The Super Bowl and Timing Your Creative Risks

What is the cost of a risk?

Well, as I imagined creating this post last week, it had a completely different spin. What I wanted to talk about was the huge amounts of money spent on Super Bowl advertising. It’s the one time a year when businesses feel safe in their creative risk, despite hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on production costs of their spots and millions spent on actual airtime ($5.25 million for a 30-second spot, according to CNBC).

I wanted to talk about the mentality behind how taking a creative risk is considered okay on the most expensive night of advertising. It honestly seems counterproductive to take a such a major risk in front of a huge audience, because if it backfires, then that’s a lot of time and money wasted.

And before we jump into where this post is truly going, let’s define creative risk. A creative risk isn’t just spending a lot of money. Bud Light, for example, didn’t take a risk with their Dilly Dilly campaign. This year and last, they already knew they had a winner because the campaign was already a familiar one with the audience — It would have been hard to lose. Creative risk is trying something brand new — something interesting and unexpected — in front of a major audience. It’s Planters driving a peanutmobile through a residential area like a it was a Mario Kart vehicle.

But then … the Super Bowl arrived, and so did the ads.

As the Super Bowl went on, and more and more spots went by, I realized that very few creative risks had been taken for the spots that night, save a Stella Artois, Planters or Hyundai. The majority of advertisers delivered bland, over-focus-grouped spots that didn’t offend, but didn’t excite either. They just … existed. that’s when I started thinking about how the financial risk the advertisers were taking overtook the instinct for creative risk.

Instead of articles about who had the best spots, we got articles about how the spots were so profoundly underwhelming. This is when I realized that this blog post was thill the same, but now there were two angles to explore. So let’s first think back 10 years or so, when advertisers seemed to be more inclined to take creative risks.

Before data was king.

It wasn’t that long ago that data wasn’t as available or robust as it is now. Agencies and clients alike listened to their guts for everything, even for their prized Super Bowl spots, and if a creative risk felt right for them, they assumed it would feel right for viewers. Of course there were failures, but at least they were entertaining failures. And for the spots that resonated … well, they last forever in our memories.

But even then, why take a creative risk on the biggest night in advertising? I’m not suggesting they shouldn’t have run the spots they did, but those exact same spots would entertain or provoke emotions just as well if they were part of an existing campaign. The initial risk could have come months beforehand, and if it didn’t work, then clients could save themselves millions of dollars by steering clear of that campaign during the Super Bowl.

Throughout data’s reign

Data is huge now. We know exactly who thinks what about this and that, and we use data to anticipate response before an idea is presented (or not presented, because an idea goes against the data). As a result, advertisers look at the giant amount of money they’re about to spend on the airing of a single spot, and that financial risk fills their gut, leaving no room left to consider creative risk.

Different story, same result. Why not take your campaign out early and see how people respond? If people love it, great — go for broke during the Super Bowl. But if the campaign gets a collective “meh” from audiences, you can scrap it and save yourself serious dollars. Live to try another day.

Small risks lead to be rewards

Obviously, some campaigns demand an element of surprise, and that carries with it an inherent creative risk. Tide’s “It’s a Tide Ad” campaign would never have had the same impact if people knew what was coming. But for the most part, creative risk doesn’t have to come with financial risk as well.

Start small. Try something creatively risky on social, or on the radio, or through a direct mail campaign. Eliminate the financial risk to see if the creative risk was worth it. When you know you have something great, all the risk is gone. You can continue with the campaign knowing it’s no longer a creative risk, and because audiences are already into it, it’s not a financial risk either.