Tag: Super Bowl

Super Bowl FSIs (2017 edition): it’s a home run! Oh, wait…

 

Kick Off
Let’s kickoff some savings with our Super Bowl FSIs!

It’s been a full two years since we checked in on the newspaper supplement coupons that appear the Sunday before the Super Bowl, wherein advertisers contort themselves to refer to the event without using the actual name, which is licensed and which license is heavily enforced. The world has gone through painful gyrations in the past 24 months. Super Bowl FSIs? Not so much.

Looking at this year’s batch, the big news is that somebody actually paid for the right to use the term Super Bowl, as in “Super Bowl Savings Spectacular” at the top of the SmartSource FSI. Unfortunately, Dollar General immediately drops the ball by inviting us to “Kickoff the Savings!” Team, the verb is “kick off”, two words. “Kickoff” is a noun.

I like to think of FSIs as the last bastion of old-school copywriters with shaking, nicotine-stained fingers who would rather forego their morning whiskey than come up with an original thought. Hence the tired headlines like “Get Your Game Day Going” (Blue Diamond almonds) and “Stock Up for the Big Game” (Pepcid antacid). What does it actually mean to “Snack Like a Pro on Game Day” (Oikos yogurt) or “Cheer on the Crunch” (Carvel ice cream cakes) or “Blitz Your Taste Buds with Flavor” (HeluvaGood dips)?

Super Bowl Cliche Headlines
Are these headlines creative, or what?

I did see some promising rookie plays like Texas Pete’s “Go for the Game, Stay for the Drama” (I assume that is what happens when the hot sauce and fried food hits your intestines) and French’s “Spice It Up This Bowl Season” (bowls of dip, get it?) and José Olé’s “Make Your Crowd Go Wild” (taquitos and dip in stop motion as they tumble toward the floor, presumably hurled by an unruly partyer).

Rookie Super Bowl Headlines
A completed pass and a fumble by the rookie squad

However, with NFL ratings in decline it’s entirely possible this new crop of scribes has no idea about or interest in pro football or sports in general. How else can you explain Drake’s Cakes “Your Lunchbox Game is Strong” or Bush’s Beans’ “Our Lineup Completes the Gathering”? Just try serving up a bowl of beans to your beer-swilling spouse and her loutish friends and announcing, “Honey, I’ve brought some beans to complete your Super Bowl gathering.” She’ll drop kick you into the next county, and rightly so.

Brands get their (big) game face on for Super Bowl FSIs

Big Game FSIs 2015
How many ways can you say “Big Game”? Not that many, apparently.

The big day for football fans has come and gone. Of course, I’m referring to the Sunday before the Super Bowl when the newspapers are full of FSIs touting snacks of all varieties (except healthy) as super savory, fan favorites or a tasting touchdown without ever using the actual name of the event which requires an exclusive and very expensive license from the very litigious (unless you are a wife-whacking or child-whipping pro athlete, in which case you are exempt) National Football League.

Except… hardly any of the headlines are anywhere near as creative or alliterative as the descriptives I tossed together above. Take a look above… a majority of the ads have “Big Game” in some variation as their headline with only the lamest attempt to tie it to the product. We have two incidences of “big flavor for the big game” and one “big taste for the big game” along with “big game lineup”, “stock up for the big game” as well as “game plan” and the ever popular “game changer”. You’d think that copywriters have a vocabulary of 50 words, but that’s wrong because a lot of the non-Super Bowl ads in the same edition are very clever. (My personal favorite, “What the Yuck?” for a super strength detergent that gets the “yuck” out of deeply soiled clothes.) They are bored with this tiresome yearly charade and as a result get sacked for a loss, creatively speaking.

Super Bowl P&G ad
Look! A Super Bowl ad that says Super Bowl!

Interestingly, the words “Super Bowl” actually do appear, in a spread in the P&G Brand Saver. Their Gillette shavers, it turns out, are indeed an official sponsor. All the senior people were in the jet on the way to Phoenix (where this year’s game will be played) so the playbook was left in charge of a novice copywriter and a too-cute art director. “Smooth moves and fresh plays?” I don’t think so. And can you find the Roman numerals XLIX, for 49, hiding in the ad? Sadly, Ex-Lax is not a sponsor and this will be the last Roman-enumerated Super Bowl; we’re moving to 50 next year.

My prediction: Seahawks by seven.

Chrysler, Dylan show how not to use celebrities in your advertising

Much has been made of the expensive nonsense that was the Chrysler ad in last week’s Super Bowl. What does “more American than America” mean? And is it disingenuous to proclaim “you can’t import American pride” when Chrysler is in fact owned by a German company? What was most troubling to me, however, was the way that Bob Dylan’s most public product endorsement (surprisingly, there been others) turned him from an icon into a pitchman.

