This article, dated January 12, 2010, explains how different companies acted when buying spots for the Super Bowl between last year’s Super Bowl and the upcoming Super Bowl. Many companies have dropped out including Fedex, Pepsi and General Motors, all who were regular advertisers for the big game. This may be due to the companies still being in tough times, for example, General Motors who probably can’t or does not want to spend millions of dollars on various thirty-second slots. However, many companies have jumped on the Super Bowl advertisement spots including Boost Mobile, KGB and Dockers. The companies who are just joining feel as if their service has something special to offer and will stand out to their viewers. Millions have people are watching the Super Bowl, many just for the commercials and viewers will be surprised when they see new companies like Dockers while Pepsi is holding out for this years.
It's interesting how demand for Super Bowl air time is actually quite indicative of how the U.S. economy is doing that year. It will be a little weird not to see a GM commercial and see Coke but not Pepsi though.
ReplyDelete-Cassie
yeah i feel that every year many people look forward to see what exciting new commercials that GM can present because they typically like to introduce new cars and car models that they feel are going to be stars for them in the future. as for FedEx's commercials they usually have very funny commercials that they save specifically for the super bowl. i also think that it will be very interesting to see what new elements of entertainment these new companies will provide with their commercials.
ReplyDeleteGM is smart by not using $3 million on a super bowl ad. I think viewers (American tax payers) would resent the frivolous spending on a 30 second commercial because of the bailout money GM received. Not to mention there is already a lot of publicity on their new models because of the recent bankruptcy. Chrysler on the other hand has decided to spend the tax payers money to advertise the same cars that they haven't been able to sell for years. I think this goes to show not only the poor management of the company, but the failure of the Fed to determine which companies are worth saving, regardless of the jobs it would retain.
ReplyDeleteYea, I have just watched some Super Bowl commercial advertisements on the youtube website. The ads were quite funny and interesting, so they certainly provided good opportunities for firms either to introduce new products or to simply enhance their brand names.
ReplyDeleteThe current rates that firms have to pay for 30-second slots are lower than those from last year due to "dampened demand for such expensive air time", indicating that most companies still don't expect the prospect of the American economy to improve any time soon. As already mentioned, the demand for Super Bowl air time seems to be a pretty good indicator for the state of the American economy.
However, I was wondering how good the demand for the Super Bowl air time was as an economic indicator. The customers of the advertising slots are usually, if not always, big corporations. Their reactions with respect to these slots may not be significant enough to reflect how the economy behaves since over 70 percent of the American GDP comes from consumption (which relates to household, not firms). Perhaps the demand for certain consumer goods would be a better indicator.