How Major Advertisers Are Hoping to Score Big on Super Bowl Sunday

No one--absolutely no one--wants to see more points scored in this year’s Super Bowl than Larry Kraines.

You probably haven’t heard of Kraines or his Compton company, Kraco Enterprises. But on Jan. 28, Super Bowl Sunday, Kraco--which makes auto floor mats--will see its name plastered on a scoreboard in the Louisiana Superdome, just like advertising giants Budweiser, Coca-Cola and Marlboro. And each time there’s a touchdown or field goal, millions of TV viewers may see Kraco’s name.

“I think we got lucky,” understated Kraines. After all, that prime scoreboard space is usually reserved informally as a special perk for the world’s biggest advertisers. In fact, said the president of one major company that sells scoreboard advertising space nationally, “If these Kraco guys even get a couple of flashes on the screen, they’ve made the deal of the century.”

While Kraco has managed to link its name with the Super Bowl for an estimated $20,000, advertisers will spend more than $60 million for Super Bowl exposure. This year, 30-second TV spots on the Super Bowl are selling for up to a record $700,000 each. Anheuser-Busch boasts that it plans to spend more than $7 million on Super Bowl commercials alone. And Coke, meanwhile, was so concerned about locating certain long-lost actors to appear in its remake of a famous ad from two decades ago that it hired a private detective agency to find them.

Sound a little loony? Well, for a chance to score big during the Super Bowl, many advertisers say they will do just about anything.

“It’s the happening,” said Mike Ray, marketing professor at Stanford University in Palo Alto. “And the results can be catalytic. Besides the millions of people who see Super Bowl ads, even those who don’t see the commercials will probably find out about them by word of mouth or by reading about them the next day.” The day after last year’s Super Bowl, USA Today published a story that had consumers rate each commercial aired during the game.

By most estimates, nearly half the households in America will tune in to view the Super Bowl.

“It’s become a forum for ads,” said John Rinek, national ad manager at Nissan, which will advertise heavily on the Super Bowl.

“It’s the biggest event of the year,” adds Michele Szynal, a spokesman for Gillette Co., which has three new ads on tap for the Super Bowl. “Gillette couldn’t target its audience any better than this.”

At the same time, high costs have persuaded a growing number of advertisers to purchase 30-second spots. And in an increasingly familiar action, several advertisers--including Michelin and International Business Machines--have bowed out because of the high prices. So, a smaller number of advertisers will use a bigger portion of commercial air time for this year’s game.

The biggest spender, hands down, will be Anheuser-Busch. “If you’re going to be there,” explained Tom Sharbaugh, group brand director for Budweiser, “you really need to be there big time to make it pay off.”

For the second year in a row, Budweiser will air six spots--spaced throughout the game--in a mock tournament called “Bud Bowl II.” The ads use a process called photo-animation that makes the beer bottles appear to move around on an animated football field. Last year, the Budweiser brand beat the Bud Light label. Executives refuse to divulge what will happen this year. To keep word from leaking, Budweiser’s ad agency has actually filmed several different endings and only a few key executives know which ending will be aired on game day.

And if you think that big advertisers are the only ones to take marketing moves like the “Bud Bowl” seriously, consider that last year Las Vegas odds makers actually posted odds on who would win the first “Bud Bowl” match-up.

But plenty of other Super Bowl advertisers have big things up their sleeves, too. Tops among them is Nike, which hopes that its newest commercial featuring star athletes and famous sports announcers--scheduled to premiere during the game--will attract the same kind of media attention as its “Bo knows baseball” spot that premiered during baseball’s All-Star game.

Nissan has spent nearly $1 million to create a special ad for its 300 ZX Turbo. In the ad, the car manages to outrun a couple of menacing motorcyclists, a formula race car--and finally a fighter jet. Pontiac will premiere a commercial set in the West that introduces its new minivan and another that unveils its newest Grand Prix model. Gillette will also launch a new product--its Sensor shaver--in several spots. And Pepsi has a new ad with Michael J. Fox that it will premiere--along with two other spots with yet-to-be-announced celebrities.

Coke, meanwhile, hopes to rebound from the somewhat embarrassing 3-D commercial that it aired during last year’s Super Bowl. Viewers were asked to wear special 3-D glasses to see the commercial, but some watchers complained that the commercial was so bad that it made little difference whether they wore their special goggles. Rival Pepsi even aired one ad that ridiculed Coke’s 3-D effort.

So this year, Coke reached back for a sure thing and remade the popular TV commercial that it first broadcast in 1971, featuring a throng of young people on a hilltop singing the words, “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke.” The new ad features many of the same people--along with their children.

But Coke had a hard time finding several key singers from the old spot. So its ad firm hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to locate them. Perhaps the most difficult to find was Linda Higson Neary, the British-born woman who opened the 1971 spot with her solo lyric, “I’d like to buy the world a home, and furnish it with love.”

When all else failed, the agency placed an ad in the International Herald Tribune, which was spotted by a friend of Neary’s who knew her whereabouts. Neary--who appears in the new version along with her 10-year-old daughter--was found just five days before the commercial was filmed.

From now on, Coke plans to keep close tabs on those who appeared in its Super Bowl ads.

After all, there’s certainly going to be a major Super Bowl event in the year 2000. “For that one,” said Coke spokesman Bob Bertini, “maybe we could bring these people back with their grandchildren.”

Tri-Star’s Switch Means Pink Slips

The toughest part of the advertising business is firing employees when a big account is lost. And Patrick King, who runs West Coast operations for AC&R; Advertising, is expected to deal with that thankless task this week.

“I expect a few jobs will be lost,” said King, chairman and chief executive of the Los Angeles agency that lost its portion of the Tri-Star pictures account late last month. “We don’t know how many yet, but it will not be as many jobs as people expect.”

The exact size of the account has not been revealed. Industry sources estimate that it could be anywhere from $40 million to $150 million. But AC&R; did not create ads for Tri-Star--nor did it buy network TV time. It mostly purchased spot TV time for the film company.

King also denied rumors that AC&R; was considering closing its Los Angeles office--which employs about 65 people. “All of our offices will remain open,” said King, whose agency also has an Irvine office. “Closing any of them isn’t even a consideration. We have lots of other clients.”

The Los Angeles agency that inherited the Tri-Star business said it has little plans for expansion. “We’ll probably add to our staff, but only five or six people,” said Richard B. Edler, executive vice president of McCann-Erickson/Los Angeles.

How did his agency celebrate the win? “We had to work over Christmas while everyone else was on vacation,” said Edler.

Some celebration.

What’s Chiat to Do for an Encore?

For adman Jay Chiat, the question for the 1990s might be, how can he possibly top his accomplishments of the 1980s?

Last week, the trade magazine Advertising Age named his Venice firm, Chiat/Day/Mojo, the agency of the decade. And it also selected the “1984” commercial that his shop made for Apple Computer as the TV commercial of the decade. Jay Chiat was also named “Leader of the Decade” last week by the Western States Advertising Agencies Assn.

What’s left? Well, how about adman of century?