Should You Buy a Super Bowl Ad?

Brandon Welch 0:00
I want the majority of your budget and your resources going to that every day, knock on the door in the heart of the customer and win them over, win them over, win them over, win them over. Because the way bigger thing that’s always at play than just one big audience is that humans do things in their own order and their own timing. There’s natural timing to your product cycle, so you’re way, way, way better to spend the money if it’s an either or, like not even close to a comparable answer yes to have frequency overreach.

Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. I’m your host. Brandon Welch, I’m here with Caleb Ichabod ag Nate, the camera guy, and a wonderful question from a wonderful listener,

Caleb Agee 0:48
yes, today we’re gonna we’re getting right into it.

Brandon Welch 0:50
Getting right into it. Yo, no, you missed. No, no, okay, I have to do the thing. Okay, do the thing. This is the place, the place we’ll re answer your real life marketing questions so you can eliminate waste in advertising, grow your business and achieve the big dream, the big dream. The big dream is all about the big game.

Caleb Agee 1:07
The big game, yeah, we’re game today, we researched

Brandon Welch 1:10
if we’re if we’re allowed to say what we’re about to say, we’re allowed to say yeah, according to three websites, we’re just Yeah.

Caleb Agee 1:17
If you are an NFL attorney listening to this, we are in no way trying to sell our services while we say this word, please

Brandon Welch 1:24
send all correspondence to Nate the camera guy at Nathe. Camera guy, calm. So

Caleb Agee 1:28
the question, the question today, if you haven’t figured it out yet, is all about the Super Bowl and Jason, who is an avid listener, he has sent us a question before. Maybe he may have said two at this point. He said, after listening to your episode on TV, you know, buying TV, I think we were talking about how to share, how to steal market share, how to how to grow next year. That was from a few weeks ago. We’re usually just a couple heads, so we wanted to answer this as quickly as possible. He said I would be interested to talk Super Bowl. So I think what he really wants us to do is turn this into a sports commentary podcast, yes, and talk about all of our we look like sports commentary, yes? Well, yeah, you know, we both played so much football. I

Brandon Welch 2:16
dabble. Yeah, I’ve been watching football since 2021 yes.

Caleb Agee 2:23
So I would say, what’s your pick for the Super Bowl? Do you do? You know who you feel like is going to be there? You know, we don’t even say pick winner. Maybe just,

Brandon Welch 2:34
you know, I was telling my buddy the other night, the 40 Niners earned everything I’ve got right now. And I hate to say that, because I don’t, I don’t like them. I like them at all. I don’t like their faces. Oh, my god,

Caleb Agee 2:49
yeah, you know they’re cleaning

Brandon Welch 2:50
house, my homes, my homes. And magic is like, it’s special to watch. If I, if I had to bet the Eagles will at least be in it, it’ll be Eagles 40 nines or Eagles chief,

Caleb Agee 3:00
yep, yep.

Brandon Welch 3:01
I think we’re in Chief’s kingdom. That was a, like a three pronged answer, yeah. Well,

Caleb Agee 3:06
yeah, the 40 Niners and eagles are in the same conference, so they’ll have to beat each other out.

Brandon Welch 3:13
But thanks to Netflix and Amazon, I’m a Jason Kelsey fan.

Caleb Agee 3:19
Yeah, yep. So I would say chiefs 40 Niners would be fun. Yes, just so it’s not the same thing again, right? Chiefs eagles, but be fun. Who knows? Who knows? All right, that’s

Brandon Welch 3:31
for those of you still listening. Yeah,

Caleb Agee 3:32
we bored you enough. We really the

Brandon Welch 3:34
ESPN podcast in the show notes,

Caleb Agee 3:37
yeah, somebody else is talking more credibly about this. We really want to talk about Super Bowl ads because we’re marketing

Brandon Welch 3:43
and the scoring and the commercial breaks,

Caleb Agee 3:45
Yes, yep, um, the reason probably another half of the audience actually watches the Super Bowl, right? Everybody has that person at the Super Bowl party, right? So you got your got your wings. What’s your favorite Super Bowl

Brandon Welch 3:59
food? Gotta be wings. Is it wings? Gotta be wings that just came out seven layer dip, and wings came to mind. Okay, yeah, we

Caleb Agee 4:05
make some, like a cheese dip, yeah, with some beans. And that’s good stuff. Velveeta, fake cheese, yeah. So we’re talking about the Super Bowl ads. Now, before we move on, we got to get some clarity, because there are two kinds of ads in the Super Bowl. I say kinds, as in, there is a nationally there are the nationally syndicated ads. Those are the the Geico the budweisers, the burritos, Doritos, Mountain Dew, you know, right? And they’re going directly to the network. They’re going just all, it’s on Fox this year. So all of Fox is broadcasting that ad at that time across nation, the right nation.

