Companies Flock To Celebs To Star In Super Bowl Spots

Super Bowl advertisers are "latching onto celebrities this year like star-struck teens," as more than "one-third of the game's 50-some spots will feature a familiar celeb or two -- or three," according to Bruce Horovitz of USA TODAY. Some companies are "trying to latch onto the stars' social-media following," while others are "seeking instant credibility." Several companies believe using celebs is the "only way to stand out from the pack of Super Bowl marketers." However, AceMetrix reports that ads with celebrities "are 3% less effective than ads without them," and those airing during the Super Bowl "tend to do far worse." AceMetrix CEO Peter Daboll: "Dogs do better than celebrities." Horovitz notes unless an ad "really bombs, it's a big win for any celebrity." Octagon First Call Managing Dir David Schwab said that Super Bowl spots also "allow a celebrity to be extra cool via a kind of self-deprecation they don't typically get to show otherwise." Horovitz notes that is one reason why comedians Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno "show up together in a spot in which the two real-life car collectors lust after the same Acura sports car." It is also why Matthew Broderick "show up as a middle-aged version of his teen character" from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." Other celebs that will appear during the Super Bowl include Donald Trump, actors John Stamos and Will Arnett, TV personality Regis Philbin, model Adriana Lima and athletes Apolo Ohno, Deion Sanders and Chuck Liddell. Pepsi said that its use of celebrities in Super Bowl ads "continues to evolve because social media has put a twist on consumer relationships with stars." Pepsi VP/Marketing Angelique Krembs: "If we put Lady Gaga in a Super Bowl spot just for the sake of having a big name, I don't think we'd connect with consumers (USA TODAY, 2/3). The WALL STREET JOURNAL's Suzanne Vranica cites sources as saying that reports Chrysler plans to air a two-minute ad Sunday which depicts Clint Eastwood "giving the country a pep talk" (WSJ.com, 2/2).

CAMPAIGN LAUNCH: MetLife will run a 30-second spot titled "Everyone" during the Super Bowl that will feature the Peanuts characters, as well as many other celebrities. The company is using the game as a platform to launch new national advertising, with the tagline "MetLife: I Can Do This" (MetLife). In N.Y., Stuart Elliott notes MetLife is "turning to social media to drum up discussion of its coming commercial." Recent visitors to the MetLife fan page on Facebook may have "noticed that the almost 153,000 people who 'like' MetLife include, in addition to Snoopy, characters like Scooby-Doo and Voltron." Those characters are "teasing fans on Facebook with cryptic comments; for instance, Scooby-Doo declares, in his unique patois, 'Rook out for me and Shaggy on TV Feb. 5th!'" (N.Y. TIMES, 2/3).

CANADIAN PERSPECTIVE: The GLOBE & MAIL's Susan Krashinsky reports U.S. advertisers "shell out on huge production budgets to make eye-catching ads and pay millions more to air them" during the Super Bowl, but because of TV rights issues, the Canadian Super Bowl broadcast is "full of the same ads you might see any night of the week." NBC is charging US$3.5M to run a 30-second ad, but sources said that a 30-second spot on CTV is closer to C$130,000. But some advertisers this year are "bucking the trend." Samsung for the first time will be "airing the same commercial in Canada that it does in the United States." Not all advertisers in Canada "agree that the Super Bowl is the place to make that kind of investment." The prevailing notion is that the game "just does not have the cultural resonance here that it does in the United States." Krashinsky notes Labatt is "attempting to make the best of this." It is one of the "few companies creating a spot just for the Super Bowl in Canada -- and it is using hockey to make an impact." Budweiser Canada spokesperson Briar Wells said, "We wanted to do something that really resonated with Canadians. … Hockey is where it’s at -- even though it’s during the Super Bowl, hockey is first -- so it was an opportunity to combine the two" (GLOBE & MAIL, 2/3). The CTV broadcast counts Labatt, Chevrolet and Nissan "among its major returning sponsors, and is adding McDonald's as a sponsor this year." The net said that Dairy Queen, Entertainment One, FedEx, Ford, Kraft, PepsiCo, Samsung, Toyota and Universal Pictures have "also bought commercial time" (GLOBE & MAIL, 2/3).