Thursday, October 28, 2010

Super Bowl 46 Sells Out


You have to be impressed that it isn’t even November and the 2011 Super Bowl commercial inventory is already sold out. Just the other day the remaining two spots were sold at their retail price of $3 million each. The 46th Super Bowl will be played on February 6, 2011 at the new indoors Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas. It will be televised live on NBC in the United States and by various other broadcasters around the world. Historically, the worldwide audience hovers around 110 million viewers. Given the state of the U.S. economy, a sell-out is pretty spectacular in my humble opinion. I wish Super Bowl advertising served as a barometer of the economy’s future, however most of the ads are for familiar brands – Pepsi has purchased 6 advertisements. After being absent from the spectacle for two years General Motors is likely to return; that’s a very encouraging sign. But they have a good story to tell and a new tag line “Chevy Runs Deep” to sell. And of course we know there will be some consumer generated advertising (CGA) opportunities to ensure fan engagement. I’ll have more to say about Super Bowl advertising as we move closer to the event. But I’d say that selling out the entire inventory of spots, and these last two at full price, makes me feel very optimistic about the future.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I think that your idea of using the Superbowl sales of commercial space as a gauge for the economic state is very interesting. I agree that there is a correlation between the sales of commercials and the economy. In a bad economy, I would think that companies may decrease the amount of advertising they do. My reasoning being that advertising is not only expensive for the companies, but because sales may be predicted to drop because they have less surplus money to spend on material things.

I also noticed, after clicking on the image in the blog post, that Pepsi and Doritos are both having consumer generated advertising contests. Three winners for both products who have created commercials will have their advertisement aired during the Superbowl. While I know that this isn't a new concept, I was surprised at how much these companies allow for CGA. In the blog post, you mentions that Pepsi bought six spots for ads during the Superbowl, and finding out that half of them will be allotted for consumer generated ads is surprising.