant launched its Border Lights menu during last year’s Super Bowl, but the low-fat offerings didn’t catch on with customers. The menu has been revamped and Taco Bell isn’t in the big game this year, though it is airing a spot on the “Friends” post-game special.

Pepsi, the largest advertiser in the game with four minutes of commercial time, is invading grocery stores the day after the game to get more from its massive investment in the Super Bowl, estimated at about $12 million. In choosing Sanders as its pitchman, Pepsi risks confusion. Sanders appears in at least one other Super Bowl spot, hawking General Mills’ Wheaties.

“There is always risk in this kind of situation, but there is also an upside,” said Pepsi marketing executive Brian Sweete. “In some ways, the multiple exposure can build on itself.”

In the contest for America’s attention, the big winners could be companies that haven’t spent a dime to advertise during the national telecast.

About a dozen firms have billboards in Sun Devil Stadium under multiyear contracts. “With 27 camera angles, it’ll be hard not to catch a sign somewhere,” said John Shean, a marketing executive with the Arizona Cardinals, based at Sun Devil Stadium.

In the 1994 Super Bowl, a Coca-Cola stadium billboard showed up during the telecast for a total of 51 seconds, according to the research firm Joyce Julius & Associates. That free exposure was worth $1.5 million to Coke, which didn’t advertise during the telecast.

America West, with its rotating scoreboard sign, could get lucky. “I think our chances are small,” said Mitchell. “But we’re hopeful.”

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Super Bucks

Cost of a 30-second commercial on Super Bowl XXX, compared with five highly rated prime-time TV shows:

Super Bowl XXX: $1.1 million

Seinfeld: $400,000

ER: $390,000

Friends: $300,000

The Single Guy: $250,000

Mad About You: $200,000

Source: DeWitt Media Inc.