Hello Internet!
Thank you all for making my January such an amazing month! I started this year off with new spark of energy and creativity and I managed to publish a ton of new content onto the website. Weekly Blogs, Poetry, and Writing Prompt Pieces. I had them all. And all of you wonderful people really showed up to support me. Thanks to all of you, my January was a pretty great month in terms of visitors to the websites and views on my pieces, so thank you for the love and support. It really makes my day when all of you read my stuff and you seem to enjoy it which is really really makes my day. Now last week I did miss a Weekly Blog Post and my website seemed to go all wonky. The good news is that it seems to have fixed itself and is no longer displaying strangely. The bad news is that you might have missed out on the other pieces I’ve published over the past couple of weeks. So lets quickly talk about them just in case you missed them and want to read them.
Two Sundays ago I published a Weekly Blog talking about the movie 1917. Now the Weekly Blog does spoil a lot of details to the movie so read at your own risk, but if you have seen the movie and want to talk about it with me, I highly recommend reading that Blog. Spoiler free review: It’s really great and you should go see it while it is still in theaters. Last Wednesday, I published a poem titled “Asymmetric Life” which is all about how we live in the constant flux of chaos we call life and how we want everything to make sense even if it rarely does. That Friday I published a Writing Prompt Piece titled “Emergency Broadcast Message Part 2” which is a sequel to a Writing Prompt Piece I published almost two years ago titled Emergency Broadcast Message. By reading both of those pieces you can really tell how much my writing has improved over just a short amount of time. It’s not a huge change but it’s definitely noticeable. Anyway, read those if you want to read how a girl tries to survive an incoming apocalyptic event with just her baby brother and a old fashioned radio. Now this past Wednesday, I published another Poem titled “Soft Snowfall” which is pretty self explanatory. It’s just a simple poem about winter and the snow. Something good to read while sitting next to a big window as you sip a hot beverage and watch the snow fall outside. Finally, this past Friday I published a Writing Prompt Piece titled “Blessed Are The Dead.” This is a bit of a shorter Writing Prompt Piece but I really enjoyed the prompt. The piece takes a look at a fantasy village where necromancy is not feared, but praised and the dead are seen as tireless protectors and laborers. It’s an interesting twist on the fantasy trope of necromancers and necromancy always being seen as evil and unnatural. Go ahead and check any and all of those pieces if you haven’t already and they seem interesting to you. I’d really appreciate it.
Now let’s get past all of that and talk about what is going on today. That’s right. Today is the day of “the big game.” If you don’t know what that means, you probably don’t watch sports or care about Professional Football. Today is The Superbowl. The National Football Championship. But not only is today a big day for Football and it’s fans, it’s also a big day for advertisements and the non-sports people who just watch to see the funniest or most creative advertisements that will run during the breaks in the big game. The Super Bowl is a big deal to advertisers because The Big Game brings in a ton of views. Even people don’t usually watch sports will watch The Super Bowl. Maybe it’s just for the fun of it or maybe they want to watch The Halftime Show. Maybe they are there for the ads. No matter the reason, companies know people are watching and will pay big bucks to run their ads during The Super Bowl. In 2019, The FOX Network sold 30 second Super Bowl ad slots for 5.6 million dollars a piece (Bloomberg) and CBS charged 5.25 million dollars for similar 30 second slots (CNBC). That is a ton of money and that’s just for one, 30 second slot. If you have an ad that runs for a minute, your company could be paying twice that amount. Now times that 5 million dollars by all of the advertisements that run during the Super Bowl and it’s easy to see that advertising during the Super Bowl makes the networks a ton of money.
But do Super Bowl Ads really work? Is it really worth the money that these companies are paying just to show their product for a minute or even 30 seconds. Well it’s not really simple to answer that. A 2015 Stanford study looked at Super Bowl Ads and their effectiveness to boost sales following The Super Bowl and found that “Super Bowl ads are mostly effective — but not always. They do not drive new sales when two brands of the same type — soda, for example — are both advertising during the football game.” (Stanford) They went on to find that ” Super Bowl ads can spur large increases in revenue and volume per household, but when two major competing brands advertise, most of the gains are eroded. In the broadest sense, the researchers wrote, Super Bowl ads ‘build an association between the brand and viewership of sports.’ However, two competing brands do not benefit from this same association at the same time.” (Stanford). So it seems that Super Bowl Ads do work but if there are conflicting companies that sell similar products both competing to dominate sales following the Super Bowls, the ads will end up cancelling the other out. Generally speaking it does seem like many companies do make their money back from their ads, but it’s not always guaranteed that advertising during the big game will make their business filthy rich.
But what about advertisements in general? Do advertisements really work to influence what consumers buy? Everyone thinks that they are not affected by advertisements, but in reality they are. I know, I know. You think you are the exception to the rule. Ads don’t work on you, but if that was true and ads didn’t work on people, companies would not be pumping billions and billions of dollars into advertisements. They would not be spending all of that money if they weren’t finding success and getting that money back. The Atlantic wrote an article in 2011 talking about advertisements and its affect on consumers and they said this. “Successful advertising rarely succeeds through argument or calls to action. Instead, it creates positive memories and feelings that influence our behavior over time to encourage us to buy something at a later date. No one likes to think that they are easily influenced. In fact, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that we respond negatively to naked attempts at persuasion. Instead, the best advertisements are ingenious at leaving impressions.” (The Atlantic.) Basically, companies are not trying to brainwash you into going out and buying their products, right now! They are trying to leave an impression on you so that the next time you are in the proximity to their product, you’ll think positively about the company and buy their product. This is done through commercials with catchy jingles or memorable quotes or moments that wedge themselves into your brain. State Farm’s jingle, “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there” or McDonald’s jingle “I’m lovin’ it” are designed to get stuck in your head so you will subtly repeat it back to yourself over and over again without realizing it. Then maybe someday down the road you will hum that tune to yourself, you’ll crave a Big Mac and go to McDonalds. Or maybe if you find yourself in a situation where you need assistance you’ll remember that State Farm always has your back. (None of this is sponsored by the way). All of this is becoming bigger and bigger as digital advertisement grows, personal data’s value skyrockets, and Corporate Twitter Accounts are becoming more personable. It’s a strange world out there but it doesn’t look like the power of advertising is going anywhere soon.
So that was my Weekly Blog talking about advertisements. Hopefully you enjoyed it and even learned something along the way. Just the fact that companies spend more than 5 million dollars per ad slot during the Super Bowl is mind boggling enough for me. If you are watching The Big Game, I hope you enjoy the game. I know I’m going to be watching with friends and enjoying the football game and the advertisements alike. If you aren’t watching, you can just look up the funniest ads on YouTube later or just scroll through Twitter. Twitter will have you covered when it comes to big moments that happen today.
Thank you all for reading this Weekly Blog and hopefully you’ll check out some of the other stuff I’ve written. If you are new here, I hope you will Follow Me here on WordPress that way you will know when I publish new pieces. It would really mean a lot to me. I really appreciate all the love and support I receive from readers new and old and I’m glad you are here.
Thank you again for all of your support and I hope you have a wonderful week!
-Allen_The_Writer
Header Photo Credit to CMO Adobe
https://cmo.adobe.com/articles/2017/12/15-mind-blowing-stats-about-the-future-of-advertising-exb.html#gs.v8mvpz
Allen The Writer 