If you’re like most small businesses, marketing decisions revolve around how to make the best use of limited promotional dollars: Sponsor a youth sports team or write a check for a few weeks of advertising in the local paper?
By contrast, consider the Super Bowl looming on February 2nd. With rising demand this year, the price tag has soared to $4.5 million for some 30-second commercials.
So without even factoring the cost of creating the commercial, that’s $150,000 per second. Some businesses don’t generate that much in gross revenue annually.
But with creative thinking and execution, small businesses can parlay the contest and all the hype around it into free publicity (“earned media”) through editorial coverage.
How to Ride Super Bowl Marketing Coattails
To help you get your “game face” on, here are some ideas for riding those Super Bowl-sized coattails:
Health clubs, fitness centers and other similar exercise/work-out/sports locales
Over the years, the Five Seasons Family Sports Clubs in Burr Ridge and Northbrook have been natural fits for creating Super Bowl-themed buzz. As the publicist for both clubs, I have gathered tips from fitness directors on ways to combat calories consumed while watching the game.
From a 2011 news release excerpt:
Develop creative “games within the game” to incorporate push-ups or sit-ups.
For example, every time the ball changes possession, you could do a pre-designated number of those repetitions. Or, like college cheerleaders, you could do a push up for every point that your favorite team scores, increasing the total as the team’s tally grows during the contest.
If you’re rooting against the Green Bay Packers, maybe you can do celebratory push-ups every time the Pittsburgh Steelers get a first down.
Medical practices with physical therapy, sports injury rehabilitation or similar services
Going into the game, the eventual winner is in some doubt. By contrast, there is no question that some of those high-priced commercials will be triggered by medical personnel sprinting onto the field to aid a hurt player.
That offers an opening for a medical practice to market its services, such as offering insights about the best way to recover from common injuries or debunking healing myths.
Products or services with a theme easily tied to outdoor weather
This year, the Super Bowl is at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. It’s the first time since the Super Bowl’s 1967 debut that it will be outdoors in a cold-weather spot. Snow could be in the offing, and it will almost certainly be freezing.
Does your product or service have a logical link to this setting? If so, then explore ways to tie it in.
Anyone willing to wage a publicity stunt
In 2007, Jennifer Gordon, a diehard Chicago Bears fan offered up her protruding, pregnant belly for ad space, in exchange for two tickets to the game between the Bears and the Indianapolis Colts.
uBid Gets Buzz Via Pregnant Belly
She got 200 offers from companies vying to display their logo on her stomach. uBid.com was the winning suitor. Some criticized it all as a publicity stunt, which, of course, it was. But the return on investment for uBid was certainly many times the cost of those tickets.
After each Super Bowl, the winning team receives a trophy named after Vince Lombardi, the great Packers coach whose team won the first two Super Bowls. He is famed, among other reasons, for the way he would open up his remarks to his squad each year:
“Gentlemen,” Lombardi would say, “this is a football.”
He would then launch into an emphasis on the fundamentals of the game, and how simply paying attention to basics, like the proper way to block and tackle, would propel the team to victory. In the same way, by applying the fundamentals of compelling story-telling, you can reap Super Bowl-proportion PR results from even a backyard football budget.
Assemble a team of individuals unafraid of voicing ideas beyond the norm, no matter how far-fetched, goofy or flat-out ridiculous. They are the path to profitable PR, if only you don’t give up after a few incomplete passes.
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