Brandon Welch 4:46
Yeah, it’s, it’s probably, it’s probably important to note that that yes, you’re, you’re not buying that ad from your local nation and or even, you’re probably even not at regional and

Caleb Agee 4:55
well, and that’s the thing a 32nd ad is. Is predicted to be about in the 7 million, 7 million

Brandon Welch 5:03
bucks. So reach, essentially, it’s, gosh, it’s in the neighborhood of 120 100 30 million people, because you’re reaching half of America, or a little better, like 60%

Caleb Agee 5:11
Yeah, yep. Then we have local ad slots. You can usually, unfortunately, tell the difference, yeah, you know I’m saying, and you’re like, oh, okay, we’re in the, we’re in the local ads right now. But there are a few ad slots that run with your local DMA, your local Fox. Yes, station runs those ads specifically and the inventory. They get the inventory. Yeah, they sell them. Those aren’t $7 million they’re they’re gonna be in the 30 to 50,000 depending on what market you’re in, or upwards. That’s, that’s like a medium market, yes. And then I would say so

Brandon Welch 5:48
medium markets. Think, think Tulsa, think we’re here in Arkansas, we’re here in Springfield, probably one to 2 million people in population. That’s a medium sized market. Yep.

Caleb Agee 5:59
I think ours here in our town, 40, I believe,

Brandon Welch 6:03
is the Yeah, 30 to 50, depending on when you buy it. Yes, you commit to if you

Caleb Agee 6:07
go in New York, Atlanta, Dallas, those big, big markets. We’re talking hundreds of 1000s Yep, for local, for the locals, for the local spot, yep, yep, multiple six figures, and top 10 market, for sure. According to the NFL and Nielsen, the rating for the Super Bowl is 60, or last year was, yeah. So 60%

Brandon Welch 6:29
of all, basically all people watching TV are

Caleb Agee 6:33
watching are tuned into the Super Bowl? Yes, which is wild, yes.

Brandon Welch 6:38
So not unreasonable to say, you know, half of your backyard will see it, right? Yeah, by law, that will be, yeah, we’ll be in the room that is being shown would maybe be a more, yeah.

Caleb Agee 6:50
You have to physically take into account how many people actively watch the Super Bowl, right? Did they? Oh, yeah. You know, there’s its own. That’s its own. We’re gonna get there. But um, so since we’re typically talking to business owners, entrepreneurs, small businesses in America, yes, we are going to stick with that local ad spot, and we’re going to we’re going to address that from that perspective. And that’s actually where Jason comes from as well. I think

Brandon Welch 7:13
the principle applies either way it does. So the question is, should I buy a Super Bowl ad? Have you ever wondered that? Have you ever looked at competitors, people in your market going, you know, spending that big money? And you’re going, should I do that too? I have actually a very fast answer, probably not, probably not for most advertisers, and not because it’s not even about the money, really, it’s about the strategy behind it. So the long answer, the second part of the answer, is absolutely. If these three things are true, if you have a healthy core audience and a consistent budget that will not be affected by this decision to spend 50 grand or 100 grand in the Super Bowl, sure, and that is several advertisers that we work with could do that, right? Yep, and it wouldn’t necessarily affect it would be a it’d be noticeable expense. Noticeable expense, no doubt, but it wouldn’t necessarily affect what we’re doing on a daily basis. So if you’re if you’re using the Maven method, when we’re primarily using broadcast for a tomorrow audience, the tomorrow customer, the three things have to be true is that we are showing up to as many people as we possibly can daily, consistently, and we’re doing it generally in the same times. And so that’s what we call a core audience, a core schedule. Yep, I coach most of my clients to build unless they’re just now starting out, like if they’re just now starting out, I say, put it all, you know, let’s just do it all in an annual plan. But I after we’ve worked with somebody a couple years we’re budgeting, we put 80 to 90% of the budget in that core budget, and we save 10% ish, yeah, or at least 10% ish for for special, heck of a deal type stuff, right? Extras, yep, big noise, things, right? Yep, but, but every other day of the year, I don’t care if it’s July, I don’t care if it’s December. I don’t care if you’re a jeweler and it’s, you know, not Valentine’s Day. I want the majority of your budget and your resources going to that every day. Knock on the door in the heart of the customer and win them over, win them over, win them over, win them over. Because the way bigger thing that’s always at play than just one big audience is that humans do things in their own order, in their own timing, and there’s a natural timing to your product cycle, so you’re way, way, way better to spend the money if it’s an either or, like, yeah, not even close to a comparable answer yes, to have frequency overreach, yeah, frequency and consistency with the same audience, I’ll add. But that’s a that’s a different that’s a different nerd topic for a different day. But the short answer, the way you do that is you pick a couple, few, 510, programs, maybe, if you have even a large budget, and you show up to those people all the time.

