MBA1991 What Makes a Great Super Bowl Ad?

Let me tell you about Intuit QuickBooks. When I was starting out my business, I remember sitting at my desk late at night not working on my business but cleaning up numbers, tracking and reconciling payments and wondering how this became my life. But once I automated the admin side of things of my finances, those nights had disappeared and I felt a whole lot better. Outdo it with intuit QuickBooks QuickBooks is the trusted end to end solution that businesses rely on for getting paid, managing finances, paying employees, finding new customers, and more. QuickBooks provides a team of AI agents and trusted experts, so doing it yourself no longer means doing it alone. Their payment agent gets you paid faster, their customer agent finds leads, follows up and secures more sales, and the accounting agent automates and categorizes transactions. Get your critical business jobs done with QuickBooks on the Intuit platform. Ready to save on new Tech? It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Product perks include Dell rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster and with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals. Hey oh. Welcome to the $1 RMBA show, the place to go to grow every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014. And in today's episode you'll learn what makes a great super bowl ad. Every year, big companies and big brands spend millions of dollars to grab 30 seconds of your attention during the Super Bowl. They need to seize that opportunity. So in today's lesson we're going to break down what are the ingredients that makes a powerful, impactful super bowl ad? Why? Because you could do the same with your own business. Create a great video ad so that you can use unpaid advertising on your website in social media that does the job in a short amount of time. We'll discuss some of the mistakes many people make when it comes to video ads or video marketing in general, and how to avoid them. But also how do you make sure you make the most out of your investment of time, money and effort so those that are watching remember who you are. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

You love what you do. You also love the idea of not doing it one day, but it's getting harder to know the best way to move into the future towards retirement. We hear about inflation, rate hikes, the changing market, gotta get the kids through college, build an emergency fund, and then there's retirement. Here's where Fidelity comes in. Fidelity can help you find clarity in saving for the future, even as your path and priorities evolve. How? Well, they'll help you create a free, personalized plan that adapts as your priorities change. They'll also show you what's called timely insights, small tips on ways to save and invest to help meet your goals. And you can monitor your plan so you stay on target. The future's coming, and so is retirement. Fidelity can help you take it on your way. Learn more@fidelity.com future expenses charged by your investments and other costs and fees associated with trading or transacting in your account. Apply Fidelity brokerage Services member NYSESIPC it.

