Talking Babies and Burping Frogs: Three Reasons Why Super Bowl Spending is a Bad Investment

This is Super Bowl Sunday and we all know what that means ... hilarious and eye-catching advertisements on commercial breaks!  But this year, some journalists and marketing experts are speaking out against spending money on Super Bowl advertising.  Here are three reasons why Super Bowl spending is a bad investment:

1. Super Bowl advertising doesn't make marketing sense

Marketing is about sales - a company aims to capture customers' attention and then get them to make a purchase.  With Super Bowl commercials, standing out is almost impossible.  Most of us can't even remember who played last year, much less which advertisements stood out.

2. Too much competition means most companies get left behind

So you want to sell something, huh?  Well good luck doing that with a Super Bowl commercial.  The ads shown during the Super Bowl are about being funny - a real "sales" commercial won't catch any attention.  It's a Catch 22 - you have to be funny to catch consumers' attention, but most Super Bowl viewers are more interested in how funny a commercial is as opposed to what it's trying to sell.

3. Celebrities stand out; brands don't

Ozzy Osbourne, Will.i.am, and Eminem are among the lot of celebrities to be featured in this year's Super Bowl commercials.  It's good news for the stars - they get loads of press, but the brands may actually suffer.  Take last year's most popular advertisement.  That one featured Betty White, but does anyone remember which product she was representing?  If viewers remember anything about Super Bowl commercials, they remember the celebrities, they don't remember the brands.

Super Bowl advertising really proves one thing: consumers are fickle.  While big businesses spend big bucks on commercials that air during the Super Bowl, most viewers aren't rushing to the stores to pick up the latest products repped by the likes of Justin Beiber.  Marketing is about making a sell.  When big businesses figure that out, maybe Super Bowl spending will decline.

Photo credit: Mike Licht