Caleb Agee 9:51
When that’s not true, though you should not be it’s a heck no for me, yeah, yep.

Brandon Welch 9:57
So that is the first thing. So if. If these three things are true, you have a healthy core audience, that budget we just talked about, and by doing the Super Bowl ad, you’re not affecting that or stealing

Caleb Agee 10:07
from or stealing from your overall consistency, consistent budget. Yeah. The

Brandon Welch 10:11
second thing, if you are a company with strong values and something to say, Please, I’ve seen this a bunch of times, please do not be the car dealer that just says, Oh, we can swing the hammer of a $50,000 ad, yeah. And just runs your regular commercial and says, Oh, welcome to, you know, Toyota, right? Yeah. You know we gotta, you know, we got great deals down here. We have great customer service. Don’t do that. Please don’t do that like the magic in the premium that you pay for a Super Bowl audience, and frankly, the responsibility you have when you have that many people all paying attention to you, because they are, the difference in Super Bowl ads is they are expecting something remarkable. Yeah, I’ll argue that it’s a detriment, because you are proving what an unremarkable company and brand you are, and you just get on and flap your jaws about like it’s every other day of the week. It’s like, no, and this is show business. You best have something worth saying, Yeah,

Caleb Agee 11:10
I would say that’s also true. Obviously it’s true in your longer term thing. But yes, you need to be willing to invest. Yes, when you when you get free at free production, yes, you get what you pay for, oh, I’m saying, and so you need to be when you have a consistent budget and schedule in your traditional media, especially when you’re gonna spend 50,000 100,000 $200,000 on an ad. That ad should cost you a significant portion of that to produce, to

Brandon Welch 11:41
produce the actual creative, yeah, which Mr. Cart in front of the horse? Oh, my bad. Is the exact next point. Let me check better notes here. So, so segue, so, yeah, that the third point is, or the third like, if you, if this is true, if you are willing and have the courage to put extra resources towards the production of this ad then, and these other two things are true that I say, Yeah. Go ahead, real quick. Back to point two for just a second. Yeah. Can a company without the strong values that we talked about, and by the way, go back to listen to Dr Rice’s episode. Can a company who doesn’t really believe something they can do, they have something to say that that can equate, they can leverage an audience like this into, you know, some sort of compelling reason to do business.

Caleb Agee 12:33
I actually think that they could, at some level. You could, depends on the product. You can change the product like you have a strong product. You have a strong product, wise, you’re just or a strong offer. Yes, yes. You can convince somebody to do it. That’s the exception to the rule. But generally, else up, yes, generally No, yeah, yeah. It’s

Brandon Welch 12:51
way, way, way easier when you are a company of values and you believe something, you’re trying to change the world, and you’re trying to fight for something, or stand up for something that is, you know, for the betterment of whoever you’re talking to, yes. So we only work with clients that have that connection. So that’s really a lot easier for us to do that. But going on to point three, even if you’re an everyday like, you know, I’m talking to my Steve rises, I’m talking to my Lori rooks. I’m talking to my people that are have businesses of purpose and passion. You still need to go out of your way and and get, get the ad writers, pay the ad writers enough to make you something spectacular, and then pay then eight the camera guys, enough to make it come off in a way that is just spectacular. Yes, it needs to be a media event for you to do that. Yeah, yeah. So let’s talk about those three things real quick. Answer is probably not for most organizations, because most organizations these next three things aren’t true. But if these three things are true, if you can pull it off without it affecting your daily consistency with your audience. Otherwise, check number one. If you’re a company with strong values and something to say yes, and if you are willing to put in the resources for incredible creative Yes, all three of those things are true. Let’s do it. Yeah, let’s make a Super Bowl ad, because, yeah, you’re gonna get famous. Yeah. And as long as you’ve hired the right people to make your ad, it’s gonna pay dividends for Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have. I’ve actually tested in the past, I’d say, allowed I didn’t speak up loud enough with a couple of clients, I’m thinking, in the past that wanted to do Super Bowl ads earlier in my career, and they had hopes for a high transaction count, yeah, they equated, oh, it’s all these people. And that must be, you know, it’s five times the people of normal ads. So it’s five times the response. And, man, the product would have to be really timely. It would have to be a product that people actually already want to buy, and you’re just making it like. Obvious that this is the, this is the right time to buy it and right time to do something because of your offer. Yeah, I think GoDaddy probably does a fine job at that with their ads.

