The long and the short of it
If there is one sporting event that is discussed for 30 seconds each year, it is the Super Bowl ads. The 57th edition on Sunday featured 70 in-game ads with the most expensive 30 second spots costing a cool $7 million. And they did not disappoint offering a range of themes rammed with celebrities, animations, and premature electrification. My favourite was the GM ad partnering with Netflix that included Will Ferrell, Bridgerton, Stranger Things and Squid Game amongst others. Check it out here.
If the Super Bowl ads are not crazy enough, the €830 million ‘invested’ by English football clubs in the January transfer window to sign new players was insane and almost double the previous record. With this budget you could have bought 127 TV commercials around the Super Bowl! The English Premier League is becoming the Super League most fans, clubs and UEFA wanted to avoid two years ago when a group of European clubs tried to set up an exclusive breakaway league.
But in all seriousness, there is a subtle difference in these two cases. When discussing marketing principles with university or masters students, I often ask about the difference between product orientation and market orientation that has been around for years in the marketing literature. Which one is more effective and what is the current thinking? Most students insist brands today adopt a market orientated approach, listening to the needs and wishes of their customers to ‘add value’ to their products and services. The marketing strategy and campaigns are created to promote these benefits, retain existing customers, and acquire new ones. Short term and long term thinking combined.
When it comes to brands like Bud Light, GM, Pepsi, Doritos, Workday or Skechers who all featured around Super Bowl LVII, there is the potential to increase brand awareness, emotional share of voice and drive key messages amongst the Super Bowl fan base. Over time these activities need to generate brand preference and conversion into sales. And this is irrespective of what happens on the pitch, which was incidentally won by the Kansas City Chiefs.
With the English Premier League and 20 member football clubs, the situation is crystal clear. There can only be one champion at the end of the season and three teams are relegated. In fact, there are only four or five teams who could win the English Premier League and the others will be happy not to finish in the bottom three and be relegated. So how much can one team or league benefit from investing €830 million in new player signings? Does this really build the EPL brand and the individual club brands that leads to more engaged fans and ultimately more revenue for each club? I doubt it. The English Premier League is one of the most successful widely broadcast media products in the sports world. If the current model was so effective and sustainable, EPL football clubs would be generating a higher return on investment for the number of fans and supporters who claim allegiance to these sporting brands, their products, and services.
Perhaps it is time to take a different approach. Mark Ritson, a brand consultant, former marketing professor and regular author in Marketing Week often quotes the work of Les Binet and Peter Field, especially ‘The Long and the Short of It’ (TLATSOI). Keeping it very simple, ‘the long’ is any marketing investment that creates long term memories, which might result in enduring changes in behaviour. And ‘the short’ is referred to as sales activation intended to generate an immediate response from the market, in other words ‘buy my product or service’. Further research revealed spending 60% of the budget on long-term brand building and 40% on short-term activations would more likely help a brand prosper. The other important finding is that short-term investments do not build long-term brand building, but longer term investments do contribute to short-term sales.
In footballing terms, player signings in January are short-term investments that have short term effects. What would happen if professional football clubs invested more budget and resources in social projects with schools and local communities, or climate change leadership as part of their longer term brand building? Who knows, perhaps their brands could generate increased revenue from sponsors on big match days irrespective of the performance on the pitch. In effect, a super bowl that drives positive societal change week in week out. And that’s the long and the short of it.