Costs $6.5 million for 30 seconds of airtime for a Super bowl ad. That's $217,000 per second. So big brands have to make sure every second counts. And that's just the cost to advertise. There's also the cost of actually producing the ad itself. Now, most of us are not going to spend $6.5 million to get in front of an audience for only 30 seconds. But there are some key ingredients we can extract from great super bowl ads to make sure we capture our audience's attention in minimal time. People are really, really busy. They're very distracted. So you got to make sure you have an effective ad. Whether you're running YouTube ads or Facebook ads, or you're just creating a video for your website to talk about what you do, there's three major ingredients when it comes to an effective super bowl ad. If you look at any supervisor that you enjoyed this past super bowl, or any super bowl in general, or any ad period, they're going to have these three ingredients. Now remember, you can do the same with your own video. The first ingredient is the actual ad is incredibly memorable. The ads you remember are the ones that matter because that means it's going to stick in your mind and it's going to be top of line when you go shopping for that category. So if you see a memorable ad from a car company and you're shopping for a car, you're going to remember that car company. So how do they do this to make sure it's memorable? Well, it's actually quite simple. You got to make sure that your commercial touches on some Sort of emotion. Emotions actually make things a lot more memorable. It's like having a memory. And when we say emotional, this could be funny, this could be touching, this could be motivational. Most companies try to lean on positive emotion because positive emotion has more of an impact than negative emotion. In terms of memory, we tend to forget negative emotion over time for self preservation. It's just part of our DNA. So you'll see a lot of funny ads that make you chuckle, and that's why it's memorable. You might see an ad that gets you pumped. This is like Apple's 1984 ad that promoted the idea of being a rebel and breaking out of the status quo. It might be touching. Like back in the day at AND T, the long distance phone company would have these touching ads about connecting with loved ones. But the point here is that you have to invoke some emotion to make your ad memorable, because you only have 30 seconds. But you want people to remember you so they can look you up, figure you out, remember you at a time. To make a decision to buy the second ingredient is incredibly important. And this is where people make a mistake or make the biggest mistake. And in any successful super bowl ad, you will notice that there's only one message. There's only one idea they're trying to convey. They're not trying to communicate everything in 30 seconds. They're not trying to cram in all their features and benefits and success stories and all that kind of stuff. They're actually trying to just convey one concept, one idea, and they want to drive it home. Because people know in advertising, it's actually more effective to focus on one thing that people can grasp so they're not overwhelmed or confused and go deep at it. For example, Hellman's mayonnaise had this ad where there was this football player that was tackling people out of nowhere. That was the funny part, right? That was a memorable part. But what was the message? The message was, don't waste food. Hellmann's cares about you not wasting food. This is kind of conveying their values. And if you resonate with those values, if you're somebody who grew up and said, yeah, I never like to waste food, you're going to have an affinity for Hellmann's. But notice that they did not try to do a million things at once. They didn't say, hey, don't waste food. And Helman's taste great and it's a great value. And by the way, our jars are easy to open. No, they don't cram A million things into the message. They focus on one idea, one concept, one message. This is your challenge. Most entrepreneurs have this challenge in their marketing. You need to just focus on one idea because it allows you to go deep. It allows you to really convey the value of that idea. And many people, I would say most people need to hear something over and over a few times to actually grasp what you're saying, what you're trying to convey. And with 30 seconds on a Super bowl ad, you don't have much time. So you have to just stick to one idea. The third ingredient of an effective super bowl ad is they understand they only have you for 30 seconds. I need them to know what the next step is. You want to guide them by the hand, right? You don't want to say goodbye after the ad. You want to say, here, let's continue the conversation after the football game. I want you to do this thing right or right now. So you'll see this. It's called a call to action. This is like a car company saying, book your test drive now, giving you a website or Pepsi saying, enter to win X amount of money or this prize by going to this URL. The king of call to action in this year's super bowl ads was by Coinbase. Coinbase, which is a marketplace for cryptocurrency. Their ad was purely a QR code floating around on a TV screen. No words, nothing. But they just focus on the call to action, which is scan this QR code. People couldn't help but check it out. What does this QR code do? Where does it lead me? It got people intrigued. Their whole ad was a call to action. Now many big, big brands with endless budget will have an ad with no call to action. Their whole job is just, hey, brand awareness, right? Or a corporate flex, right? But for other businesses that don't have endless cash, that happen to have a Super bowl ad, they really focus on the call to action because they know they want to get people engaged afterwards. Even bigger companies like Pepsi, they are big on call to action. So let's recap the three ingredients. Being memorable by using emotion, humor, having a touching story, being motivational. Two, focusing on one message, one idea. Don't try to cram so many ideas into your ad. And number three, a solid call to action. Tell them what to do next. Okay, now you know who we are, what we're all about, what that one message is. What's next? Where could you take them next? Whether it's a free trial, whether that is to use a coupon. Whether it's to enter a contest, tell them what to do next so they can get engaged and and work with you. A little tip when it comes to the call to action, many people say, oh, this is so obvious. I don't need to tell them it's right on the site. They can click the button. No, people want to know what's next. People like something to look forward to. Like to know what's the next step. They like continuity. Also, by giving somebody the next step, it kind of clears up any confusion about what to do or how to learn more. Always give a call to action. USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With usaa, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a'@usaa.com bundle restrictions apply. To wrap up today's lesson, I want to stress the fact that the production value of your actual video ad doesn't need to be huge. There are so many successful ads that are really well done on a low budget with very low production value. A good example of this is a lot of the ads that Ryan Reynolds creates. Go follow him on Twitter and look at his ads. Most of them are done in one room, in one set, even just one shot. And if you want to know why that the video is so good even though this low production, here's the answer. It's the script. Spend time really crafting a great script for your ad. The words and ideas you convey are the most important thing in the ad. So really spend as much time as you can on having an incredible script for your ad. Whether your tone is motivational, emotional, funny. The point here is that it's not going to be funny by itself. You have to make it funny with a good script. What's also great about a script is that once you write it out, you can read it out slowly and time yourself and see how long is this actual commercial? How long is it going to take to convey this information and realize, okay, I don't have much time. If I'm running YouTube ads, I don't have all the time in the world. I want to convey it very quickly, within 30 seconds or so, 60 seconds max. That's usually the sweet spot for YouTube ads, so I can't stress enough how important a solid script is. Invest the time and energy into a fantastic script for your ad. Thanks so much for listening to the 100 RBA Show. If you love what you hear, hit, subscribe and Leave us a rating or review on your favorite podcast app. We read every single review. It helps us get better. It also helps us know what you love about the show. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. A fun exercise I do that I recommend that you do too, is go on YouTube and watch the super bowl ads. Now, when you watch the ads, I want you to have a paper and pen and take notes. If I were to reproduce this ad as it is, how can I reproduce it with my budget? Maybe I can animate it. Maybe I can have actors who are really just my friends or our team members. Maybe I can change the setting or change the way I convey this message. What you'll notice is that the actual commercial wouldn't be much different. Okay. The effectiveness would be the same because the content is the same. The theme, the message, the script. You'll be surprised as you're doing this exercise. And one thing that I really love about this exercise, that it gets you inspired. It gets you thinking like a director, like a filmmaker. It gets you thinking, hey, I can create some pretty creative ads as well. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. We've all been there. You hold on to a coupon, but forget about it and suddenly it's expired. Expired in 2012. Dang it. Fortunately, by switching to Geico, you could save about 900 on car insurance without ever touching a coupon. It feels good to save big. It feels good to Geico.