Caleb Agee 15:07
What investment app had the QR code? Yeah, bouncing. You

Brandon Welch 15:11
know, I’m talking about, Yep, perfect Bitcoin, or right Robin Hood or something, yeah, something like that is some sort that’s

Caleb Agee 15:16
disruptive. It will cause somebody to go. They can make a an action right there. They don’t have to leave. But if you’re selling a service, yes, I’m not, I’m I’m eating, you know, I’m switching from barbecue to Parmesan, you know, garlic, parmesan wings right now. Yeah, I’m not thinking about my roof. You’re a parmesan wing guy. Oh, well, if I said I switched, that’s both, it’s both. And I gotta, I go with the sampler, the sampler platter. Maybe you don’t make them good enough, all right, if you don’t like them. Oh, okay, okay,

Brandon Welch 15:49
okay. All right. All right. Excuse me. So talk about that resource for a second. I’m going to speak in terms of our ad agency, just as a little case study. You hear about, hear about Doritos and Pepsi and Budweiser. I mean, the production there is well into the millions for the ad itself, yeah. And then the media on top of that, you know, is expensive, yeah, at a local level, I’m not saying that there isn’t somebody very talented in your station group that may be selling you the ad, if you don’t have an agency, but for heaven’s sake, make sure that person’s getting taken care of. I would even go to the station. I’d be like, I’m thinking of John, my friend, John, at a station here that we in Springfield. I’d be like, John, I know you have 50 other ads in a week to produce for this TV station. Yeah, I need this one to be special. Yeah, I’m gonna pay you five grand to make that happen, right, just for your writing hours, right? So I would make sure whoever is doing that knows it’s their mission to do something remarkable and give them the space and give them the creative freedom Yeah, to bring you something remarkable, yeah, if it was our agency on a normal day, just an ad that it’s running for any of our clients, that may be a five to 10k per ad investment. Some of them, when we batch them, they get down to like, three, four grand a piece. But if we were doing, and we’ve done, you know, momentous like, video projects. In the past, it might be upwards of 50 grand if you’re paying an agency to do it, really, really well, yeah, maybe even more than that, I think bigger markets you could expect. And it

Caleb Agee 17:29
depends on the concept. It depends on the what the script is like the end, you know the end result, yeah.

Brandon Welch 17:34
But, and you’re thinking, Okay, wow, this, this $50,000 media ad just got another $50,000 bill tied to it, which was the commercial I had to produce. Like, it’s not that that’s bad money spent. If you’re the right company and you’re in the right place and you’ve got the right mindset and the right other things in place. But that 100 grand, for a lot of people, I think that are listening, that’s a pretty significant port of a part of a marketing budget, yep. And in a medium sized market, that 100 grand would be way better spent every day at a little bit of the time, you know? So, um, cool. Let’s talk about, if you’re gonna do it, let’s talk about some messaging tactics. Yes, we did an episode like, way back four or five years ago, we dissected the top five Super Bowl ads and what made them remarkable. We shouldn’t do

Caleb Agee 18:18
that. I’m gonna say we’ll do it. We’ll do an episode right after, we will do it, Super Bowl, which is February 11. Cool, February 11. Love it. Fun. Fact, usually falls on my birthday, if you want to send me, you know,

Brandon Welch 18:31
parmesan, wind, Gifford, yes, weirdo,

Caleb Agee 18:34
in early February. It’s not this year, okay, just kidding.

Brandon Welch 18:39
Yeah, it’s next year. Yeah. He’s what are you going to be like, 19 and a half? Yeah. Okay, so obviously we got to rise above the noise if we’re making an ad like this, and that’s the literal noise in the room, because depending on where your spot falls, you’re competing with bathroom breaks. You’re competing with, how do I say this so endearingly conversing wives and friends you were competing with Doritos and Chip dip and let me go get another beverage. Yeah? And so

Caleb Agee 19:17
drinks cracking open, yeah, you know, open, big.

Brandon Welch 19:21
There’s, there’s two ways to rise above the noise. You either you literally rise above it, or you rise below it. Yep, you give contrast to whatever you think is going to be around you, and you probably won’t know what the ad before you were after you is, but do something that, on the whole is just disruptive, like white noise or white space, or change the pace, because most people, most people, get a little too excited in their ads for what the actual excitement level calls for. They’re trying to get really excited about, you know, if it’s a local thing about you buying their, you know, car this Saturday, you know, or Yeah, or their or their plumbing. Service, and it’s like most ad people, because they lack the time ability discipline, whatever you want to call it, to write well and to say big things in short sentences, they will try to over hype something by yelling at you doing a fast pace. The advertiser almost always wants that poor ad guy or gal to cram more information in it. Don’t do that to them, by the way, no, and people think that it’s their job to inform people, educate the public. By the way, that’s a myth in the Maven marketer. You should read all about it. Educate the public, pick it up on Amazon or chapter six, I think. Anyway, that’s not your job. Your job in this moment especially, is to bring smiles, fist or tears. Nate the camera guy, what do we believe?

