The Super Bowl is right around the corner, and you know what that means...time for some of the best commercials of the year! Okay, maybe not the best, but they are defiantly the most watched commercials; therefore, they are also the most expensive. I know you have probably heard by now that the cost to make and air a commercial during the Super Bowl is very, Very expensive. I recently came across an article that said that this year CBS had sold all of its slots for Super Bowl commercials with prices ranging being 2.5-2.8 million dollars. The writer for the article was amazed how CBS was able to sell all of its slots for such a high price even though the country is in one of the worst depressions it has been in for a while. I to was also amazed and it made me ask myself, is it really worth it? The companies that will air commercials during the Super Bowl are the same companies whose commercials can be seen in the middle of any programming now. So, will putting all of this extra money for thirty seconds during the Super Bowl really make a difference?
This question got me thinking, because personally, I don’t think that a thirty second commercial will make that much of a difference in sales that a company would spend 2.5 million dollars. This might be because I don’t own a company, (or have 2.5 million dollars) but it still made me think that maybe there were other reasons to spend all of this money on one commercial. It made me think about a particular section in the book Media Society by David Crouteau and William Hoynes when they were talking about advertisement. The book talked about something called “consumerism“, which is a movement that advocates the greater protection of the interests of consumers. When this idea was first mentioned in the earlier stages on televised advertisement, “ads sold consumerism… as an ideology that would smooth over social conflicts” (Pg 187). This means that commercials were being used to sell the company’s ideas on certain topics, and usually the idea being sold is that their product is more helpful than the next.
So this brings us back to the Super Bowl and why companies are spending all of this money on commercials. I believe it is because companies are trying to sell a little more then their product. These companies use the Super Bowl, the most watched event on television, as a chance to share their ideologies to the world. And what is the ideology of any company? It’s that a person will be better off in they have/own their product. Companies don’t want to just sell their product, they want people to believe that you cannot live without it so that you will keep on buying it. If you have ever met or have heard about anyone who is “addicted” to coffee, this would be a perfect example. No one can actually get addicted to coffee (unless you drink it everyday, all the time) but yet more then 50% of Americans drink coffee at least once a day. Why? Because the new ideology in America is that you drink a cup of coffee to start your day off right as Dunkin’ Donuts suggests, “America runs on Dunkin”. So during the Super Bowl, a company like Doge will not only try to sell you a truck, they will try to sell you the idea that no truck is better then a Doge.
Something to watch for if your planning to watch the Super Bowl- Well, actually two things. The first it that the popular phone company Boost Mobile will be airing a commercial for the first time during a Super Bowl. Good for them! The second it that the car company General Motors chose not to air any commercials during the Super Bowl this year. I will be looking in the weeks following the Super Bowl to see if their sales numbers are better or worse then those car companies that chose to run a commercial during the game. I will be sure to let you know!
David Smith
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