Restaurant Marketing Blog

Friday, February 05, 2010

Tom Feltenstein writes in his newsletter, “Common Wisdom”—Everybody has an opinion on who will win the Super Bowl game. I’ve looked into my crystal ball and am ready to make a bold prediction.  The big losers won’t be the Colts or Saints, they’ll be the businesses who fork out up to 2.5-million dollars for a 30-second commercial.  Although the lineup of hilarious ads has become almost as big a fan favorite as the Super Bowl game itself, investing up to $80,000 a second to promote a product that people won’t buy the next day is a terrible waste of money.  And what happens if the game’s a blowout by the end of the first half?  Think millions of disappointed viewers will stick around for the second half just to watch the commercials?

While the Super Bowl ads have become a spectacle unto themselves, they historically don’t move the sales needle enough to make a difference.  In fact, spending millions on Super Bowl ads is a terrible investment!  It’s another example of mass media marketing gone awry, with only the network execs and ad agencies coming out ahead.  Why not spend your marketing dollars wisely by concentrating them on the customers who are most likely to buy your products?  For example, rather than spending their money on costly Super Bowl ads, as they’ve done in the past, wouldn’t Frito-Lay make more of an impact by sending a bag of chips to all of their customers?

That’s wisdom you can take to the bank whether you’re a huge business with a Super Bowl-sized budget, or a small, single-unit store.  Brands are built one neighborhood at a time across America, not across the sky.  McDonald’s didn’t become successful because of mass media; they became successful because of the way they penetrated each neighborhood across America.  Costco rarely spends money on mass media - instead they focus within their own 4 Walls, their immediate neighborhoods, and through direct mail campaigns targeted to their existing customers, which is exactly what you should do.

As for the game itself?  I’ll go out on the limb and predict a 31-27 upset win by the Saints.  But don’t hold me to it, that’s just a guess.  The Super Bowl ad flop is much more predictable - in fact, it’s a sure thing.

Posted by jcohen in
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