Unknown Speaker 20:45
Does it bring smile? Fists or tears?

Brandon Welch 20:47
It falls on deaf ears. We say that every day around here. Uh huh, that is a core belief. Uh, Frank and Maven, if your ads don’t bring smiles, fist or tears, they fall on deaf ears, yep. And that’s true every day, but when you have 30 seconds to justify your $100,000 spend, you really got to make that true. So make them laugh cry or get angry people, like, I don’t want to make anybody angry. Angry isn’t like, totally piss them off. No. Angry is tension. Angry is

Caleb Agee 21:21
your company is there to solve a problem in the world. Yes, they should be angry at the problem, yeah, the problem or at the way things have always been. You’re changing something, and if

Brandon Welch 21:33
what’s not available to them, yes, the way some other competitors doing it worse. More worser than you are, right? More worse. So just a general principle rising above the noise, your your your ad angle, your copy angle, your messaging angle has to be something that’s one of those three things, humor, everybody knows humor is a good thing. Sadness, be careful, because you don’t want to Well, I shouldn’t say be careful. What I’m saying is, if you’re gonna make somebody cry, really make them cry for the right reason. Don’t just try to make them cry. Don’t like go shallow on that, right? Yeah, I’m talking Budweiser puppies, Clydesdales that are, you know, long lost friends. And, yes, that, that emotional thing. Sarah McLachlan, cue, the do the animal abuse commercial that ran like for 10 years, right? We’ll

Caleb Agee 22:25
remember you

Brandon Welch 22:26
that was without

Caleb Agee 22:28
auto tune. Yeah? Now that that was, we’ll auto tune it.

Brandon Welch 22:32
Album is coming out next, yeah,

Caleb Agee 22:34
just squeak it out. Yeah. It’s early in the morning. Yeah. It’s

Brandon Welch 22:37
called Parmesan. Sorry, the Parmesan. Okay, so let’s talk about a few things you can use. We have a guide. We’ve referred to it in the Monday morning, not Monday morning, the Monday the Maven Monday email. You should subscribe to the Monday Morning memo, though that’s probably learned more from that one email than I have anything else Monday morning memo.com. We’re not affiliated with them. We just like the heck out of them. So the Maven Monday email, we often have linked to this 14 ways to make your ads more interesting. I’m not gonna go into all of those, but a couple key ones that I think are just universally applicable to anybody. White space talked about that. So take noise out, take color out. Take crowded product, heavy things out. Use stark white backgrounds or stark black backgrounds, or something that leaves a lot of space and contrast around either the visual or the audio part of your message. Use fewer words, but pick the right words. Yeah. Another one would be use a character. You either need to become a character. And we’ve talked a lot about that. The episodes where we talked about how to steal more market share, talk a lot about that of being a noticeable person with noticeable attributes. Yeah, not just a person that’s a spokesperson reading some lines of copy. No, we talked about disorient the audience. So part of this like laugh, cry, get angry, or smiles, fist. Here is what we call it, if you can make the audience go, What in the world did I just see in this moment? Tension in and of itself, is is a form of angst, and is a form of emotional memory. Now, hopefully your product resolves it, or maybe, maybe even a website resolves it, or maybe later in the campaign would be totally fine to resolve it, yeah, but next morning, did you see that advert? What the heck was that? Yeah, that’s way better than, Oh, I know what that was, and it was totally stupid if I if I saw it and it didn’t land down, he did a commercial last year, the year before, and this can lead me to my next point. But there was just got this guy doing goofy stuff, and he had the product in his hand, but it never landed. And made a point. I think the point, or think what he said. Was, you got to sniff it to believe it, but nothing he was doing up into that point. It was, it was disoriented. For the sake of being disorienting, yeah, you don’t want to do that. What you want to do is maybe leave them curious about something they going to find out about later, or leave a little bit of a cliffhanger. But it still needs to hint that your product or the emotional experience they’re having, yes, is similar in some way. Yeah. Would you add anything to that? I

Caleb Agee 25:26
would say, along with that, is tell a good story. So, so a good story has a little bit of an art. You have 30 seconds or whatever to do that. But if you have a character, the character needs to go on a journey. Take me on a journey. What in some way, shape or form, right? And, and the danger with, especially local ads, a lot of time, is like, they’re like, a Hallmark movie. It’s like, I saw the first five seconds and I know what the end is going to be like, you know, I’m saying, yes, sorry if you love Hallmark movies. I think there’s some good ones out there. They’re just, they just give you, yes, you just kind of like, Oh, that’s nice. It’s good. Saturday nap,

Brandon Welch 26:04
movie journey didn’t make my heart go pitter patter. No. You know, you

Caleb Agee 26:07
know how that story is going to end. That’s what we’re talking about. When we want to have a plot to adventure, we want to have adventure, we want to go somewhere, we want to be something. And that sounds daunting to do in 30 seconds, but I promise you it’s possible.

