A super blunder?

Major brands spend craptillions of dollars every year for the right to appear in the Super Bowl, the media and pop culture event of the year.  And why not? Last year’s Super Bowl was the third-most-watched US-based telecast in history.

But there is one “brand” in a highly competitive “market” that was offered 3-4 minutes of free airtime during Sunday’s big game -- and turned it down. Yes, that’s the Joe Biden campaign.

The campaign believes people are fatigued by politics, so they don’t want to alienate voters by having the president show up during a pregame interview. 

Instead, they are trying to get the word out via social influencers and targeted local media interviews. One advisor sniffed, “We are being more creative and relying less on the formulas of the past.”

However, sometimes formulas last because they work. Could you imagine Coors Light, BMW, Oreo, or T-Mobile being offered three minutes of free airtime during the Super Bowl and replying, “Nah, we’re good. We put up a billboard in Myrtle Beach and maybe we can get a couple of YouTubers to talk about us. Thanks, though.”

Microtargeting can be valuable, of course, but for major brands it typically isn’t an either/or proposition.  You can microtarget while still building a mass market brand.

Perhaps we are missing something, but blowing off a chance to talk about your “brand” and its “benefits” to 110 million potential “buyers” seems like a badly wasted opportunity, doesn’t it?