The enigmatic Duane Thomas, a star running back for the Dallas Cowboys who refused to speak to coaches, teammates and the media for an entire 1971 season yet helped lead the team to victory in Super Bowl VI, once said: “If the Super Bowl is the ultimate game, how come there is another one next year?”
Still, most would agree the Super Bowl is, if not the ultimate game, certainly one of America’s biggest, most profitable sporting events.
It’s become so high-profile advertisers pay $7 million for a 30-second ad spot during the television broadcast. But that doesn’t necessarily lead to commercial success for those advertisers, as numerous tech companies can attest.
Case in point, last year’s Super Bowl. While the L.A. Rams were the big winners on the field, the losing team, the Cincinnati Bengals were by no means the biggest loser. That title arguably belongs to the cadre of cryptocurrency companies that paid a combined $54 million to showcase their wares before 99.2 million viewers in the U.S. alone.
The cryptocurrency TV ads were seemingly being fired off faster than Rams QB Matt Stafford’s passes, earning the game the moniker of Crypto Bowl.
Looking back, some of the ads placed by Coinbase, Crypto.com, eToro and FTX are a bit ironic.
FTX’s ad featured comedy writer and actor Larry David (of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm fame) as a doubting Thomas who rejected various innovations, including the wheel, fork, coffee, light bulb, dishwasher and even toilet. As the ad winds down and FTX, a crypto trading exchange which trumpeted its safety measures and financial controls, is touting its service, David says: “I don’t think so, and I’m never wrong about this stuff.”
As it turns out, David’s character might have been wrong about the wheel and coffee, but his tongue-in-cheek take on FTX was spot on. Nine months after its Super Bowl ad, FTX filed for bankruptcy protection and 30-year-old founder Sam Bankman-Fried was criminally charged with running a massive, multi-year fraud.
FTX, of course, wasn’t alone in its Super Bowl splash down. In an ad last year for Crypto.com, L.A. Lakers star LeBron James asks his younger self: “Is the hype too much? Am I ready?”
In hindsight, yes, the hype – at least for the crypto market – was too much. Since last year’s Super Bowl, Cryto.com announced major layoffs due to fast-falling crypto prices and reduced trading. The company is certainly doing better than FTX with its CEO, Kris Marszalek, insisting the firm is on solid footing.
In the last 12 months the valuations of many cryptocurrency companies have plummeted.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said in a December interview that he expected the company’s revenue for 2022 to be at least 50% lower than it was in 2021. This despite a 2022 Super Bowl ad that Coinbase officials said was so popular that 20 million people visited the company’s web site within a minute of the ad’s airing.
The Crypto Bowl reminded many of the 2000 Super Bowl, which became known as the “Dot-com Bowl.” That year 17 of 61 ads sold came from dot-com companies. Back then, the 30-second spots cost $2.2 million, still a king’s ransom for the day. Despite the high-profile ads, many of those firms met their demise shortly after the big game. Who could forget the Pets.com sock-puppet singing “If you leave me now”? The firm declared bankruptcy a few months after the Super Bowl, in which the St. Louis Rams defeated the Tennessee Titans.
Despite the flameout of some of these high-profile companies in the wake of their Super Bowl ads, don’t expect tech firms to abandon ad campaigns that include spots during the big game. There are still few – if any – other ways to reach the massive nationwide and global audience the Super Bowl captures. And there are still plenty of venture-backed tech firms desperately seeking a market and with lots of cash to spend on marketing.
For this year’s Super Bowl – pitting the Philadelphia Eagles against the Kansas City Chiefs – 10 of the 32 advertisers so far are tech or tech-enabled companies.
This year’s cadre of tech advertisers include, Tubi, a streaming platform with plans to debut three commercials during the Super Bowl; Workday, a business software brand that offers small-to-medium sized businesses tools for things like payroll and HR; online platform Rakuten; and Sqaurespace, a web site building and hosting firm.
While the likes of Tubi, Workday and Squarespace are newcomers, others such as Rakuten and Booking.com are Super Bowl advertising veterans.
One thing these firms – like the dot-coms of the 2000 Super Bowl and cryptocurrency companies from last year – have in common is they’ll look to score with some bold claims during their 30-second spots.
Workday, for instance, has tapped rock legends Ozzy Osbourne and Gary J. Clark in its Super Bowl ad teasers, promising that on Feb. 12, “The corporate world will be rocked.”
And if that doesn’t pique your interest, we have the Super Bowl return of the famous (or infamous) talking baby to look forward to in E*Trade ads.
Here’s a complete run down of this year’s slated Super Bowl TV ads.
Anthony Schoettle is the director of communications for the Indiana Chamber. He started with the Chamber in 2021 after a long career in journalism. He’s won multiple awards for his storytelling ability on a wide range of business topics.
