super bowl fun facts & behind the ads.

In past years, Super Bowl concepts and ads were top secret. Now, companies pre-promote their spots and the concepts behind them via social media channels to get the biggest bang for the buck. They love the hype.


One commercial getting a lot of buzz is for Fox's upcoming 3-D animated film. During the fourth quarter, advertising will go to a new level with the first-ever embedded code spot. The 30-second spot will hype Fox's 3-D animated film Rio through a tie-in with the uber-popular Angry Birds mobile game. The ad invites viewers to pause the action and seek out the code frame by frame to access a special level of the game and a chance to win a trip to Rio de Janeiro for the world premiere of the film on March 22. The Angry Birds Rio app debuts the same day. -  David Gianatasio, AdFreak.com  


In case you're impatient or miss today's advertisements, here's a link to preview 21 of the commercials that will air today. I haven't watched them yet, but I do like to read about the rationale behind each spot.


For example, last week I read about the reasoning behind Groupon's first-ever commercial (produced in 2009) that may be the spot they air tonight - their first ever Super Bowl ad. This Groupon commercial was made in response to the Super Bowl ads of that year. 


"While watching the 2009 Super Bowl after we'd just launched Groupon, a few of us noticed how dumb most of the ads were - seemingly all of them had some sort of slapstick violence... one after another, they began to appear increasingly absurd, especially because none of the people affected by the slapstick violence were hit with the actual painful consequences of real violence. ...In response, we commissioned a super low budget commercial with the same premise of senseless violence, but this time with its shockingly realist aftermath that violence tends to have. It is a lesson in anti-violence, and a fossil of Groupon in the earliest phase of its horrifying evolution." - Groupon

Kinda fun to know the "why" behind the ad, right?

Couple more Super Bowl 2011 factoids...

• Total consumer Super Bowl spending is expected to reach $10.1 billion, the highest in 8 years.
• Sentiment towards advertisers appears to be improving. In past years, consumers said advertisers should bypass pricey Super Bowl spots and pass the savings onto them. This year, 17% expressed that, down from 21% in 2009.
• Commercial time in the Super Bowl has been creeping up over the past decade, culminating in almost 48 minutes worth of ads and network promotions during last year's game.

Source: “Super Bowl Spending to Hit $10 Billion,” Advertising Age, 1.25.11 Scoop courtesy of Patty Roloff