The use of Eminem and Clint Eastwood in the two previous Super Bowl spots was brilliant. Eminem didn’t appear till toward the end and he looked like an anonymous and well-dressed young hipster, no visible tattoos, prompting many viewers to say “who’s that?” (The theme of the spot in that dark year, by the way, was “Imported from Detroit,” a direct contradiction to this year’s.) There’s no hiding Clint Eastwood’s voice, but the man himself was in shadows until the very end for the “halftime in America” spot, another piece of brilliant writing and staging.

By contrast, Dylan is in almost every frame of the 2014 spot so it comes to seem like a “you’ve seen him on…” retrospective. It doesn’t deflect the blatantly obvious to have the ironic cut of him flipping through his own albums in a record store. And at the end he does in fact turn to us and come right out and say it: “we will build your car.” And if you act fast, you’ll get a bonus set of floor mats!

Celebrities stand for something beyond their (often tawdry) actual selves. If you pay to put them in your advertising and fail to leverage that aura, you’re shooting yourself in the crankcase. The only exception might be the Ed McMahon/Bob Dole category of commercials used to pitch to an elderly audience, which is believed to have great respect for figures of authority. Come to think of it, Dylan’s actually old enough to join those ranks.

Here are the actual words to the Chrysler Dylan 2:00. Thanks to Mike Wayland, Michigan Live automobile blogger, for providing them so I don’t have to watch the spot over and over again to write them down.

Is there anything more American than America?
‘Cause you can’t import original.
You can’t fake true cool.
You can’t duplicate legacy.
Because what Detroit created was a first
and became an inspiration to the… rest of the world.
Yeah…Detroit made cars. And cars made America
Making the best, making the finest, takes conviction.
And you can’t import, the heart and soul,
of every man and woman working on the line.
You can search the world over for the finer things,
but you won’t find a match for the American road
and the creatures that live on it.
Because we believe in the zoom,
and the roar, and the thrust.
And when it’s made here, it’s made with the one thing
you can’t import from anywhere else. American…Pride.
So let Germany brew your beer,
Let Switzerland make your watch,
Let Asia assemble your phone.
We…will build…your car.

And, here are the Eminem and Eastwood spots in case you to watch and compare.

FSI coupons score for the home team before 2014 Super Bowl

Super Bowl FSIs
Football-themed FSIs a week before the big bsme
Okay, football fans, what’s special about this past Sunday? If you said Pro Bowl, you just got sacked for a loss. Correct answer: it’s the weekend before the Super Bowl, and therefore the Sunday when the FSI coupons do a Richard Sherman trying to connect themselves to the Super Bowl without actually mentioning the name of the event, since they haven’t paid the hefty licensing fee.

Here comes Kraft with “your bold lineup for game day dipping”. Foster Farms wants us to “save big on tasty favorites for game day”. With a casserole made with Carnation evaporated milk, “game day just got tastier”. Attacking a problem we didn’t know we had, Hefty plasticized paper plates advise us to “soak proof your game day”. And, in case you’re planning to eat a few too many nachos, Pepcid offers to “kick off the big game with even bigger savings”. Cheez-It advises you to “kick off the big game with these fan favorites”. And Land O’Frost offers “easy game day entertaining with our premium line-up”. Anybody notice a trend here?

But the story on the sidelines is that there are far fewer of these themed coupons than in years past. And, where many of them did photo shoots of hyperactive fans enjoying their products in a home setting, now most simply stick some stock art of a green football field behind their usual overdressed product graphics. What’s the strategy, coach? Where’s your jumbo package or that gimmick play?

It just may be that marketers have found these themed ads aren’t worth the effort in terms of incremental sales. The overwhelming majority of coupon clippers are female, and so the underlying message is that the little woman is going to put out a bountiful spread for the men in her house and their loutish guests. But more and more consumers may be blowing the whistle on this blatant pandering. It may be that it’s better to promote your tried-and-true product positioning after all.

In my house, I know, the males are going to be expected to put together their own Super Bowl spread and clean up after themselves. Maybe I should get some of those soak-proof plates.

It’s halftime in America

I just about wet myself the other night watching the spot during the Super Bowl. Very gutsy that Chrysler would spend God knows how much to run a 2 minute spot that could only run … during halftime in a single football game. After watching I had tears in my eyes and was about to run out and buy a Chrysler 300.

