Denver-based companies, including Coors Brewing Co. and Frontier Airlines, will take advantage of intense interest in today’s AFC and NFC championship games to run ads.
Local viewership for the matchup between the Denver Broncos and the Pittsburgh Steelers is expected to be comparable to that of last year’s Super Bowl between New England and Philadelphia, according to an e-mail statement from Walt DeHaven, general manager of KCNC-Channel 4, the CBS affiliate airing the game.
The station declined to provide its lineup of local advertisers, although Coors confirmed that it is running a national ad during both games. Frontier also confirmed that it is running spots that will air in the Denver market during both games.
Today’s playoffs games offer such companies an opportunity to reach viewers at a lower cost than in the Super Bowl broadcast.
“It doesn’t carry any of the cachét that Super Bowl ads do, but marketers know that – specifically in the playoff team markets – a lot of people are going to be tuned in,” said Gregg Bergan, co-founder of Pure Brand Communications, a Denver-based advertising and public relations agency.
Thirty-second local spots in today’s AFC Championship game cost roughly $30,000 to $50,000, according to industry experts, compared with $18,000 to $26,000 for a regular-season Bronco game. For a local spot during the Super Bowl, the cost is between $50,000 and $75,000.
National 30-second spots for the Super Bowl are selling for an estimated $2.5 million – roughly five times the cost of advertising during the highest-priced slot in a regular program, according to media reports.
Companies that purchased the high-priced spots this year include Burger King, Ford Motor, Pepsi Cola, Subway and Warner Brothers.
Today’s broadcast of the conference championship game offers advertisers a venue with less viewer expectations than the Super Bowl.
“If you’re trying to compete for share of mind … there is no time that’s harder than at the Super Bowl,” said Bob Mazerov, a principal with Greenwood Village-based Mazerov Miller Research & Marketing Strategy and a professor at Johnson & Wales University in Denver. “You’re competing with everybody’s best as well as just a heightened interest.”
During playoff games, he said: “We don’t all try to become advertising experts. You’re watching the game in a more normal situation.”
Coors, the U.S. subsidiary of Molson Coors Brewing Co., cannot advertise during Super Bowl XL in Detroit because Anheuser-Busch is the exclusive national alcohol beverage advertiser for the game. Anheuser-Busch has 10 slots planned for the Feb. 5 broadcast on ABC. The company has held the designation for 17 years.
Coors Light has a sponsorship deal for the NFL Network’s week of Super Bowl coverage that gives the company on-screen logos and promotional spots.
For today’s two conference championships, Coors will run its “Coors Light Super Train” ad, a 60-second spot by Chicago advertising agency Foote, Cone & Belding. The spot, which launched Dec. 17, drips with Super Bowl nostalgia as game heroes from long-gone games fill the screen. It features Super Bowl highlights like the handshake between Kansas City Chiefs coach Hank Stram and Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi before the kickoff in Super Bowl I. Additionally, the company will run three ads featuring vice chairman and pitchman Pete Coors with John Denver’s song “Rocky Mountain High.”
Frontier Airlines will run three 30-second playoff spots – two during the AFC championship game on CBS and another during the NFC championship game on Fox. The company has purchased local spots to target its Denver-area customers.
Frontier spokesman Joe Hodas declined to say how much the company is spending for the spots, except that it is twice what the company pays during a regular-season game.
“The viewership more than warrants it,” he said.
Hodas would not confirm that Frontier bought ad time for the Feb. 5 Super Bowl, but Frontier’s ad campaign appears to be laying the groundwork for that.
The campaign, created by New York’s Sticky Grey, centers on animal pitchman Flip the Dolphin and his campaign to fly to Mexico.
As part of the campaign, which features so-called press conferences and news reports chronicling Flip’s efforts, the dolphin recently gave the company an ultimatum to which it must respond by Feb. 5.
“Feb. 5 happens to be an important day for sports fans, and given the public nature of Flip’s campaign to date, it would not be surprising that we would air that information during the Super Bowl,” said Hodas.
The company’s effort to create a big buildup by establishing a continuing storyline line leading up to the Super Bowl is a creative move and will help generate interest in the campaign, said Steve McKee, president of McKee Wallwork Cleveland, an Albuquerque ad agency that runs AdBowl.com, which allows consumers to rank Super Bowl ads.
Denver-based Quiznos, a previous Super Bowl advertiser, last week said that it opted not to purchase ad time in either the Super Bowl or playoff games. Last year, however, the company said it would not advertise in the Super Bowl – but then bought significantly discounted local ad time at the last minute.
Qwest, which ran local spots during last year’s Super Bowl, declined to discuss its advertising plans.
Staff writers Tom McGhee and Kelly Yamanouchi contributed to this report.
Staff writer Kristi Arellano can be reached at 303-820-1902 or karellano@denverpost.com.
