Tag Archives: Super Bowl

Shouldn’t Mark Zuckerberg Just Set His Super Bowl Ad Money on Fire?

by doctorads

Well the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.

Dear Dr. Ads,

It’s well known that Meta (a.k.a. Facebook/a.k.a. Instagram) is getting its ads kicked by TikTok and even Snapchat nowadays. So what is Mark (Data) Suckerberg doing about it?

Running a Super Bowl ad.

As Todd Wasserman reports at MediaPost, Meta’s big game ad will follow a fourth-quarter earnings report that included the company’s first-ever quarterly decline in daily active users.

Meta’s Super Bowl teaser, via Anomaly, features a shot of a virtual hangout called Questy’s. Questy’s looks a little worn, as the ad shows the restaurant at night, when it’s empty and dark (except for a flickering neon sign).

The ad is a direct reference to the Oculus Quest 2 headset, which Meta released last fall. Questy’s is actually a virtual hangout in Oculus that is a portal to games and other activities.

The music in the ad is a callback to TV themes of the 1980s that advance a good-timey virtual reality experience and a sign that Meta wants to leave behind the Internet and social media and instead usher users into a virtual world.

Empty restaurant? TV theme music of the 1980s? That’s what Zuck brings in the wake of last week’s knee-buckling 26% plunge in Meta’s share price, which vaporized $237 billion in market value?

Is this just wish-casting, Doc? Or what?

– MetAverse

Dear MetAverse,

For starters, here’s the teaser ad in question.

A 60-second version of the ad is scheduled to run in the first quarter of the Super Bowl at a cost of roughly $13 million, which is, of course, lunch money to Zuckerberg.

Problem is, he’s getting his lunch eaten by TikTok, as the Wall Street Journal’s Salvador Rodriguez reported yesterday.

Meta Faces Uphill Battle Against TikTok

Amid a dismal earnings report, Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. on Wednesday highlighted its short-video product Reels as a bright spot and perhaps its best bet to kick-start flagging growth.

The challenge is that in the increasingly important fight for video dominance, Meta faces a heavyweight rival that is only getting stronger.

While Meta executives said Reels is now the company’s fastest-growing content format, ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok is growing even faster. It was the most-downloaded app of 2021, and overtook Meta’s Instagram in popularity among coveted young users.

That makes a switch to Reels and away from TikTok a tough sell for a lot of advertisers and creators.

Especially when you consider these numbers in the WSJ piece: “In 2021, TikTok reached 63% of Americans between the ages of 12 and 17 weekly, up from 50% a year prior, according to a November survey by Forrester. Instagram, meanwhile, declined from 61% in 2020 to 57% in 2021. Other industry data shows similar trends.”

So, to conclude: How many Americans between the ages of 12 and 17 do you think will be riveted to a TV screen for next Sunday’s Super Bowl broadcast?

Yeah, us too.

Not to be repetitive, but memo to Zuck: You should have just set that $13 million on fire.

Ain’t This Georgia Lawyer’s Super Bowl Ad a Peach?

by Campaign Outsider

DrAdsforProfileWell the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.

Dear Dr. Ads,

I was just sittin’ there watchin’ the Super Bowl when this beauty popped on-screen.

 

 

Whiskey tango foxtrot, yeah Doc?

– Hoot ‘Lanta

Dear Hoot,

Fact #1: The annual Super Bowl broadcast traditionally includes some local commercials among the big-bucks TV spots.

Fact #2: We’ve never seen anything like this one.

From FishbowlNY:

The only thing that could possibly raise the ante of this incredible two-minute Savannah, GA area TV spot is if Matthew McConaughey had done the voiceover honors. Who knows, given the life story of the guy responsible for the ad, we may all be watching said indie flick or HBO movie a few years from now.

Per Deadspin’s Tom Ley, personal injury lawyer Jamie Casino did to the conventions of that professionl realm’s TV advertising over the weekend what the Seahawks hoisted from the opening snap on the Broncos . . .

Check out #CasinosLaw for further details.

Yo.

Got Any Love for Bud’s ‘Puppy Love’ Ad?

by Campaign Outsider

DrAdsforProfileWell the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.

(Actual letter – tip o’ the pixel to Double One in the great American Heartland.)

Dear Dr. Ads,Budweiser_Ad_2_012914

So what do you think of the Budweiser “Puppy Love” ad for the Super Bowl?  Let’s hear it straight from the Dr’s mouth—yea or neigh?

Remember …not every horse lover is an a–.

Regards,
The old gray mare

Dear Old Gray Mare,

First let’s look at the ad in question.

 

 

Now don’t get mad at the Doc but  . . . this one doesn’t quite cut it.

No question the Clydesdales spots have been highlights throughout the Super Bowl years.

Just not this year.

Yo.

 

What’s Up with the New Apple Ads?

by Campaign Outsider

Well the Doc opened the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.

Dear Dr. Ads,

Apple has always run breakthrough ads promoting its breakthrough products. But we think its latest campaign is kind of  . . . meh.

What do you think?

– Adam and Eve

Dear Adam and Eve,

The new Apple ads have, as the saying goes, fallen pretty far from the tree, yeah?

A little history is in order here.

In the beginning, there was the 1984 ad that ran during that year’s Super Bowl broadcast. (Yeah yeah – the Doc does know there were Apple ads before that one, including this 1983 spot featuring Kevin Costner. D’you know that?)

 

That spot launched the Super Bowl Adstravaganza – one-off commercials designed mostly to profit from the promopalooza around the Big Game.

After that came a variety of other campaigns, most notably the Mac and PC series. Representative samples:

 

Same themes as the 1984 ad, right? Apple gives you freedom, individuality, personality, uniqueness.

Accent on the you.

Now consider the current Apple campaign. Here’s one of a series of double-trucks running in newspapers like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and today’s Boston Globe:

Picture 2

 

Body copy:

This is it.

This is what matters.

The experience of a product.

How it makes someone feel.

When you start by imagining

What that might be like,

You step back.

You think . .  .

 

And yack yack yack.

Oh, yeah – here’s the companion TV spot, titled “Our Signature”:

 

What’s wrong with this picture (tube)?

It’s all about them – all we we we. Just like the last graf of the print ad: “We’re engineers and artists. Craftsmen and inventors. We sign our work. You may rarely look at it. But you’ll always feel it. This is our signature. And it means everything.”

And all this time we thought the customer meant everything.

Plus, Designed by Apple in California? Is that supposed to make us forget the Third World manufacturing that produces this stuff?

Apple used to be the most sure-footed of marketers. But this is a major stumble.

Yo.