12/02/2016 Film Spots At The SuperBowl Set The Same Old Standard
Reposted from LinkedIn, our CEO Adam Rubins gives his thoughts on the Superbowl, and the challenges facing the film industry.
It’s that time of year again – SuperBowl time. Last year I wrote about How The Super Bowl Dominates The Advertising Agenda. This year, I’d like to look specifically at the film industry and lay down some constructive criticism and a challenge.
It’s fair to say, television advertising works at major sporting events as it’s a mass medium designed to deliver REACH. It effectively acts as an enormous fishing net which you throw over multiple audiences, reel it in and hope you’ve done enough to influence those that matter and worry less about those who don’t. And it makes sense. You have at your disposal a third of the entire market. Now all you need is $5m and some content to offer them.
However, times are a changing. REACH is still interesting certainly, especially when you are selling wide reaching products. But what about ROI? What about the quality of the content, or its sphere of influence. These are the questions I am far more interested in. Volume is yesterday. Engagement is today.
So what do I want to see when I look at a film industry related TV spot? At the moment, they read like a standard box ticking exercise. Relate movie in some what to event – TICK. Explosive action – TICK. Film title and call to action – TICK. It’s worked for years, why change it now?
We have been looking at analytics within SuperBowl for a few years now. Why? Because its an industry event and a forum for content providers to launch something new and interesting, make a statement. And the same thing keeps coming up time and time again. The movies that win SuperBowl, are the movies that offer something different. New footage or some kind of digital extension that takes the message and gives it another platform to breathe.
I have to say I was disappointed this year. This airtime doesn’t come cheap so to fill it with what felt like a very standard TV spot felt like a missed opportunity. Sure there are exceptions, some nice voiceovers here or some catchy music there, but the challenge is how do you take 30 seconds and grab someone with a message that says ‘dude, see this one in the cinema, don’t bother with the others’. To that point, I am not surprised to see Jungle Book so high on the intent scale. For me, it’s about a wow moment, then taking that moment and extending it on other platforms. Below the infographic, check out the other spots and I’d be interested to hear which ones stood out for you…
