If they haven't released a teaser video yet, are they also advertising during the Super Bowl?
Brands releasing videos promoting their ads ahead of games are participating in a trend that's been around for about a decade, said Rick Suter, senior content strategist at Gannett and editor of USA Today's Ad Meter. That's what it means. Super Bowl advertising since 1989. Teasers around 2014 were relatively unofficial, perhaps in the form of social media polls or posts about upcoming ads, but by 2020, the death and resurrection of Mr. Planters meant that Planters had changed the concept. “We've taken it to new heights,” he said. . peanut.
Well, you can't deny that. “This is reality,” Souter said.
Why tease big ad buys, sometimes weeks before game day? Some brands do this to generate buzz, while others roll out teaser videos exclusively for social media, executives say. Told. Whatever the reason, marketers said they still think there are benefits to releasing teasers, despite the potential pitfalls.
heads up
Even without the teaser, there's a lot of anticipation for the Super Bowl ad. A survey conducted last year by Marketing Brew and Harris Poll found that 76% of people who said they were likely to watch a game were “at least somewhat excited by the ad.”
Chris Sims, senior marketing director for Unilever's North American dressing product portfolio, said Hellman's removed teasers in its ads this year to capitalize on existing audience interest in Super Bowl ads. Plus, there was a lot of material. When the brand was filming an ad featuring comedians Kate McKinnon and Pete Davidson, “we were all just laughing hysterically and we all said, 'We have to use this as a teaser.' ''' he told us.
Todd Allen, Bud Light's senior vice president of marketing, said the brand did this to “give all of our fans a little taste of what to expect” ahead of the game.
In some cases, a teaser can not only generate hype but also lead to media coverage, said the co-founder and CEO of creative agency Mekanism, which has worked on about a dozen Super Bowl ads. CEO Jason Harris said.
“You can do it without paying publication fees, and people will still search for it, otherwise it would be featured in a million articles,” he said. “The expiration date is longer than that date.”
In the rare situations where a brand teaser doesn't lead to press coverage, it always generates social conversation. Michelob Ultra released several teasers this year, and vice president of marketing Ricardo Marquez said those videos started generating both “social conversation and press” almost immediately.
social media mania
Long ago, Sunday's Super Bowl served as a “big reveal” for most advertising, Suter said. People no longer consume media solely on TV screens, so brands want to be part of the social conversation leading up to the big day. That's Kia America's goal, according to Russell Wager, vice president of marketing, that teasers can generate buzz about the brand in the weeks before the game, potentially making Super Bowl ads more effective. He said that there is. Oreo, which is returning to the Super Bowl for the first time in 11 years, had similar hopes, said Michelle Deignan, vice president of Oreo US.
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“For us, it was really about leveraging all the cultural conversations leading up to the Super Bowl,” she said. “What's really important is maximizing the impact on the brand, because this big game is huge and we're excited to be a part of it, but there's so much more to it right now and we're so prepared. The stages are a very important part.”
Harris noted that brands may not even have to pay to feature a teaser, just post it to their own account. Elf Cosmetics, which will run its first national ad during this year's Super Bowl, has more than 8 million followers on TikTok and Instagram, where it teases an ad featuring Judge Judy Sheindlin and cast members from the film. I posted a few. suit. Brian Vaughan, partner and ECD at Elf's long-time creative agency Shadow, said the content was designed to “narratively enhance” the plot of the matchday ad.
big hope
However, teasers are not always beneficial. Some advertising executives said there was a risk of exaggerating or overhyping the ads themselves.
Earlier this year, Nars sparked social speculation about who would appear alongside Addison Rae in its first Super Bowl ad after releasing a teaser asking fans to guess who the creator is helping learn to dance. called. It remains to be seen whether her co-star, the animation geek Gummi Cluster, lives up to the hype.
Souter said teasing was “smart from a marketing perspective” but risked undermining the creative concept of the ad.
“I've certainly seen campaigns where the teaser was great, but the commercial wasn't,” he said. “It's not necessarily that the commercial was bad, it's that the teaser was really good.”
Ryan Barwick contributed reporting to this article.
