It’s official: Fox recently announced it has sold out of TV broadcast advertisement slots for the 2014 Super Bowl—a month earlier than last year’s sellout date.
While the Super Bowl is always a hot commodity for companies looking to advertise, this year’s game promises to garner extra attention as it will be played in the major marketing metropolis of New York. The world’s biggest game, in other words, will be played on the world’s biggest stage. The game also promises to be extra exciting due to the fact that it will be the first Super Bowl to be played outdoors in cold weather, as opposed to a hot climate.
As a result of the hype, the game has already drawn the likes of familiar brands such as General Motors, Annheuser-Bush, Pepsi and Hyundai as well as newcomers like Nestle and Intuit (News - Alert).
“It’s the worst kept secret,” said President of Fox Sports Neil Mulcahy. “The demand has been incredible. Having the game in the New York market this year meant a lot to people wanting to be there.”
The game is attracting an unprecedented amount of attention, and companies are paying more than ever for a spot in the limelight. While Fox has yet to release the price tag for advertising during this year’s Super Bowl, it has been predicted that a 30-second slot is going for an estimated $4 million—up $200,000 from last year’s event.
Due to the exorbitant price tag, and the fact that the slots are now sold out, companies everywhere are looking for alternative ways of remaining competitive and relevant during the game. The aforementioned factors are therefore driving companies to the Internet to generate revenue instead of shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars per second for a brief television slot. This means finding new content mediums—blogs, newsletters, online videos and social media—to bolster brand awareness and thought leadership. In other words, brands are turning to content marketing—an approach that covers all of the above.
Actually, research shows that content marketing is a more fiscal way of achieving the same goal. In fact, Founder of the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) Joe Pulizzi revealed after last year’s Super Bowl that businesses could buy 47 issues of their own custom magazine, 16,000 blog posts and over 1,100 whitepapers for the price of just one 30-second Super Bowl television ad. Businesses could hire a chief content officer to serve their staff for 23 years—or a managing editor for about 40 years—for the equivalent of a 2012 Super Bowl ad, which cost about $3.5 million.
Super Bowl executives are definitely taking a content marketing cue, as this year’s Super Bowl will be live-streamed through an app for the first time ever. This means that more unique viewers will tune in than ever before. It also means that companies will have a much easier time of driving sales, as consumers will be able to switch back and forth from the game to an application or website with little chance of getting distracted.
Edited by
Allison Boccamazzo
