As millions of people gather around television sets to watch the 44th Super Bowl on Feb. 7, one thing will be missing: Pepsi commercials.
This year marks the first time in 24 years that the soft drink company will not have a Super Bowl presence. Instead of purchasing multiple, 30-second Super Bowl commercials — costing between $2.5 million to $2.8 million a pop — this year Pepsi will invest that money in a community service initiative marketed mostly online.
And while no small business in Greater Hartford can compete with Pepsi’s advertising budget, it can take a lesson from Pepsi’s advertising playbook and look for new online advertising opportunities, a trend that has been underway for several years, according to regional industry experts.
Glastonbury ad executive Tony Cashman is not surprised by Pepsi’s decision, given the ever-changing landscape of traditional media and marketing.
“Although the industry continues to debate the staying power of some of the social networking sites, the fact remains that the Internet is not going anywhere,” said Cashman, president and chief executive officer of Cashman & Katz Integrated Communications.
“Companies that learn to embrace and integrate this medium along with print, outdoor and broadcast, will have the most success,” Cashman said.
“What is interesting, however, is that this isn’t a cost-cutting strategy for Pepsi,” he said. “In fact, it’s a shift in strategy to move towards digital and social media. Like any other social media campaign, execution will be the key to its success.”
While an increasing number of businesses of all sizes are creating corporate profiles on social networking Web sites such as Facebook, Cashman does not believe that businesses — small or large — can devote resources to only digital or social media.
“It does, however, have to be an integral part of an overall marketing campaign,” he added. “[Social media and online advertising] is a tool to enhance public relations, community relations and overall marketing goals. New media offers the opportunity to expand your message, engage with people, and participate in conversations.”
Joe Giacobbe, general manager at Palley Advertising in Worcester, agrees, cautioning that creating a Facebook page is not enough for businesses.
“If you don’t really have something to say, it just becomes noise to a certain extent and people just tune it out,” he said. “At some point, people are just going to stop looking and that defeats the whole purpose.”
A corporate Facebook page may work for companies with the size and scope of a Pepsi or Starbucks, but for many local businesses, it will lead to a dead-end. Instead, Giacobbe says businesses should look toward Facebook and other social networking sites as an advertising medium because it’s a cost-effective option that offers a highly targeted audience.
“Ads are being served pretty much everywhere on the Internet,” he said. “We have many customers that advertise on Facebook, but it wasn’t an easy sell. It’s become a much easier sell over the last few months.”
According to eMarketer, a service that aggregates and analyzes online advertising, the 100 largest advertisers are still putting a relatively small share of their measured media budgets into display advertising and, in general, are still holding back from greater online ad investment.
However, eMarketer finds that as advertisers look to engage their audience with relevant, trustworthy messages, increasingly smaller shares of marketing budgets are going to traditional — newspaper, radio and television — advertising and there is a spending uptick for non-advertising marketing, built on top of the social Internet sites, such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.
Although Facebook is almost six years old and counts more than 350 million users, some companies are just beginning to consider the advantages of advertising on the site, but Giacobbe believes the slow adoption is a product of the recession more than it is a representation of corporate understanding.
“I don’t think last year was a question that they didn’t understand it,” he said. “I think they just didn’t want to spend the money on it.”
Locals Only
New technology might create new avenues for advertisers, but it also poses some challenges for marketing via more traditional mass media, such as television and radio spots.
But as Andrew Davis, president of Davis Advertising in Worcester explains, advertisers can’t jump ship altogether.
“Is there any question that it’s harder and harder to reach people? Yes,” he said. “You have to be more selective as to what channels you pick and what programs you pick.”
When it comes to television and radio, Davis said it’s all about focusing on local news and programming.
“People still turn into local radio stations and local sports, and they’re not going to get that from satellite,” he said. “And the ratings will reflect what people are watching. People are not TIVOing the news.”
Hartford Business Journal Staff Writer Diane Weaver Dunne contributed to this report.
