Well, it’s that time of year again. No, not the holidays. It’s time to write a Super Bowl ad.
And all the bigwigs from all the fancy ad agencies across the country are, as we speak, camping out at Starbucks and giving up all thoughts of REM sleep and disappointing spouses (once again) in the unrealistic hope of writing an ad that I somehow make at the Super Bowl.
And they go through this pain and suffering because each one of them knows that writing a Super Bowl ad that is produced and shown during the game will change their lives forever.
You can sleep in February. There are fewer days then anyway.
This year, the NFL has decided to involve you and me, the fans, in writing a Super Bowl ad (call them ads if you want to sound professional). Instead of just handing the creative brief to your ad agency and letting the creatives do it like a piece of rib tossed to bloodthirsty hyenas, the National Football League wants to get ‘real’ people involved this year.
Marketing rollout? Yes. Has it been done before? Sure. Who cares? This is beyond huge. This could lead you to ‘Entertainment Tonight’. And they all want to be on ‘Entertainment Tonight.’
The fact is that the ads in the Super Bowl get just as much (if not more) attention than the game itself. USA Today will feature an entire SECTION on who had the best ads next Monday. People in faded cubicles and on construction sites and at gas stations across the country will be talking about which ad was the best. People who never know each other sit in hotel lobbies and wonder things like “do you think they went far enough at that Fed Ex place last night?”
That’s how important Super Bowl ads are.
The chosen commercial will be remembered LONG after it airs. It will become part of our culture. Think about it… now is your chance to create something that will become a part of our culture for years to come. Exaggeration? Hardly the 1984 Apple ad (with its beautifully woven Russian overtones) featured a woman throwing the sledgehammer through Big Brother that defined a critical moment in the life of our country.
And instead of spending your life writing a novel or spending your life developing works of art, you can do it in just 30 seconds.
Good. So if you’re going to write the NFL Super Bowl ad that’s produced, which takes you to the filming of the commercial, and then flies you to South Florida for the Super Bowl itself… here are a few things to must do.
1) Think like a screenwriter
We’ve all been to the movies. We all know that ‘movie feeling’. It’s epic. It feels like it belongs to be seen on an IMAX screen. It can be a dramatic return from a lunar mission or the tension between two lovers in Paris, or it can be a kid walking down a hallway… the point is, it doesn’t have to be big… it has to feel big.
get inspired. Go see a Tim Burton movie. Gold Apollo 13. Gold Purple Color. Rosebud rent. Whatever it takes to put your mind in the right place.
2) Don’t feel the need to explain anything in the ad
Super Bowl commercials don’t talk about product features. We are never told a laundry list of reasons why Bud Light is the best beer at a Super Bowl venue or why Pepsi is the only soda you should “trust.” And that’s great news, because it means you can focus on your ‘theater’ (your commercial action).
Don’t waste your time writing announcer copy explaining the benefits of the NFL. People know the benefits of the NFL. You will be wasting valuable time. So keep your copy to a minimum and focus on ‘writing’ a place people will remember.
3) Choose to be relevant visually or verbally
Two very different lines of thought here: are you showing soccer-related action or not? This is very important. Do you show some action that has nothing to do with football and then tie it to the NFL with a very clever line at the end or do you focus on one aspect of football throughout your theater and then end the spot with a line very clever at the end. (Hopefully you saw the need to smartly finish your place TWICE.)
What is the difference between visual and verbal relevance?
If you write an ad about a monkey and several mentally challenged men in a garage playing with spoons and singing off key about absolutely nothing and then at the end you write a line about not wasting money (actual Super Bowl ad), that’s verbal relevance. It’s incredibly memorable. Along with a lot of people, I remember it was for E*Trade. And because E*Trade took such a risk… I like them better as a brand.
So if you go this way, go crazy. But you better have a great line at the end like them. That it was about throwing money away, that they just did showing crazy people and money in a garage and that you won’t do if you come to E*Trade.
brilliant thought.
However, if you write an ad about the guy tying the laces on the footballs and cleaning the towels and then (something cool happens here), then you’re being visually relevant. Everything about soccer, from the guy who mows the grass on the field to where they test cleats to the helmets that are used as cocktail glasses… is visually relevant.
Visual relevance is MUCH easier to sell. Memorable goal of MUCH LESS.
4) Be very, very hard on yourself
People in the advertising world would literally sing the Kazakhstan National Anthem naked at Grand Central Station during rush hour for the next six to eight years for a chance to produce a Super Bowl ad.
So push it. Have fun with it. It is, after all, copywriting. No accounting (sorry, accountants, I had to).
