When the Packers take on the Steelers in Dallas on Sunday, millions of people will be laughing and shouting in excitement – not just for the football, but also for the hilarious new crop of commercials that will premiere during the Super Bowl.
With production budgets that rival a Hollywood film’s, advertisers compete to create the most memorable thirty-second spot. One of the most successful campaigns of the last few years is the beloved E*Trade baby, who premiered during the 2008 Super Bowl.
Tor Myhren, President and Chief Creative Officer of Grey New York, is the creative mind responsible for those cheeky ads. He recently spoke with us about the power of “America’s last campfire” and offers teasers for this year’s E*Trade and star-studded NFL ads.
Do you have a sense about what we can expect from this year’s Super Bowl ads?
I think every year it’s kind of the same. Probably a lot of comedy and a lot of spectacle. There are sort of two kinds of Super Bowl ads – comedy and spectacle. And I think you’ll see a lot of those.
Have you seen any of this year’s ads?
I’ve seen some. In general, the mood of Super Bowl advertising tends to mirror the mood of the nation. And right now the nation is slightly more optimistic than we’ve been in the last few years. We’re slowly grinding out of the recession, and there is some optimism. So, I think you’re going to see more humor, I think you’re going to see more optimism. Probably a little less of the very self-serious ads you saw in the midst of the recession. And, I mean, even if you think back to post-9/11, there was a couple of years of the Super Bowl there where the ads got very serious. I don’t think you’re going to see that this year.
Will we see the E*Trade baby?
(Laughs) Of course! For the fourth year in a row, if you can believe that. He’ll be back. We have one commercial in the game. And we also have a really fun pre-game bit, on FOX with their pre-game lineup, with Terry Bradshaw and Jimmy Johnson, Howie Long, with all their announcers. We found babies that looked like all those guys. It’s in a good, like, one-minute bit. It’s very funny. It’s going to be on about ten minutes before Obama on the FOX pregame show.
So, that should be really fun. And then we have one ad in the game for E*Trade, we have one big sixty-second ad in the game for the NFL, which is really, really… I love, I love, love the NFL ad! Then we have another ad right after the game for E*Trade.
How does this year’s Super Bowl ad sales compare to previous years?
Well, they sold out much earlier. They’re saying the price is $2.9 million this year for thirty-seconds. And I think last year was $2.7. And I don’t think last year sold out until like the very, very end. There was maybe even a little discounting, so it’s been a much hotter ticket this year.
When do you think the Super Bowl became such a showcase for advertising and commercials?
Probably a lot of people would say 1984. That’s when the very famous Apple ad launched. It’s probably the most famous Super Bowl ad ever. It was a sixty-second really kind of spectacular ad. That set the standard for what a Super Bowl commercial could be. The brands started to treat this as a platform to not only communicate about their product, but to really entertain the nation.
I make the argument that Super Bowl ads now are bigger than ever because the Super Bowl is really America’s last campfire. If you think about it, about 110 million people will watch it this year. Which is more than a third of the country. There is just nothing like that anymore in our culture, where everybody gathers around and watches the exact same thing at the exact same time.
It doesn’t happen because there are DVRs, and you can buy it on iTunes, and this and that, or you can go online and watch it on YouTube. The Super Bowl is the only thing left that everybody still watches together. Which is, I think, what makes it such a powerful piece of media.
How do you adjust to all these new possibilities with media? How does that change the way you approach ads?
It completely changes everything. And just specifically with Super Bowl. Everybody is always so amazed that anyone would pay $2.9 million for a thirty-second commercial. But I always say, it’s not a thirty-second commercial. That’s a very small piece of the bigger puzzle.
You have two weeks of media ramping up to the Super Bowl. They’re talking about the ads. They’re doing blogs. There are tv shows, there are late-night shows talking about the ads. The E*Trade baby has already been on Good Morning America. And the Super Bowl hasn’t even start yet! You get two weeks of this massive buzz where the ads are talked about as much as the players in some regards. And that kind of attention, that media attention, is very different than paid-for advertising because your brand is being talked about in pop culture. It’s really editorial content rather than advertising, and I think that’s a much more powerful thing.
So you have that for two weeks, then you have this amazing thirty-second moment where all of America is watching this one thing at the same time. And that’s powerful storytelling. And you really can have a big effect in that thirty seconds.
But then because of the digital world, it’s gone into a whole ‘nother realm. Whether it’s YouTube or Yahoo or Vimeo or Hulu or all these places that now post all the ads on their sites. Not to mention all the blogs and all the Tweets that go on surrounding the game. The ad really has an exponentially longer life. I mean, the E*Trade baby’s been viewed 50 million times, just on YouTube! So, when you think about the $2.9 million, you have to take all of that into account. I always say it’s the biggest bargain in advertising. Because of all the things you get out of it beyond the thirty-second television commercial.
What do you think makes for a good Super Bowl commercial?
There are only two ways to judge a Super Bowl commercial. One is, first and foremost, does America love it. It’s a total mass buy. You know, you’re not playing in the world of niche. You have to appeal to the masses. So, does America love the ad? Number one, most important thing.
And obviously, hand in hand where that goes, is it working for the product? Is that investment paying off? Not the next day necessarily, but over the course of that year, is that investment for your brand paying off, do the sales result with whatever product it is you’re selling? Those are the only two ways to measure.
There are a million polls, whether people love an ad or hate it. Ultimately, I think the best way to judge an ad, to be totally honest, is to just go to YouTube and look at the view count. And ads with the most view counts are the most popular. It’s really that simple.
Do you have any personal favorite ads?
It’s probably like ten years ago, but my favorite Super Bowl ad was “Wassup” the Budweiser ad. It is just such a classic, and I thought it was so perfect for the brand. And so memorable. Here we are, ten years later, you still see it referred to and talked about. That’s the power of a Super Bowl ad. We’re talking about it ten years later. We’re talking about 1984 ad for Apple. What are we, god I’m bad at math, but 25, 27 years later. Isn’t that crazy? So that’s pretty amazing.
Have you ever been surprised at some of the ads that have been successful?
I’m never surprised because I think there are certain formulas that work. They always say babies and puppies. I think that the thing that works the best now, at least, as far as popularity goes… I’m not quite convinced that it works as far as really moving a brand forward, but as far as popularity of a piece of content, physical humor. Betty White getting tackled really hard. A guy throwing a snowglobe into somebody else’s nuts. These are the things that always seem to end up at the top of the ratings. That is what America likes right now. I don’t know what that says about our culture, by the way.
How did you come up with the E*trade baby concept?
The campaign was borne out of an insight, which was that the biggest hurdle for people joining E*Trade was fear. Fear of technology, fear of where their money is going, how do I work this site, there are no people involved. And so, out of that insight, we brought them an idea, which was ‘well what better way to show that this is an easy site to use than show a baby actually using it.’ And really the rest is history.
One interesting point is that the first year we ran the ad, on that Monday after the Super Bowl, more accounts opened on E*Trade than any day in the company’s history. So, to me, that’s success. It had a major impact on the business and it happened to be sort-of a pop culture hit, as well. That kind of hit both parts that I would measure. I think those are the two measuring points.
Who’s going to win the Super Bowl, Packers or Steelers?
Packers. Aaron Rodgers. I actually think the Packers are going to win by two touchdowns. Cause I think Aaron Rodgers is gonna tear ‘em up. Although I hope it’s close because I’m going the game, and both of our commercials are in the third quarter, so it has to be close in the third quarter. Whatever happens in the fourth quarter, I don’t care. Just as long as it’s good in the third.
