FEW on Madison Avenue who emulate the habits of highly effective people would admit to borrowing from the Nixon White House. But as marketers that will advertise in Super Bowl XLVII plan pregame strategies, many are opting for what was described during the Watergate era as a modified limited hangout.
Those marketers, which include Kraft Foods and Procter & Gamble, are deciding they will share part — but not all — of their Super Bowl commercials before the spots are broadcast by CBS on Feb. 3. Their decisions stand in contrast to what brands like Acura and Volkswagen did in the last two Super Bowls: offer consumers opportunities, days or weeks before the games, to watch online the entire spots or longer versions.
The increasing willingness of consumers to share information about Super Bowl ads on social media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube has been encouraging sponsors to provide sneak peeks of the commercials. That departed from what Super Bowl sponsors had done for decades: stay mum, hoping to capitalize on the element of surprise to stimulate conversation and coverage.
But some executives say they see disadvantages to previewing Super Bowl spots in full because doing so could diminish, to use a term from another White House, the shock and awe.
“Right now, our plan is to hold back the spot till the day of the game,” said Chris Lillich, associate marketing director for North America laundry at Procter & Gamble, which will run a 30-second spot for Tide in the third quarter.
Providing full commercials in advance is “certainly a valid strategy,” Mr. Lillich said. “But we think doing the ‘big reveal’ in the game is going to do the best for us.”
Procter is scheduling a “significant” teaser campaign to begin next week, which ought to “generate a lot of buzz and still allow us to have that ‘big reveal,’ ” he said.
The Tide commercial, by Saatchi & Saatchi in New York, part of the Publicis Groupe, will feature the two teams to face each other in Super Bowl XLVII. It comes at the end of the first season of a multiyear deal designating Tide as the official detergent of the National Football League.
Kraft, like Procter, also intends to run a 30-second commercial in the third quarter of the game. The Kraft spot will be for MiO Fit, a new variety of its MiO line of “liquid water enhancer” that is to compete with sports beverages. Like Procter, Kraft will run a teaser campaign for its spot but resist the full Monty until the game.
“It has become more expected to do the prerelease,” said Doug Weekes, vice president for refreshment beverages at Kraft, and “it’s very tempting.”
But the concern is that previews would make the MiO Fit commercial “just a little bit less special,” Mr. Weekes said. “We prefer keeping it a surprise for our consumers.”
The star of the MiO Fit spot, by the New York office of Taxi, part of WPP, is the comedian Tracy Morgan. Just as the content of the commercial will be “totally unexpected” by viewers, said Michael Pierantozzi, co-executive creative director at Taxi New York, Mr. Morgan “is a totally unexpected sports-drink spokesman.”
“It’s a big, fun spot,” Mr. Pierantozzi said. “We wanted to save it for the Super Bowl because it’s the kind of spot you need to watch on the big screen on Super Bowl Sunday.”
Other marketers said they considered the surprise-and-delight approach before determining the revelatory route would be more rewarding.
“For me, it’s all about maximizing exposure,” said Steve Cannon, president and chief executive at Mercedes-Benz USA, which will run in the fourth quarter a one-minute commercial, by Merkley & Partners in New York, an Omnicom Group agency, for the 2014 CLA small coupe.
Even if millions of people watch the commercial online before the game, “it’s still going to be brand-new for 98 percent of the population,” he said, and such previews help defray the “big expense” of buying time in the game.
Five CLA teasers are to begin on television on Sunday, using the Rolling Stones song to be heard in the Super Bowl spot, “Sympathy for the Devil.” (That’s a plot clue — hint, hint.) Ten days later, a preview of the Super Bowl spot, in the form of a 90-second version, is to appear on Facebook and YouTube.
On Jan. 28, the Taco Bell division of Yum Brands plans a preview of its one-minute spot that will run in the second or third quarter of the Super Bowl. “Why not reward the people who love you?” asked Brian Niccol, chief marketing and innovation officer at Taco Bell. “I don’t think it does anything but amplify.”
Employee previews are planned, too. “We have access to all our restaurants via the Internet, and we’ll use that to share the ad,” Mr. Niccol said. “There are no bigger advocates for the brand than our team members.”
The plot of the Taco Bell commercial, about an unexpected night out for a group of aging friends, is evocative of “Cocoon” or the “Kick the Can” segment of “Twilight Zone: the Movie.” The spot will feature a Spanish version of the hit song “We Are Young.”
The agency creating the Taco Bell commercial — Deutsch L.A., part of the Interpublic Group of Companies — created the Volkswagen commercials in the 2011 and 2012 Super Bowls that benefited mightily from early releases of longer versions on YouTube.
“The people who viewed them and shared them before the games were the ones to tell everyone at the Super Bowl parties, ‘Quiet down, here comes that Volkswagen spot,’ ” said Michael Sheldon, chief executive at Deutsch L.A.
Advertising: Some Marketers Rethink Super Bowl Ad Previews
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Advertising: Some Marketers Rethink Super Bowl Ad Previews