Brandon Welch 26:21
Here’s what’s worth saying. This is all rooted in neuroscience. Our brains are programmed to ignore and forget the mundane and save energy for the moments of things that, as Donald Miller would put it, make us thrive or survive. So thrive is all the emotions that are part of the human experience. Think about Maslow, love and belonging. Think about acceptance. Think about status. Think about things that allow us to be more secure in who we are and what we’re doing on a daily basis. Survival is triggering the alligator brain and saying something’s coming for you, yeah. And basic needs, yeah, being met. Needs, pain, soaps, fears, yeah, we talk about that. And so just from a basic level, like, what is my ad doing that? But also, you know, is it helping them thrive or survive? But the the clues along the way that the brain uses to stop and go. Is this something I should keep watching? Um, and by the way, audio is the fastest way to do it. It’s Is this an unpredictable pattern? Yeah, have I seen this before? Can I quickly see to the end of it, or am I You got me? You hooked me because I, because I’ve got to see to the end of this to know if it’s thrive or survive, right? Yeah, all the better if, when they find out that that time has been worthy, and it did land them to a conclusion of, oh, that was a good point. Yes. Oh, yep, yep. Good job, Yep, good job. Snickers, right? Yeah. Um, so that that was kind of my next point, that story is so important, but relate the story. Don’t be like the downy guy. Relate the actual story to a conclusion. Your product makes that should be that sounds obvious, but so many people don’t do that, right? Well,

Caleb Agee 28:13
and I think we get, we get lost in our own world. So the danger is your intent, your intentions here even even in buying a Super Bowl ad, make sure your intentions are clear. What are your goals? I’m going back to the top of this conversation, the strategy of it. What are your goals? It does feel good to see your ad in the Super Bowl. Let’s be honest about that. Business owners, you’re like, I have an ad in the Super Bowl this. Yes, right? That feels good. But that can’t be the only reason you’re doing the ad,

Brandon Welch 28:39
and I promise. What if you make the worst ad ever, every friend you’ve ever had, and your mom’s friends are going to be sitting there waiting for it to be your ad? Yeah, text you and be like, I know that guy. I know that. Yeah, that whole thing and what? That feels

Caleb Agee 28:51
good. That’s fun, but that, but that’s got more point 50 grand. And when we the same is true in the message, right? We need to connect with a human and offer them a better life. And if we haven’t done that inside of our ad, and if that wasn’t our intent in the first place of of doing this, our product, our service, changes their life. And if we don’t connect with them and show them how that does that, we’re missing the whole point. Yes, we shouldn’t save your money.

Brandon Welch 29:17
Yes, I’m thinking, yeah. So I’m thinking of a couple good examples here. Betty White was just infinitely funny. No matter, you could have done anything with Betty White, and you would have had the attention, right? She demanded that kind of attention, yeah? But Snickers did a really good job with her some years back, and they, they had, it was Betty, it was a bunch of, you know, rough and tough football players, and then Betty White was like, the running back or the receiver, or something like, yeah, and which is perfectly timed anyway, because it’s football, right? But also, it wasn’t just about Betty White being funny, the conclusion of the ad. So it was Betty White playing and, you know, all the guys around. Telling her, like, you’re playing like Betty White out there. And she’s like, that’s not what your girlfriend said, or Yeah. And she’s being funny Betty White. But at the end, you see, you see her eat a Snickers bar, and she turns back into the guy, right? She turns back into the guy that he actually is. Yeah? So she’s no longer playing by Betty White. And the hook is brilliant, you’re not, you’re you’re not you when you’re hungry, yeah? And so it was like, ah, instant it resolved, right? Yeah. So they used an emotion and funny, but they didn’t stop there. They concluded it. So Budweiser does this, all their puppy love, all their Clydesdale stuff, you know, on its own, people gonna watch that. People watch cat videos. But if that’s all they did and didn’t resolve it, and what they do, they do this whole best buds thing, right? What is the reality of their product when you’re using it, that is usually when people are together. It’s a social product, unless you have a problem, yeah, you’re generally with other people while you’re doing that. Yeah? So all this connectedness and warm fuzzies of the animals get made whole when they say that warm fuzzy, that connection is also what you get when you you know, share this with share this, yep, with a friend, right? Yep, best

Caleb Agee 31:15
buds, all right. Bad examples.

