By Maxine Shapiro, KERA 90.1 business commentator
Dallas, TX – TV ads: we love 'em, we hate 'em, we watch 'em, and we usually discuss them more than the programming. Do they work? Sometimes yes, and sometimes no. I'm Maxine Shapiro with KERA Marketplace Midday.
The Super Bowl is over and, like every year in the past, the conversations at the water cooler will spend about a minute on the game and ten minutes on the ads. I was curious - with all the money poured into advertising - is it worth it? Do the companies benefit? I called AdAge Magazine. Financial Editor Mercedes Cardona bluntly stressed it's all about the product. If you don't have a good product, the consumer won't come back. Her first example was the case of the Pinto. When people are reading headlines about exploding cars named Pinto, you can spend all the money you want on ads and it won't help.
Here's an extreme example when all the money did work. Hotjobs.com took their whole annual budget and put it into an ad for the 1999 Super Bowl. It was a small start-up at the time and this was a gamble. Boy, did it pay off. So many people went to the site it crashed. They recouped quickly, and four years later were one of only three dot-com commercials aired yesterday.
Ms. Cardona told me that many of yesterday's ads were one-of-a-time events. For instance, the H&R Block commercial with Willie Nelson won't be seen again. For the advertisers, one viewing during the Super Bowl is equal to having an ad on every night in prime time for a few weeks. That many people see it.
So what about when companies start a whole new campaign - does that work? Wendy's "Where's The Beef?" probably had the biggest impact in my memory. And as Ms. Cardona emphasized it wouldn't have become pop culture if the product wasn't good. "The Softer Side of Sears" is another example of what worked. It's old now, but for most of the 90's, we went to Sears for more than a leaf blower or washing machine. But what a flop the Cadillac Catera was. "The Caddie that Zigs!" All that money, and they couldn't convince a BMW owner to switch. No more Catera. For KERA Marketplace Midday, I'm Maxine Shapiro.
Marketplace Midday Reports air on KERA 90.1 Monday - Friday at 1:04 p.m. To contact Maxine Shapiro, please send emails to mshapiro@kera.org.