Frequent Super Bowl advertisers including Anheuser-Busch, Pringles and Toyota have committed to appear again, but they face uncertainty after a topsy-turvy National Football League season of relocated teams, rescheduled games and sick quarterbacks. Media buyers said the big game could move to Feb. 28 if the pandemic forced a postponement. Their clients’ contracts with CBS include money-back stipulations if the Super Bowl is canceled, they added.
Advertisers spent a record $489 million to book slots on the 2020 broadcast, according to the research firm Kantar. They spent millions more to produce the commercials and on related promotions, paying to feature the ads on YouTube and to distribute marketing materials to stores across the country.
“It’s just a massive endeavor, like a military operation, to synchronize all of these steps,” said Kevin Krim, the chief executive of EDO, a TV ad measurement platform that works with networks and advertisers. “You don’t have a lot of give here. By this point in time, if you haven’t already shot and edited your Super Bowl ad, you’re running late.”
Avocados from Mexico, a nonprofit marketing organization linked to an import group, has participated in the Super Bowl broadcast every year since 2015, but is stepping away from the next one. “There’s a big benefit to being in the Super Bowl, but there’s also a cost,” said Kevin Hamilton, the organization’s head of brand marketing. “We thought that this would be a good year for us to try a few different things.”
Still, at a time of watch-when-you-want streaming shows and fractured viewing habits, the Super Bowl is one of few events that attract tens of millions of live viewers — a “marquee moment,” said Cathleen Ryan, the vice president of marketing of Intuit, the company behind TurboTax.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/15/business/media/super-bowl-2021-ads-coronavirus.html
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