Super Bowl Monday. In recent years, it has become as much of a tradition as the game itself. It’s a day dedicated to analysis, debate, statistics, records, and historical perspective. Sports fans are at the water cooler, watching talking heads, and calling in to sports radio to argue whether it was the best Super Bowl ever, whether the Steelers are the greatest franchise ever, and all stats in between. Most sports fans wouldn’t call in sick even if given the chance. They’d miss too much smack talk and bet settling.
In the advertising world of Madison Avenue, Super Bowl Monday is also a day to dissect and debate the stats, records and historical perspective of the event that just took place. Which ads soared and which flopped? Eighty million Americans tuned in and advertisers were salivating as usual.
Three million dollars for a 30 second commercial, the highest ever. When all the money is counted, the total marketing dollars spent on the Super Bowl, including creative development, production (3D!!), promotion, contests, and everything else that makes the single greatest marketing event of the year, will be more than half a billion dollars. You can see why Super Bowl Monday can be a career changing day up and down Madison Avenue.
What about on Main Street? Springsteen was great. Otherwise, it’s yesterday’s news. The average consumer stopped thinking about the game when the whistle blew, never considering the economic tsunami that is the Super Bowl. If Madison Avenue is so interested in the economics of buying our time, why don’t we seem to care about the economics of selling our time? If a few hours of our time was worth half a billion dollars, I wonder why we don’t take notice. Collectively, we’re extremely valuable and I’m thinking of ways that consumers can get the seat at the table we deserve. It’s a different way of thinking, but there’s no status in the status quo.
More to come….
