Betting Big On The Super Bowl
The limit for advertising in the Super Bowl appears to be sky high, as each year 30 second spots continue to cost more. And yet, brands double down year after year, driving more demand for precious little time in a period where it is near impossible to get a critcal mass of viewers at the same place at the same time. Rather than cover yet another story about the total cost of running ads in the Super Bowl, we wanted to take a closer look at Svedka’s bet on AI, vodka, and the power of the Super Bowl.
Making It Big In The Super Bowl
With a 30-second spot costing an estimated $8-9 million, the immediate return on ad spend (ROAS) is difficult to rationalize if it’s just about sales, especially in a challenged category like alcohol, especially when up against Dry January. To break even, Svedka would need to sell approximately 1.5 million more liters of vodka, a lofty goal when vodka saw overall declines last year.
Sazerac is betting big on its new flagship vodka brand. And the fact that we are talking about it, might be just the return needed and could pay itself off in dividends.
What Does This Mean For Marketing?
The debate on the value of the Super Bowl won’t be settled in this blog post or on Svedka’s choice to run the ad. Performance driven marketers are going to see the eye-popping figures and want to see a ROAS that’s tough to prove with hard numbers. And for the brand building CMOs, the Super Bowl is cultural zeitgeist with a price tag. It offers the hope and dream to be uttered next to Mean Joe Greene, Clydesdales, Apple, and Wasssssup, spots that would have never made it if judged on a spike analysis or CPA alone.
But Svedka offers a compelling case study for future brands in a big enough spotlight that it will be hard to deny the outcome, regardless of how it plays out in the weeks to come. A few ways this is an interesting case study are the use of AI, rekindling nostalgia, and resurrecting a brand that for years was content on being 3rd or 4th place.
On the use of AI, they’ve been open about using it. Coke faced backlash online for the use of AI in their holiday commercials but it doesn’t seem to have shown up meaningfully in spend or brand equity. Could Svedka offer a roadmap for thoughtful integration of AI that is additive to brand building and doesn’t become a distraction to the underlying message?
On nostalgia, leveraging Victoria Justice is a double edge sword. It could read about a connection to the past, a time when things were fun, light and carefree. Or to borrow from a demographic that doesn’t know Victoria Justice, risks being cringe.
Lastly, is this Svedka’s Old Spice moment, a refreshing pivot and resurgence after peaking in the mid-aughts and helping Sazerac continue their path to growth into a multinational spirit powerhouse? It has us talking about it, so maybe. Most brands opt to the tried and true brands that go with the Super Bowl like wings, dips and booze (Budweiser, American auto makers, Go Daddy), or offer something brand new (Oately). But Svedka strikes a new path, an established brand but probably looks pretty skewed if brand awareness was cut by age demographic. This could work to rekindle joy with Millenials and GenX and be the platform to reintroduce itself to a new cohort of Gen Zers.
Either way, it makes for a good story and a better case study. Time will tell.
