Super Bowl ads this year aim increasingly at women, with more messages of female empowerment, as marketers seek to navigate a polarized political environment for the biggest US sporting event.
With women making up a large segment of the viewing audience, advertisers are giving them a greater voice and offering messages about women controlling their own destiny, according to previews released ahead of today’s Super Bowl LIII between the Los Angeles Rams and New England Patriots.
“We will see advertisers run messages that skew toward women, but they will be very careful not to offend men along the way,” said Timothy Calkins, a Northwestern University marketing professor who researches Super Bowl advertising.
Racy sexual ads are unlikely in the #MeToo era, Calkins added.
“I think advertisers are going to be very afraid to run anything remotely suggestive,” he said.
One of the female empowerment ads features tennis star Serena Williams for the online dating site Bumble, where she speaks about how women can “make the first move” and take control of their lives.
Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parker appears in one message where she shocks restaurant staff by ordering Stella Artois and interacts with Jeff Bridges reprising his Big Lebowski role.
Cosmetics brand Olay is to run its first Super Bowl spot with Buffy the Vampire Slayer actress Sarah Michelle Gellar with a #KillerSkin theme.
A Toyota ad features female football player Antoinette “Toni” Harris, who wants to be the first woman in the NFL.
It is logical to appeal to women who make up about half of the Super Bowl viewing audience, analysts say.
The Super Bowl remains one of the top marketing events of the year with 30-second spots costing about US$5 million to reach the estimated 100 million US viewers, an outlier in a media environment that has become increasingly fragmented into targeted segments.
Bettina Cornwell, a professor and director of sports marketing at the University of Oregon, said that the latest ads are part of a broader trend where brands are promoting their social values.
“Brands are beginning to use that stage to communicate their values, and that includes empowerment, environment-friendly behavior and societal support,” Cornwell said.
However, advertisers are likely to stop short of the approach taken in the Gillette “toxic masculinity” ads that sparked calls for boycotts.
“We’ll see advertisers talking about women’s empowerment, but not in a polarizing way,” Calkins said.
According to a survey by the research firm 3Gem, about 77 percent of viewers said that politically charged ads for the Super Bowl are not compelling, while 60 percent said that a funny ad made them more likely to buy a product.
Pace University marketing professor Larry Chiagouris said it might be bad strategy to advertise female empowerment rather than doing something about it.
“Brands would be wise to practice what they preach and put more women in C-suite offices or make better products for women, rather than talking about it in a commercial,” Chiagouris said. “Why is a brand of toothpaste an arbiter of social values? What brand doesn’t stand for empowerment?”
Chiagouris said he believes brands would eventually move away from social and cultural messages, and find other creative ways to stand out.
“I suspect there will be some backlash to these ads and we will see a turn back to the entertainment value of the messages we had in past years,” he said.
Two women yesterday morning attempted to hang a banner from the Acropolis in Athens in protest at the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics, but were detained by Greek police. The women, 18-year-old Tibetan student Tsela Zoksang and 22-year-old exiled Hong Konger Joey Siu (邵嵐), both US citizens, are members of the “No Beijing 2022” campaign, a statement from the New York-based organization Students for a Free Tibet said. They, and a third person, entered the archeological site as paying customers, and then Zoksang and Siu climbed some scaffolding, from which they attempted to unfurl the banner. A security officer rushed to them and took
TREBLE CHANCE: Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei is eyeing a third title in the California desert after winning in 2014 with Peng Shuai and in 2018 with Barbora Strycova Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Belgian partner Elise Mertens on Thursday cruised into the women’s doubles final at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, California. It took second seeds Hsieh and Mertens just 54 minutes to defeat Japanese third seeds Shuko Aoyama and Ena Shibahara 6-2, 6-0 in the semi-finals to advance to their second final as a duo. Hsieh and Mertens denied the Japanese duo, winners of a WTA Tour-best five titles this year, a spot in their sixth final of the season as they broke serve five times and won the final nine games. “We’re very happy about the performance. Just
HUSBAND WANTED: Athletics Kenya said the country had lost a jewel who was one of the fastest-rising athletes on the global stage thanks to her eye-catching performances Record-breaking Kenyan distance runner Agnes Tirop was on Wednesday found dead with stab wounds to her stomach in a suspected homicide, athletics officials said. Police said that they were on the hunt for her husband over the incident at Tirop’s home in the high-altitude training hub of Iten, Kenya. Tirop, 25, was a fast-rising athlete — a double world 10,000m bronze medalist and 2015 world cross country champion who also finished fourth in the 5,000m at the Tokyo Olympics this year. Only last month, she smashed the women-only 10km world record at the Road to Records Event in Germany, with a time of
It is the world’s longest certified foot race: a 4,989km run that takes participants around the same New York block 5,649 times. Thousands of people have climbed Everest — but just 49 have completed the Sri Chinmoy Self-Transcendence 3,100 Mile Race, organizers say. Runners finish more than two marathons a day for almost two months, on less than five hours of sleep a night. They cannot rely on changing scenery to keep them motivated as the route is a 883m loop on a concrete sidewalk around a high school in Jamaica, Queens. To mix things up a bit, they alternate between running clockwise
RSS