But reviewing it today a couple of nits. Clint Eastwood does not have the Detroit cred of Eminem, even though “I’ve seen a lot of tough eras, a lot of downturns in my life.” (I wondered if he actually was born in the Motor City and looked it up. No: San Francisco, CA.) And honestly as the spot began I was thinking it was a Clint Eastwood voice imitator (he was there but in shadows) and by the time he showed up I was almost irritated that it really was Clint. And of course the parallel to the Hal Riney “It’s morning in America” Reagan ad was a distraction for anyone who remembered.

The observation that “the fog of division, discord, and blame made it hard to see what lies ahead” was also a calculated risk on timing which I think misfired. Carl Rove says that’s a political attack which is for sure protesting too much. The producers were simply going for a chord of empathy, assuming we would be in the midst of hard times when they made the spot but the economy seems to be looking up so it doesn’t ring true for at least one viewer.

So, I still prefer Eminem’s spot last year. But I still think I will buy a Chrysler in the form of that little Fiat that morphs into a giant woman dressed in red and black in another Super Bowl spot.

FSIs (newspaper inserts) and the Super Bowl

Newspaper coupons grasp at 2009 Super Bowl
Newspaper coupons grasp at 2009 Super Bowl
Three years ago, I did a post on newspaper inserts and the Super Bowl… and how snack manufacturers contort themselves to create a “big game theme” without ever actually mentioning the Big Game, which is a copyrighted product with big licensing fees attached. Looking at this past Sunday’s crop of FSI’s, it’s reassuring to see that nothing has changed. The nation’s economy may have melted down and the web has transformed marketing for most products, but for salty snacks and their teammates it’s still “game on”.

Smirnoff offers us a “smart choice for your super party”.  Newman’s Own wants you to “go natural for the big game”. Tums will let us “enjoy the game heartburn free” while Pop-Secret popcorn promises a “home field advantage” and Hersheys wants us to “treat your home team” to a “candy bowl blitz”.  Marie’s salad dressings invite you to “tackle the taste” and Dean’s Cool & Creamy exhorts you to “bring the ultimate dip to the ultimate game.”  You can also “score one for the home team” with Ling Ling egg rolls, say “it’s good!” [umpire with upstretched hands holding up two hamburgers] for White Castle or enjoy “football food… ready for game time in minutes” from El Monterey Taquitos.

It’s clear that the marketers are doing an end run around the NFL by not mentioning the Super Bowl by name, and that the NFL has dropped the ball by not figuring out a way to bring them into its licensed marketing huddle. But more important, there’s a flagrant violation by most of these marketers because they forget that coming up with a catch-phrase is not the same as selling a product.

And so the winner, in overtime, is an ad from Butterball cold cuts with the theme “One taste brings the party together”.  Because after all, the reason these marketers are trying to tie in their products to the Super Bowl is that you’re going to serve them at a party—and here’s one marketer with a generic ad (originally created around the election, maybe?) that says how their product is going to make your event a success. Touchdown!

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.

The S*uper Bowl of copywriting!

Coupon FSIs (freestanding inserts) in the Sunday paper are like Toontown—a separate reality where the colors are garish, the actions outsized, and stories don’t quite make sense. This is especially evident around Super Sunday, when we are asked to believe that across America Big Game hosts are training to lay out a spectacular feed based on branded products.

In the highly competitive FSI pages where package goods makers vie for our attention, you can count on the writers of heads and taglines to rise to outsized brilliance. Thus we have “roll out big game flavors” and “the easy game plan!” (Totino pizza rolls), “Score big when you serve Boboli… the football party favorite!”, “the big game plan…lineup the great taste of Dean’s dips” (this one has a diagram of wings and ruffles going for the goal line, and an invitation to download your own football tablecloth pattern at www.deansdips.com), “kick off your party with Farmer John’s hot dogs”, “savor the taste of victory” with Cattlemen’s Barbecue Sauce, “enjoyed by BBQ experts and football fans everywhere”, “is your sandwich dressed for game day?” with French’s mustard and of course “it’s CRUNCH time” with Mt. Olive…”the super pickle for the super game.”

What makes the copywriting stars shine even brighter is the fact that none of these ads can actually mention the Super Bowl by name, since they didn’t pay for licensing rights. The results are doing a full court press on my taste buds (oops, wrong metaphor) but I’m holding out for an invitation to “throw the MVP—most valuable PARTY” with the ultimate Kraft 7 Layer Dip (heart attack on a platter) and Game Day Football Cake made with extra-strength Maxwell House coffee and dressed with Cappuccino Pudding Frosting. Call the trainer—this playah is DOWN!