Nuts for the super bowl

The Wall Street Journal’s advertising column (2/3/06) ran an item noting that Emerald Nuts had spent a fifth of its ad budget last year on a single spot in the 2005 Super Bowl, and as a result sales more than doubled in the 10 months that followed. Actually, the column didn’t say “as a result” but that was the implication since no other information was given to explain the sales increase.

It’s more likely that Emerald Nuts used the same formula that is described for this coming year: use its cachet as a “Super Bowl Advertiser” to gain shelf space, promote tie-ins to the event, and forge alliances with other, bigger marketers. So the few mill for the spot in the game are leveraged to make its participation look far bigger than it actually was.

Compare that to the Gillette “Fusion” razor that was introduced with an elaborate spot in the 2006 game. The next day I got an email inviting me to “Experience Fusion” by clicking through to a rich media website that took forever to load and then was pretty silly… a giant razor rotating on a stand while an out-of-sync Vanna White avatar invited me to check it out. Zzz.

And what was missing? The coupon, of course, to clinch the deal and get me to try it. P&G did have a sweepstakes but you can tell their heart wasn’t in it because the stakes were small and the copy flabby and generic: “enter the Ultimate Sports Fan Sweepstakes for a chance to win $7,500 in cash to spend on other good stuff: a big screen TV, season tickets to your team’s games-you name it.” If the copywriter can’t get excited about the offer, you can bet the audience won’t either.

P.S. Clicking on the title of this post will give you a look at the sweeps; if you want to meet animatronic Vanna she’s waiting right here.