By Andy Goldberg Feb 1, 2007, 11:41 GMT
San Jose, California - As they waited Wednesday at the checkout lines in the American shopping mecca of a Costco discount warehouse, customers Tim O'Brien and Katherina Lopez couldn't help but compare shopping carts.
Lopez's cart was filled with tortilla chips, salsa, dip, nuts and beer, while O'Brien's had much the same, plus a huge box containing a 2,000-dollar, high-definition flat-panel television.
'Getting ready for the big game, huh?' asked Lopez.
'Sure,' replied O'Brien. 'For me it's like a religion.'
O'Brien is not alone.
CBS, which is broadcasting the NFL championship game Sunday in Miami between the Indianapolis Colts and the Chicago Bears, estimates that nearly one in three Americans - some 90 million people - will tune in for the bruising, four-hour struggle.
That level of viewership will allow the TV network to charge 2.6 million dollars for each of roughly 60 advertising spots during the game. With just days remaining before the contest, media reports Wednesday said that several spots remained unfilled as advertisers wonder whether the huge expense is justified in the age of Tivo and the internet.
Most academics think it is. They point out that in the age of media diversification, the Super Bowl reigns supreme as the only event that so many people watch at the same time.
'It's unrivalled,' says Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York.
He views the broadcast less as a sporting event than a seasonal winter festival designed to banish the winter blues. Only half jokingly, he predicts that in 200 years, when the game of football has been long forgotten, American will still celebrate Super Bowl Sunday on the first weekend of February.
Whether in the future the festival will feature crisp-eating beer guzzlers gathered around screens to watch marketing messages is debatable. But there is little doubt that in 2007, Super Bowl ads seem at least as important as the action on the gridiron.
Super Bowl Games vs. Commercials was the title of an article Wednesday in the San Francisco Chronicle, which asked 'Are ads superior to game?'
The answer was inconclusive, but the article illustrated that for days before the game, the media writes and talks as much about the commercials as the teams.
There are even commercials advertising the commercials. Among this year's ads stirring up the most pre-game hype is a spot featuring Kevin Federline, would-be rapper and soon-to-be ex-husband of singer Britney Spears.
K-Fed, as he is nicknamed in the media, failed in an attempt at a music career despite being married to one of the industry's biggest stars, providing a springboard for his Super Bowl appearance. His ad for an insurance company features him as a struggling restaurant worker who dreams of being a rapper - only to wake up to the reality of a life flipping burgers.
Federline seems like the butt of the joke, but - luckily for the advertiser - it was deemed insulting by an organization claiming to represent the country's 12.8 million restaurant workers. Resulting protests sparked a whirlwind of interest in the advertising spot.
Another strategy being used by advertisers is a blatant appeal to the YouTube generation, which is ambivalent both about network television and American football. No less than three ads are the result of work by amateur auteurs, who entered their ideas in competitions held by the National Football League, Frito Lay and Chevrolet to come up with interesting snippets on which to blow 2.6 million dollars on airtime alone.
The seven-figure price tag is still a bargain, says John Antil, an associate business professor at the University of Delaware, who specializes in Super Bowl advertising.
'The Super Bowl is the only true mass media outlet available today,' he contends. 'If you want to reach a very large audience of males and females, young and old, the Super Bowl is the only game in town.'
Still, don't expect to have your socks blown off by the quality and wit of the ads, says Thompson, who claims to have watched every game for the last 26 years 'stone-cold sober and holding a pen and clipboard.'
'If you really look at these things objectively, they're not that great,' he says. 'You get better jokes on any five minutes of the Simpsons.'
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SP4: What a Gyp..Feb 2nd, 2007 - 02:59:18
It said nothing about football. Sports is the only real reality programming.
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SP4: What a Gyp..Feb 2nd, 2007 - 02:59:18
It said nothing about football. Sports is the only real reality programming.
Report this comment