If It Doesn't Sell, It's Not Creative

The Super Bowl delivered once again. Great game and 110 million viewers. And at $3 million a pop per commercial, the "national holiday" also delivered a nice profit for Fox, which broadcasted the game.

But like in the game itself, there are winners and losers. The losers? Almost all of the Advertisers and the ad agencies that took part in the event. Advertisers were actually two-time losers. First, by letting themselves be convinced that $3 million is a fair price. It is not. I know that there are Advertisers who claim "we got a bump in sales the Monday after the Super Bowl". The question is how long does that "bump" remains bumped. The theory of recency requires repeat engagements. Watched among intervening information (how many car commercials were there?) and interruptions (how many noisy people at your Super Bowl party?), how effective was the Super Bowl advertising?

The other issue has to do with the quality of the ads, or lack thereof. Much was written about advertising reaching nadir during the broadcast. I agree. Little discussion was around the WHY. Most ads did not have a benefit, they did not have an IDEA, they did not try to sell you. They were simply executions, trying to entertain. Their ambivalence about selling was obvious. But techniques don't sell products, they simply are momentary attention grabbers.

David Ogilvy famously said, "If it doesn't sell, it's not creative". Just because you spend $3 million on media, and probably another million on production, doesn't make it creative either.