This past Sunday I attended the “Football, Marketing, and Money” Rose scholars event to watch the super bowl and analyze the advertisements.  I came into the event in anticipation of a great football game between two great teams that would be complimented with some great advertisement commercials.  However, while the game was great, the ads fell short in my opinion.  In fact, I personally think that the ads have been on the decline the last few years in terms of recall from viewers.

In other words, the ads don’t seem to be memorable as of late.  Statistics from the recall rate of viewers of these adds were just 29-39% depending on the add.  As a company, I think a successful recall rate would be over 50%.  At the same time, the cost per ad for just 30 seconds has been on a steady rise.  Back in 2002, the cost for such an add was $2.3 million.  Flash forward 15 years, commercials of just 30 seconds cost a company $5 million.

I believe that such an investment is important for many companies due to the strong viewership of the Super Bowl.  However, I think these same companies need to spend more time on their marketing capabilities in order to make their commercials more memorable and thus lead to more commerce in their company.  Also being from the Atlanta area, I was a little sad to see the hometown lose; however, there’s nothing you can do when the clutch Patriots do what they did so late in the game.