Brandon Welch 31:16
We talked about the downy McBride. I’m also thinking of any local car dealer we talked about that just gets on and says, runs their normal commercial or don’t do that. We already talked about that. Yeah, last piece of creative advice, for the love of humanity, ignore focus groups. There I said it. And your friends opinions, and I’ll probably, honestly, probably most of your company collaborate on every other thing, but when it comes down to what do you think of this ad, whether it’s a professional setting or whether it’s a whatever, everybody is going to offer you something because you’ve triggered the part of their brain that is about them, and they’re going to start looking for things that they wouldn’t have looked at in their subconscious. This is why focus groups fail. Mm, hmm. You’re asking somebody to be analytical about an experience that the entire rest of the world is not going like commercials by in and of themselves. Nobody’s sitting there at home. No doing what you’re asking this focus group to do, which is analyze this ad, right? Nobody’s look ever looking at it. They’re

Caleb Agee 32:19
trying to balance some dip on a chip and, you know, feed it into their mouth while your ads happening in the background, yes, and they’re halfway listening to you, yes. That is a completely different mindset than when you say, Hey, look at this. Put it right in front of their face, and they they instantly put on this

Brandon Welch 32:35
Anakin, you know, advertisers and the world tends to think that people know what makes them do the things they do, and they just don’t know. The neuroscience of it is that we have 10,000 times more brain capability to imagine and process and experience a world that is not sensory, that is not visual, sight, sound, touch, it’s all emotion, and in this cloudy thing called the right brain, yeah, and that we talked about a minute ago about earning attention, that is the fastest way to attention, and the analytical brain is the slowest, or is the most critical, rough, turbulent way to earning attention, because the brain is always trying to turn it off. But music, rhythm, polka dot colored pink, polka dot cows, things that are just not a pattern that the right brain has seen before. And you can do this in an infinite number of ways. What I’m saying is all your friends are going to look at the weird stuff that actually would be capable of earning attention, and they’re going to try to find some analytical thing wrong with it because, and the truth is, they’re right analytically, it is poor. But then you’re gonna get scared, and then you’re gonna try to turn the ad down. You’re gonna try to knock off some of the sand off

Caleb Agee 33:49
the edges a little bit, and the sharpness is what got you in their brain,

Brandon Welch 33:53
exactly right? And needs to be jagged. It needs to

Caleb Agee 33:58
it needs to hit, stick hard, slap.

Brandon Welch 34:00
Yeah. Kids are saying these days, right? Nate the camera guy, that slap. Ad slaps so quick, quick story on that we’re ad guys, so we are in this industry. And if I asked most ad people like, come up with your top 10 list of ads of all time, Top Top 10 ads of all time. Or if you just Google Top 10 ads of all time, you’re going to find this ad I’m about to mention at the top of every list, if not number one, it’s widely regarded as in my world, and then by people I trust, as the best ad of all time. I wasn’t able to live with it when this ad was produced, and when I started learning about advertising, 25 years after this ad was produced. It’s the it’s the gold standard. It’s the apple 1984 ad. And just to lay out the it’s a very weird ad, I would say. It uses the concept of white space, intention and what. Going on here? Yep, and it’s this, like drone looking army, like sitting there watching some big ruler leader, and it’s implying, like, hindsight, you can say it’s implying People are sheep and they’re they’re slave to a mindset and a mentality, right? And Apple the character that sort of represents Apple, or the spirit of Apple, is a bright, athletic, ambitious woman who is running from this army and she throws, basically throws a big Sledgehammer in this big talking head that is, you know, it’s a weird ad, like you’re looking, shatters it. What is going on, right? Nobody knows what’s going on. Nobody’s going, and the focus group is losing their mind, going, this is the dumbest thing we’ve ever seen. Yeah, literally, what you look

Caleb Agee 35:48
if you look up the this doesn’t have computers in it. How are you going to sell computers? Are

Brandon Welch 35:52
you going to sell computers this way? Yeah, I don’t know anything about this product now. And Apple’s going, you’re dang right, you don’t good, because the only thing the ad says, it talks about the date that the Macintosh will be released, and you will see why 1984 will not be like 1984 again. And they’re like, What does that even mean? And so people are just carrying around this experience of angst, and what in the world is what? What are they? It’s a pretty big claim. You’re gonna change the whole year. You’re gonna change the whole decade. Yeah. And sure enough, Apple did Case in point, right? They can do that because they’re apple, but yep, the time they weren’t the apple we know today. No, nobody really understood what that meant. There

Caleb Agee 36:33
are eight apples in this room. I think I’m counting right now, probably. Yeah, it’s a very small room,

Brandon Welch 36:39
exactly. So yeah, the point is, if they listen to the focus group, they would never run the ad, and Apple may not have launched the way that it launched. So

Caleb Agee 36:51
don’t ask.

