Nielson reported that Super Bowl LVIII had 120.3 million viewers, putting it second on the list of most-viewed American television events behind the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing. Emotions ran high with the excitement over a halftime show by Usher et al., the possibility of Taylor Swift sightings, and a game that kept viewers on the edge of their seats until the last minute of overtime.
Advertisers couldn't have asked for a more riveted audience for their $7 million per 30 seconds of airtime. Intense emotional expectations of pleasure and pain are powerful motivators of attention and recall. Both positive and negative emotions activate brain mechanisms that ensure our basic survival.
They also enhance deep thinking about what we care about, increasing effortful processing and longer-term retrieval (Immordino-Yang, 2016). The stage was set for impact, and the experts have selected their favorites, but does popularity deliver effectiveness for a brand?
A popular Super Bowl commercial gets a lot of mileage beyond the game broadcast minutes. The internet is full of "best and worst" lists as journalists, marketing experts, and bloggers gave the commercials extra exposure by sharing them to illustrate their analyses. Star power remains a reliable mechanism to get attention because it activates brain regions to make positive associations, build trust, and encode memories.
Instant recognition, which is increased by exposure, facilitates an emotional tie, and the "liking" of a celebrity is assumed to have a halo effect, enhancing the brand (Moraes et al., 2019). The reliance on celebrities without considering brand/target audience alignment can also backfire, leading to the dreaded vampire effect, where content and celebrity overshadow the brand (Erfgen et al., 2015).
Super Bowl hype also works both ways. High expectations can be hard to meet and even worse when you don't deliver. The act of advertising in the Super Bowl becomes part of........