How do you make sure that millions of tipsy Americans will pay attention to your multimillion-dollar Super Bowl ad? Show it before the Super Bowl. And after the Super Bowl. And, of course, during the Super Bowl.
Advertisers are jostling for attention for their spots like never before, posting them online in advance of Sunday's kick-off, unveiling them at news conferences, screening them at cocktail parties and releasing behind-the-scenes videos about the ads' production.
"For that amount of money, they want to get more bang out of it," said Neil Burns, professor of advertising at the University of Texas at Austin.
The early unwrapping of a commercial slated to run during the most watched TV show of the year, one known for its often innovative advertising, will grab free publicity (witness this article) and may get people talking.
"We wouldn't do a Super Bowl ad at that cost if we weren't looking for some great buzz from it," said Jake Jacobson, a spokesman for Garmin International Inc., which makes global positioning system devices. The company held a news conference at Gotham Hall in New York on Wednesday to introduce its ad (a vintage car tears through the streets of Paris, guided by a Garmin device, and when the car stops, Napoleon gets out) and posted teasers for it on its blog.
Jacobson acknowledged a downside, at least for Super Bowl ad fans.
"It's lost a little bit of the suspense," he said.
But it's good for business. Research firm Cision said in a recent report that "news about the advertising . . . can extend the marketing reach tenfold." Cision said broadcast TV stations aired 6,663 news stories about Super Bowl ads in 2006 -- up from 463 in 2002.
Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. received $25 million worth of free publicity by releasing its ad (which starred Kevin Federline) in advance of last year's game, said Barbara Lippert, a critic for Adweek magazine.
Cision said that for PepsiCo Inc., the value of its Diet Pepsi ad being mentioned in TV news reports before Super Bowl XL in 2006 was $12.3 million.
"We give out most of our Super Bowl ads early to the press because the media attention on the commercials is usually quite high," said Dave DeCecco, a spokesman for Pepsi.
Among the brands whose spots you can view online now: PepsiCo, Garmin International, PepsiCo and Unilever. Hyundai Motor Co. is distributing its ad to media today and posting it on its consumer website Saturday. Audi will allow people to watch its spot online a few hours before the game.
