TV

Bigggg Super Bowl Update

If you thought we had a lot to say about the state of 2021’s Super Bowl ad inventory in Monday’s newsletter, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. 

Here’s what happened in Super Bowl LV adland since Marketing Brew last graced your inbox:

• Pepsi is extending its halftime show sponsorship into a “multi-platform, six-week campaign,” Todd Kaplan, Pepsi’s marketing VP, told Adweek.
• And while some brands were flipping a coin to decide whether to run an ad in this year’s game, Frito-Lay bought three whole slots.

Sounds...eerily precedented, no? I’m the first to admit I didn’t have a sort-of normal Super Bowl on my 2021 bingo card.

One ad buy we saw coming: Freelance platform Fiverr announced it bought a Super Bowl spot for the first time. Last spring, when smaller brands like Headspace started making TV ad debuts left and right, I figured the trend would translate to more small brands entering the Super Bowl fray. But at least as of this morning, that hasn't happened.

• Reminder: In spring 2020, there were pretty much no sports on TV and large brands had already cancelled an estimated $1–1.5 billion in Q3 ad commitments, reported the WSJ. 
• Those cancellations caused TV ad rates to plummet, hence the smaller companies piling in.

In fact, Super Bowl ad rates are up this year: “As the Super Bowl approaches, Kantar’s new estimates show that the average cost per 30-second ad slot will hit $5.6 million this year, up 7% from $5.25 million in 2020, which was the highest-grossing year of all time,” reported eMarketer. 

Searching for answers

I either severely underestimated the Super Bowl’s resilience to economic hardship...or I underestimated our industry’s ability to adapt to an enduring pandemic. Either way, I think it’s safe to say I lost my Super Bowl predictions license, so I asked a tried and true TV analyst for answers. 

Ross Benes, eMarketer analyst at Insider Intelligence, broke it down for us. Turns out, uncertainty around the Super Bowl may actually drive ad prices—and overall revenue—skyward:

• “Planning campaigns became more difficult during the pandemic. Because of this, Super Bowl inventory did not sell out as fast as it normally does,” Benes said. 
• Any inventory that's not sold up front gets snatched up on the scatter market and tends to be more expensive—which could explain what’s happening here.

SOCIAL MEDIA

‘You’re Hired!’—Facebook

Facebook’s two most recent leadership hires are guaranteed to make marketers do a double take. 

Roy L. Austin Jr.: On Monday, Facebook announced that Austin will serve as its first VP of Civil Rights and Deputy General Counsel to establish the social giant’s new civil rights org.

• Austin previously served as a White House advisor under President Obama.

Nicky Bell: Facebook also hired Nicky Bell as the VP of Facebook's Creative Shop, which works in partnership with many advertising holding groups to explore the creative potential within Facebook’s platforms. 

• Bell joins Facebook from R/GA, where she spent the last several years transforming the agency from a campaigns-only shop to a suite of R/GA Connected Brands. 
• Pre-R/GA, Bell was CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand. 

Why it matters

The agency side: In a particularly difficult year for both the agency landscape and marketers trying to make the best of Facebook, an agency superwoman like Bell jumping ship for Facebook could be disruptive for R/GA. 

The social side: I don’t want to jinx it, but Facebook creating a Civil Rights department—and hiring an advisor to the first Black president of the United States as its VP—feels like a step in the right direction.

SPONSORED BY COHLEY

How TikTok Got To The TipTop

In short: They had the best creative development partner on the block: Cohley. 

Cohley is the mighty startup that helps brands and agencies generate content for TikTok that will have you saying, holy cannoli, we gotta work with Cohley. 

Cohley connects brands (meaning you) to talents and creators to create one-of-a-kind content in a cost-efficient way. Then they give you the ability to push that content into TikTok ads and measure the results.

But Cohley doesn’t make boring old TikTok ads that leave users counting down the clock. They generate content that is authentic to the look and feel of the platform, which is why their ads are so successful.

And the TikTok cherry on top? The content you create is easy to scale and every aspect is handled within the Cohley platform. Cohley even measures the performance of the content so your brand can continue to gain insights.

Become the VIP of the FYP on TikTok with Cohley today.

CAMPAIGNS

Dry January Floods TV

In the Covid-19 era, even an orange juice brand was tempted to make a commercial about getting drunk—so it’s somewhat surprising that Dry January ads are once again everywhere. 

• With 61% of adults over 21 in the US purchasing more alcohol since the pandemic hit, one might expect alcohol brands to skip the Dry January ads this year. 
• But one in seven adults is participating in Dry January this year, up from last year’s numbers, according to research cited by Forbes. 

For a brand like O’Doul’s that specializes in non-alcoholic beer, there’s no reason not to dive headfirst into advertising around this newfound target audience—it partnered with Match to normalize dating without drinking this January. 

But for a brand like Heineken, which recently launched a spot advertising its non-alcoholic beer in partnership with ABC’s The Bachelor, you have to wonder which target audience it’s better off serving—the 61% or the one in seven?

My hot take: Alcohol labels promoting sobriety might actually earn points with drinkers and non-drinkers alike, especially after sobriety advocates publicly asked us to chill with the binge drinking messaging in response to Tropicana’s controversial “TakeAMimoment” campaign.

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• YouTube became the last major social media platform to suspend Trump’s account, making the call late last night.
• McCann named Chris Macdonald its new agency network chairman and CEO.
• Nielsen preemptively took a hiatus from its Media Rating Council (MRC) accreditation in the Local People Meter and Set Meter markets, due to Covid-19 chaos.
• Publicis will bring all of its OOH media buying in-house for better end-to-end client solutions.

SPONSORED BY SAILTHRU

A case study? About us? Don’t mind if we do. We’ve been partnering with Sailthru for years, building our marketing programs and strategies from the ground up. And thanks to them, we now have over 2.4 million best friends who read our newsletter all the time. Read about how great we are—and how Sailthru can make YOU great, too—in the case study here.

FRENCH PRESS

Marketing tips to make you fancy

Data: Sprout Social rounded up these seven creative ways to let data drive your content creation on social.

SEO: Find out whether or not incognito searches affect SEO and rankings here. 

Voice: Check out this guide to voice marketing strategies, complete with case studies from fast casual brands like Domino’s, Starbucks, and Tide. 

B2B: There are good reasons to start a B2B podcast...and there are not so good reasons. Naturally, the explanations live in this podcast. 

PASS THE MIC

Occasionally, we come across a piece of writing from a marketing leader so important that we can’t help but pass the ol’ mic to them and share it here. 

Today’s Pass the Mic piece comes from none other than the team at Cannes Lions—which, coincidentally, announced yesterday that it still plans to host its 2021 festival in person.

But that’s not the only bold prediction the Cannes team made this year. Click here for their hot takes on this year’s enduring marketing and advertising trends.

ICYMI

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

• Hyundai isn’t running a Super Bowl LV ad, breaking long streak
• Marketing Brew’s CMO series has come to an end
• The Ford Bronco is literally the G.O.A.T.