New Companies Plan to Shoot to Stardom with Super Bowl Commercials

UPDATED 8/7/20

Super Bowl 49 is upon us, and with it comes the iconic Super Bowl ads. Some companies, such as Volkswagen and Audi, are declining to advertise during the game, but more commercials are slated to take their place. In fact, 15 brands are expected to advertise during the Super Bowl for the first time, the most newcomers since the year 2000. With a $4.5 million price tag for a mere 30 seconds of air time, this level of advertising is no small investment.

One of the more well-known companies that has invested in its first Super Bowl ad is glue manufacturer Loctite. Loctite has used its entire annual advertising budget to pay for their one Super Bowl commercial, and they expect the investment to pay off.

“Our goal is to make Loctite famous,” brand director Pierre Tannoux told CBS news. “We are investing more in this spot than we invested for the total of last year.”

Because of Loctite’s small advertising budget, it was difficult for the company to reach the number of viewers it had hoped for during other ad campaigns. By focusing all their efforts on one ad that can reach a larger audience, Loctite hopes to become a household name.

WeatherTech, a manufacturer of car floor mats, hopes to have more of a long-term impact with their Super Bowl commercial. This will be WeatherTech’s second Super Bowl ad.

“We all love instant gratification, don’t get me wrong, but I was doing it more from a branding standpoint,” David MacNeil, WeatherTech’s chief executive, told Warc.com. “It’s a long-term investment in our company’s future.”

He predicts that the company’s Super Bowl ad could win over a customer as far as three years into the future.

“If you have the budget, you will never get a bigger audience for your ad than during the Super Bowl! At last year’s viewership of 112 million – that’s less than 4¢ per viewer. You can stretch that value a lot further if your ad is creative and memorable,” says Don Keller of Catalpha Advertising.

Other newcomers to Super Bowl advertising include Israeli website builder Wix.com and Mophie, a manufacturer of battery-boosting phone cases. Carnival Cruise Lines is also making its Super Bowl debut, with a commercial that was voted for by customers. The voters were entered into a sweepstakes to win an annual cruise for life. The commercials (and football game) will air on February 1st.

Having a big budget commercial for weather mats for vehicles may seem like an odd choice. After all, do the tens of millions of viewers really need to be made aware of the existence of rubber mats for vehicles? Does the brand of automotive car mats even matter? But consider how commercials are nearly as important as the big game. The right spot can get the majority of the country talking about your automotive car mats on Monday morning.

Car and truck floor mats protect the vehicle from the slop and filth passengers drag into the car. With the Super Bowl happening at the tail end of winter, it is fair to assume the majority of viewers have soaked through their automotive car mats with slush and snow. A well produced, and placed, commercial this time of year and make millions realize it is time to replace those grimey floor mats for my car. 

Although it seems like a gamble to invest so much in advertising car and truck floor mats with this WeatherTech floor mats Super Bowl commercial, it’s clear that the payoff in weather mats for vehicles sales could be huge.