Super Bowl Ads: An Empirical Investigation of the Advertising-to-Sales Relationship

The aura surrounding Super Bowl commercials is unique in American culture. These in-game ads are closely watched and critiqued by millions of television viewers in a manner that is both entrenched and ritualistic. Fueled by the relentless media hype that surrounds them, these ads attract an eclectic audience comprised of both Main Street and Wall Street viewers. In summary, Super Bowl telecasts are routinely the most highly watched programs aired on television, its viewers are as interested in the ads as they are in the game, and the athletes and advertisers share the stage in this high stakes, high profile buzz-driven entertainment environment. While the size and make-up of the audience which views the ads are fairly predictable, the results that the ads generate are much less apparent. It is commonly known that airtime cost exceeds $100,000 per second, and ad production and merchandising expenses represent millions of dollars beyond that. With this cost meter running at full tilt, it is apparent that something dramatic needs to occur on the revenue side for firms to re-coop their investments. The purpose of this manuscript is to investigate this advertising-to-sales relationship through the study of five product categories which were commonly represented in the array of 2009 Super Bowl ads. These include soft drinks, sports drinks, beer, cereal, and salty snacks. This type of brand-specific, Super Bowl advertising analysis has not been reported in the literature before. Below are the research questions which this study investigates. 1. Do brands which receive in-game Super Bowl advertising support experience significant sales lift, and if so, for how long? 2. How do the sales of Super Bowl promoted products compare with the sales of competitive products which do not receive similar in-game advertising support? Regarding this study's methodology, The Nielsen Company, a global leader in market research and online intelligence, Need a comma here was contacted and generously gave this researcher permission to analyze their proprietary scanning data for the weeks surrounding the 2009 Super Bowl. Access was restricted to bar-code scanned data from one large retail chain in one large metropolitan area. A non-disclosure agreement included the prohibition on referencing any specific brands analyzed. Sales data on 501 products for the weeks ending January 31, February 7, February 14, February 21, and February 28„ 2009 were analyzed. These items included ten products which received in-game advertising support for the 2009 Super Bowl February 1, 2009. Analyses included weekly dollar sales for each product as well as percentage changes in the dollar volume of those products for same store sales versus comparable weeks in 2008. Regarding results, of the nine Super Bowl promoted brands represented in this study, the two salty snacks brands and one of the two soft drink brands consistently outperformed their category for each of the first three weeks following the Super Bowl. If this same pattern were replicated across the nation, then these sales increases alone would more than pay for the investment in Super Bowl ads. The beer brands promoted in the Super Bowl also experienced robust sales, but did not outperform their category. This is in part because the entire beer category generated hefty sales during this study period. Given that beer sales for Super Bowl promoted products were uniformly strong, and got stronger in weeks following the game, the link between advertising and revenue again appears solid. With respect to cereal and sports drinks, the results were mixed. The sports drink brand which chose to invest in Super Bowl advertising did not fare as well. Ironically, this brand utilized the talents of Tiger Woods and other celebrities to promote its expanding line of sports drinks. This brand experienced sales declines in three of the four weeks following the Super Bowl. Given that this was long before the Tiger Woods PR debacle, the results provide little evidence that a positive advertising-to-sales relationship existed for this brand within this period of study. Finally, with respect to cereal, the Super Bowl promoted brand in this study did experience very strong sales growth for weeks two, three and four following the game. This sales growth averaged approximately 33 percent for these three weeks, suggesting that the high profile attention this brand received during the Super Bowl may have resonated with the buying public in the market studied. It is important to exercise caution and not over-generalize these results. First of all, it is not suggested that these Super Bowl ads are causing sales results. Rather, this paper identified the association between these advertisements and sales. There are numerous reasons why Super Bowl products may do well in the marketplace including distribution strength and brand loyalty. Implications for advertisers and researchers are discussed, as are study limitations and future research directions.