Brandon Welch 36:53
By all means, analyze your direct response ads and analyze your digital environment where people are actually actively using their intellect, their left brain. They’re calculating, logical, deductive reasoning brain, to make purchase decisions on price and features all the time. We use data every day for that. Don’t hear that. We don’t use data. But when I’m trying to create a subconscious experience, which is the goal of tomorrow marketing and the goal of reaching hundreds of 1000s of people who don’t care or are not thinking about your product right now. Yeah, don’t try to ask an analytical question about that ad. Yeah? Do the weird stuff. Yep, do the pattern stuff, music. We’re talking about jingles. I’m so excited for that episode. I’m actually preparing

Caleb Agee 37:35
a lot of stuff for that Live, a live show,

Brandon Welch 37:37
you know what?

Caleb Agee 37:38
I think. So we’ll just, we’ll have no, actually, the live jingle experience. We

Brandon Welch 37:42
are going to have a live jingle experience. And you know what I’m going to throw out, if you’re listening and you want a free jingle idea, you want us to produce a jingle? Sorry, not produce production. We’ll have to talk about that’s expensive. Gotta get musicians and all that stuff involved, right? If you want to us to write you a hook for your company, little words and a melody. I literally just charged somebody $5,000 just for the at or for the jingle, for this and, like, just, just for the creative part of that, and then the production’s another five ish on top of

Caleb Agee 38:15
that, depending on instrumentalists and studio time and all of that. It does take a lot. What

Brandon Welch 38:18
I’m offering you is of real value. Send us a company. We’ll pick the one. We’ll pick the one that’s the most convincing. If there’s, if there’s a bunch of them, like, we’re gonna pick one company to do a jingle on. Yeah, Frank and move in. Live, right? Jingle, jingle. Time, live. Send, send that. Say I would like a jingle. And here’s why I think you should pick my company and tell us anything you think you need us to know about writing a jingle for you. We’ll make it happen. Maven Monday at frankon. Maven.com Yes,

Caleb Agee 38:45
cool. But I

Brandon Welch 38:49
digress, because I was talking about ignoring focus groups, use music, use the weird stuff. And if somebody’s telling you that doesn’t make or that doesn’t make me feel like I know what this product is, you’re probably onto something.

Caleb Agee 39:00
You probably Yeah, this is a long term media Yep. So you need a long term place in somebody’s mind, yes. And if you just talk about, you know, something, Best Buy is going to do an ad that’s like, Apple computers are yes, 199 off this weekend only. Yes, I forgot that ad. Well, the thing is, they’re selling computers.

Brandon Welch 39:20
And most of you guys that are listening are not selling computer. Are not selling computers. You’re not selling things that people need every day. You’re selling, you know, roofing, attorney services, medical services, things that all one day need. Yeah, I can’t need them all right now, so don’t ask. Don’t ask the population. We’ve talked about that some, yeah, we got it. We’re gonna keep talking about it. All right. Last things, because I’m late, yep. Um, Caleb, put this in there. I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna land the plane real quick. Couple things to think about. Um, the more the commoditized your product is, the more creativity you can just use in general. Yes, it’s about getting them to think about something they’re gonna do

Caleb Agee 39:57
anyway. Yep, it’s customer awareness, right? They know they talk. Totally name awareness, yeah, yeah.

Brandon Welch 40:01
So, so your food, your Mountain Dews, your beers, your insurance, things people already are buying. You can, you can get away with a little bit more wide open, creative, yep. But if you’re a career service people, it isn’t commoditized. And you do have feet like there, there’s nothing new about a corn chip, right? Yeah, I know what the corn chip is. I know what the soda is that you’re not going to convince me of any convince me of anything utilitarian that is better or different about that product. Just, do I like it? And do I remember it, and does it make me hungry or whatever? Yep, um, when you’re when you’re a local service, it’s totally different, because there’s a million differentiating things, and you’re not commoditized, and people don’t have all this information and past experience with your brand or your category so you can, you have to be a touch more practical or persuasive in the value and service you provide. Yep. So that’s just a general rule. The last thing, if you’re going, Ah, I get you. I’ve got the core audience thing, and I’ve got a good budget, but 50 grand is a little steep check into a pre game ad. Yep, you might still be able to get they’re about half price. Yeah, in

Caleb Agee 41:06
generally, generally speaking, about half the price. And guess what? Everybody’s already

Brandon Welch 41:11
watching. So the 30 minutes leading

Caleb Agee 41:14
up to Yeah, they keep it elongating the pre game show. Shows are so much commentary, yeah, they

Brandon Welch 41:21
might start midday, right? Yep, so talk. There’s some packages out there for pre free game ads. All right. Now, you know, should you buy a Super Bowl ad, or should you not? Thank you so much for listening. We’ll be back here. Everybody answering your real life Marketing Super Bowl wing and sports questions. Yeah, because marketers who can’t teach you why are just

Caleb Agee 41:44
a fancy lie. Have a great day.