This year’s Super Bowl commercials can leave viewers thirsty for more.
That’s because some well-known favorites, like Coca-Cola and Budweiser, will not compete for attention with multi-million dollar game ads when the Kansas City Chiefs face the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at the Super Bowl LV on February 7. In fact, beverage manufacturers Anheuser-Busch ABI,
Coca-Cola KO,
and PepsiCo PEP,
they’re all putting their best players in the game’s commercial database during this unprecedented pandemic NFL championship. Car manufacturer Hyundai HYMTF,
and Avocados From Mexico are also sitting in this Super Bowl – making room for newbies like Chipotle CMG,
DoorHash DASH,
and Huggies to enter the big leagues with their first Super Bowl seats.
So why are so many famous brands skipping one of the most watched television events of the year? Its parent companies say they are changing their manuals for a variety of reasons, such as reallocating their advertising spending to the relief of COVID-19 or reevaluating the best way to use those millions, as the pandemic continues to have a huge human and financial impact.
This week, Anheuser-Busch announced that it is abandoning its traditional airtime at the Super Bowl game and plans to use that money to support awareness of the COVID-19 vaccine. Although the company did not give an exact dollar amount, a spokesman told MarketWatch that the total donation for vaccine education and awareness will be equivalent to the cost of advertising in the Super Bowl, calling it a “multimillion dollar commitment”. That amount can be around $ 5 million or more, so like ViacomCBS VIAC,
is looking for about $ 5.5 million to $ 5.6 million for 30-second Super Bowl ads.
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This will be the first Super Bowl in 37 years without a Budweiser commercial in the game. And it is the first time in 20 years that neither Coca nor Pepsi has bought a Super Bowl ad for their famous brands.
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But it should be noted that Budweiser will still produce a digital Super Bowl ad that will be promoted online. And other AB InBev brands, including Bud Light and Michelob ULTRA, are still participating in national Super Bowl commercials.
In a similar move, while PepsiCo did not purchase a traditional 30-second ad for its Pepsi-branded soft drink, it did buy six other ads for Mountain Dew and its Frito-Lay products. And he’s choosing to double at the Pepsi Super Bowl halftime show starring The Weeknd this year, instead … which is basically a 12-minute Pepsi commercial, anyway.
Coca-Cola Co., Hyundai and Avocados de México, on the other hand, all say they are stopping advertising in the game this year to do some household chores.
Coca has cut spending and products after the pandemic largely closed restaurants, bars, cinemas and stadiums that would normally boost sales of its drinks around the world. The company announced that it was cutting 2,200 jobs worldwide last month, including 1,200 in the U.S.
“The Coca-Cola Company decided to stay out of the Big Game this year. This difficult choice was made to ensure that we are investing in the right resources during these unprecedented times, ”a company spokesman told MarketWatch by email. “We will be toasting our other brands with a cold Coca outside.” Although the company does not share how much money it will save by moving its soda brand out of an ad in the Super Bowl, Coca spent $ 10 million on commercials placed on Fox’s Super Bowl LIV broadcast in 2020, according to the global media company. Kantar analysis and information.
On the other hand, Avocados From Mexico had record sales as more Americans cook at home. The company sold 2.1 billion pounds of avocados in the United States this fiscal year and expects to sell 2.3 billion pounds in 2021. But Ad Age reports that CEO Alvaro Lugue recently told commercial publication The Packer that the company also is “using this year as a year to reinvent ourselves and do some things differently before we go back to the Super Bowl in 2022 again.”
A Hyundai spokesman also told Ad Age that he was leaving this year’s Super Bowl “based on marketing priorities, at the time of upcoming vehicle launches and where we think it would be best to allocate our marketing resources.” But they added, “We will certainly be back.”
There are many other factors at play as well.
Most companies start planning and creating their Super Bowl ads as early as the summer before the big game. But if there be a Super Bowl in 2021 was still in the air until recently, which drastically reduced the waiting time to create commercials worth a multimillion-dollar price. “I don’t think all of his ducks were in a row to get that creativity,” said Satya Menon, who leads Kantar’s return on investment practice. She told MarketWatch that many brands have probably considered whether it was better to enter the game with “an indifferent ad or is it better to just stay out?”
“I think this is how some companies definitely play,” she said.
Furthermore, last year’s tense and divisive social and political landscape probably gave companies reasons to take a break. “People are being very careful about the emotional tonality they should bring,” said Menon, anticipating that the ads that will air this year will embrace humor to ease tension. “There’s a little bit of ‘let’s step carefully in this environment’ that may also have contributed to” deciding to skip this year’s Super Bowl.
CBS announced it had just run out of commercial stock at the Super Bowl LV on January 27, about a week and a half before the game. Meanwhile, Fox reported selling its advertising stock for the 2020 Super Bowl in November 2019.
What’s more, last year’s Super Bowl, which aired about a month before the United States began imposing economic downtime to slow the spread of COVID-19, raised a record $ 450 million in advertising revenue, reported Kantar, with Anheuser-Busch being the biggest spender, followed by Procter & Gamble and PepsiCo. Coca-Cola and Hyundai were also among the 10 biggest consumers of Super Bowl advertising last year. And the four suspended ads this year.
In fact, this will be the first Super Bowl in 37 years without a Budweiser commercial in the game. And it is the first time in 20 years that neither Coca nor Pepsi has bought a Super Bowl ad for their famous brands.
But Menon noted that these absences can turn into games of power. For example, Sam Adams faked Budweiser Clydesdales in his own Super Bowl commercial … which created even more buzz about Bud beating out this year. “Their absence can be as noticeable as being there. People are thinking about why they are not there and talking about what they really did, which is a PSA, ”she said. “I think they really played a smart game.”
And it also made room for newbies like the DoorDash food delivery service, the Mercari online market and the freelance online platform Fiverr, who have benefited from the fact that people spend more time at home, to make their marks by inserting their own Super Bowl ads for the first time. The Kimberly-Clark-owned KMB,
Huggies will also air the first diaper commercial during a Super Bowl, with its second quarter slot featuring babies born on game day.
“You have a lot of e-commerce players coming,” added Menon. “And they are really going to get a lot of return on their investment in creating awareness for their brands and what they really do.”
In fact, as Americans are likely to watch the game at home with just a few family members this year, as many bars and restaurants remain closed and the pandemic continues, advertisers may have a more captive audience than ever. After all, smaller parties to watch the Super Bowl mean a noisy bar or a house full of friends and family screaming, probably will not drowning out what’s happening on the screen, for a change.
“In fact, there could be more attention being paid to what’s going on in the ads this year,” said Menon. “This is a really great opportunity that I think the brands that have given up are missing out.”