Kellogg Tackles 5th Annual Super Bowl Advertising Review
While half of America tunes in to see whether the Steelers or the Cardinals brings home the trophy this coming Sunday, MBA students and faculty at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management will be scrutinizing Super Bowl XLIII for another reason: For the fifth consecutive year, marketing students will watch, analyze and grade each advertisement during the game for Kellogg's Super Bowl Advertising Review.
The tanking economy should make the job especially interesting, as advertisers scramble to create enough buzz to favorably impact their companies' bottom lines. During the Review, marketing faculty and students from the Kellogg Marketing Club rate the advertisements on a series of academic criteria and develop a final ranking of the most â€" and least â€" successful advertisers.
Using Kellogg-developed criteria known as ADPLAN, the students will attempt to quantify each spot's Attention, Distinction, Positioning, Linkage, Amplification and Net equity. How will advertisers perform during this era of economic hardship? Will consumer uncertainty force advertisers to alter their game a bit? What makes a strong Super Bowl ad during a recession?
Professors Tim Calkins and Derek Rucker will lead the Review and have been blogging about Super Bowl advertising in the lead up to the main event. Check out Calkins' posts on the pressures facing Super Bowl ad superstar Anheuser-Busch, and on Hyundai's chances of swaying luxury car buyers to their new Genesis model.
As a side note...last night I saw one of Hyundai's ads. In this one they were not trying to sway luxury car owners to switch to Hyundai. They were advertising a new deal where if you buy a Hyundai and lose your job this year, you can return it! Wow - thought that was a pretty interesting statement on the times we face. Wonder which ad they will run during Superbowl, and how Kellogg will rate all of these.
Some food for thought to accompany the beer and nachos on game day. (Actually, for a marketer like me the ads have always been the BEST part of Superbowl.)