Superbowl 2005 Advertising and Marketing Lessons
by Bobette Kyle

Advertisers, performers, broadcasters and coaches involved with the 2005 Superbowl demonstrated several marketing and management lessons during the course of the game.

Stay with a winner.

The 1998 Tabasco commercial shows a man sitting, eating pizza on his front porch. Before each bite, he splashes on a liberal dose of Tabasco sauce. A mosquito flies in, bites the guy on the hand, and flies off. A second later, we see the mosquito explode in a mass of flames. Cut to the guy chewing and smiling, Tabasco bottle clearly displayed on screen.

It doesn’t get any simpler than that.

In 2005, Tabasco used that same simple, wordless format for another Superbowl commercial, this time a bit more entertaining for the men. It is immediately apparent that this is a Tabasco commercial. The opening shot scans a fair-skinned lady sunbathing in a Tabasco-logoed bikini. She gets up, walks into the bungalow, shakes a few drops of Tabasco into a shrimp dip, stirs, bites, and saunters over to a mirror to check out the sun’s affect. Her sunscreen seems to have worked until – whoops – she tugs back a spaghetti strap. Turns out, she’s forgotten to protect underneath and is burnt red from that darn Tabasco bikini. All this to the tunes of “Burn, Baby Burn.” Same format, same effectiveness, different appeal.  

When developing your own marketing strategies, think about what has worked in the past and how you can reuse effective elements in a different campaign or program. 

Do what you know. Love what you do. 

From a business standpoint, doing what you know and loving what you do can manifest itself in different ways. By developing new products for a well studied target market, for example. Or implementing marketing programs in a way that takes advantage of passions of key employees. In any case, great success comes much easier when the day-to-day tasks are a joy for those involved.

Long-term success requires quality. 

Long-term staying power requires quality. Short-term gimmicks can get you noticed – often in a notorious way - but consistent, outstanding performance is what works in the long haul.

In any industry, a foundation built on quality rather than tricks builds a sturdier and more reliable business.

About the Author

Bobette Kyle draws upon 15+ years of Marketing/Executive experience, online marketing experience, and a marketing MBA as inspiration for her writing. Bobette is proprietor of the Web Site Marketing Plan Network (http://www.WebSiteMarketingPlan.com). She is also author of the marketing plan and Web promotion book "How Much For Just the Spider? Strategic Website Marketing For Small Budget Business." You can search all articles on the network through the marketing directory by going here: http://www.websitemarketingplan.com/directory