It’s only fitting that advertising’s biggest night coincides with America’s largest intake of heartburn medication. Probably.

Of course, we’re talking about the Super Bowl.

While every other marketing trade pub is putting together ad trackers and breathlessly investigating every teaser, we figured we’d have a little fun and put together a compilation of notable moments, trivia, and facts about the game.

Impress your boss, impress your colleagues, impress your friends, and remember that if Nick Foles can be Super Bowl MVP, so can you.

When did advertising in the Super Bowl become a thing? There wasn’t really one specific turning point, but in 1973, Joe Namath and Farrah Fawcett’s titillating “Cream Your Face” spot for Noxzema helped establish the game “as an event for advertisers,” according to Smithsonian Magazine. A few other ads that ran during the game throughout the ’70s, like Xerox’s “Monks,” also played a part.

• Some of the Super Bowl’s most memorable ads didn’t originally air during the Super Bowl, like the “Hey Kid, Catch” Coca-Cola ad starring ‘Mean’ Joe Greene of the Pittsburgh Steelers. It ran for the first time in October of 1979, then aired again when the Steelers played in the Super Bowl a few months later, beating the Los Angeles Rams. All these years later, we’re still thinking about how bad that jersey probably smelled.
• Another iconic Super Bowl ad? Apple’s “1984,” which ran during the third quarter of the (duh) 1984 Super Bowl. Directed by Ridley Scott, the spot also didn’t make its true debut in the Super Bowl—it first aired on KMTV in Twin Falls, Idaho, in 1983, so it could qualify for that year’s advertising awards.

How much did it cost? Apple paid more than $800,000 to run a 60-second version of “1984,” according to the New York Times. That’s about $2.3 million today, accounting for inflation. Compare that to this year’s game on Fox, where some 30-second commercials have sold for more than $7 million.

The first halftime show sponsor? This one was tougher to track down. In 1996, Oscar Mayer became the official sponsor of the halftime show, making it one of the earliest official sponsors, if not the first. Even though that contributed to a “big lift in sales” that year, per Ad Age, the brand pulled out two years later after the company didn’t feel as though that year’s halftime entertainment—which featured performances from Mr. Sex Machine himself, James Brown, and ZZ Top—was “family-oriented,” the Washington Post reported at the time.

Continue reading here.—RB

Retail Brew’s Jeena Sharma recently chatted with Heineken USA CMO Jonnie Cahill about the brand’s investment in non-alcoholic offerings like Heineken 0.0. Read some of what he had to say below, or click here for the full story.

Heineken’s first NA offering, Heineken 0.0, was introduced in global markets in 2017 and made its US debut in January 2019. In 2020, the beer giant announced it was investing $50 million annually in the segment. But it hasn’t all been smooth-sailing: “I think people thought maybe we lost our mind,” Cahill told us.

“We knew the megatrend was with us in terms of non-alcoholic beer, but we also recognized in the US, it was very underdeveloped as a segment,” he said. “So going back in time, now it seems obvious, like how could we miss? But at the time, it was still a brave move.

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

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The holiday season is one of the most significant moments for retailers, bringing in nearly $800 billion annually.

But what happens after the holiday rush? Many businesses enter a so-called “post-holiday slump,” which can pose a serious financial challenge if they’re not prepared to combat it.

Don’t let that happen to you. Check out Retail Brew’s guide for quick tips on finding sales success in the new year.

Download your copy.

Though Marketing Brew is obviously your favorite child, here’s what our sibling publications have been working on in the new year:

• Emerging Tech Brew: GM’s vision for computerized cars
• Retail Brew: Why doesn’t Amazon accept PayPal?
• Healthcare Brew: As more people give birth at home, hospitals lose out on cash
• IT Brew: ‘Please write this code’ and other problematic prompts for chatbots
• CFO Brew: The future of finance is more diverse

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• How Fly by Jing went from Kickstarter to Shake Shack partner
• The biggest TCA news out of TCA’s Winter Press Tour so far
• As new AI tools are released, some agencies seem eager to try them