STRONGBRANDS    Professor Tim Calkins, Kellogg School of Management

The 2021 Super Bowl was notable for some great football but, for advertisers, the more interesting challenge was the complex environment – a struggling economy, a raging pandemic, political conflict. Many of the core Super Bowl advertisers took a pass this year: Coke, Pepsi, Audi, Hyundai and others. One reason was likely the creative challenge; […]

We are days away from the Super Bowl, the biggest marketing event in the world. It will be a very different game this year, with few big parties, not many people in the stands and no vast fleet of corporate jets winging in with big spending executives. The advertising will also be different. Watch for […]

Super Bowl LIV featured some terrific football and some equally good advertising. There were some fierce competitive battles on the field and on the television. With a price of up to $5.6 million for each thirty seconds, advertisers invested in some remarkable creative. Overall, the quality of the advertising was high, and only a few […]

One of the interesting brands to watch on this year’s sold-out Super Bowl is Olay, the global skin care brand owned by P&G. Olay advertised on the Super Bowl in 2019 but is taking a very different approach in 2020. It is not clear how well it will work. Olay 2019 Last year Olay ran […]

The Super Bowl is just over a week away, and one lesson is already very apparent. The Super Bowl remains the most important marketing platform in the United States. Huge Demand The evidence is quite clear. First, the Super Bowl is sold out. You can take that statement with a grain of salt because Super Bowl […]

Super Bowl LIV is coming up in less than two weeks. Football analysts are now studying the teams – the Chiefs and the 49ers. It should be an intense battle. Marketing analysts are looking at the advertising matchups. There is a lot we don’t know at this point. We don’t know all the advertisers; many […]

Over the past two weeks I’ve been talking a lot about the Super Bowl ads. I hosted a webinar with my colleague Derek Rucker, did television interviews on NBC, ABC, and Fox, and talked with radio stations from San Diego to Memphis to Boston. As I’ve considered the ads, I’ve become more and more interested […]

Super Bowl LIII won’t go down in history as a thrilling football game, but at least the advertisers came through with some excellent spots. The big theme this year was technology: the tech giants came out in force, with Amazon, Microsoft and Google all running spots. More notable, a series of Super Bowl ads featured […]

Welcome to the biggest week of the year for marketers in the United States. The Super Bowl is coming right up. Over the next several days, we will see some of the world’s largest and most talented companies roll out Super Bowl campaigns costing millions of dollars. It is worth paying attention; you can learn […]

The Super Bowl remains marketing’s biggest event. Nothing comes even close in terms of reach, attention and price. Once again this year, a panel of MBA students gathered at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management to strategically evaluate the Super Bowl ads. The group hunkered down to assess the ads for effectiveness—not just entertainment—with a critical question […]

The Super Bowl is less than a week away. The football game should be interesting. Can Tom Brady and the Patriots once again take the prize? The advertising should be even more interesting. One category to watch in particular: Telecom. Last year, T-Mobile and Sprint both attacked Verizon. The Sprint ad featured a fellow faking […]

The Super Bowl is fast approaching. On February 4, more than one hundred million people will congregate at Super Bowl parties to watch both the football and the advertising. On the part of advertisers, they will spend $5 million or more for each thirty second spot to reach the huge audience. If history is any […]