There’s some sort of a cultural moment taking place in two days. Something about a “big game.” People across the company will have “Championship Parties” during what they hope will be a “Super Game.”
Even churches do it. Familiar with the Souper Bowl of Caring? I’m spending a few hours tomorrow making Super Subs for a youth group mission trip fundraiser.
Why all the evasive terms? For companies that aren’t officially sponsors of the Super Bowl, those are the closest terms they can legally use without getting sued. It’s called ambush marketing, and it’s how brands attempt to capitalize on events like the Super Bowl or the Olympics without paying the hefty amounts of money to be actual sponsors.
Why? Because actually sponsoring the Super Bowl is mind-blowingly expensive.
For this year’s Super Bowl, a 30 second televised ad spot during the game costs a whopping $4 million dollars. $4,000,000. For a minute long ad, it doubles to $8 million.
And that’s just the cost of airing a commercial. On average, advertisers spend over $1 million to actually produce a commercial.
Of course, there’s a reason companies are willing to spend over $5 million on an ad. Viewers. Forbes says it’s worth it. Last year’s Super Bowl had over 108 million people watching, and (unlike during any other broadcast) many of those viewers were actually watching to see the ads, not the game. For a few hours, the world is turned upside down.
After being bombarded with ads about what sort of new TV I need to watch the big game, or what snacks and beverages I need for my championship party, I started thinking about what a church would do if it could make a Super Bowl ad.
Obviously, it’s an incredibly hypothetical exercise. I’m guessing I could count the number of churches with multi-million dollar marketing budgets on my fingers. (The Church of Scientology sort of did it last year by running an ad in local markets during the game. Story here.)
But if we could make a Super Bowl commercial for a church, what would we say?
What 30 second message would you want to send about your church to 108 million people?
I tweeted that question yesterday.
If someone gave your church the $5 million needed to produce and air a 30 second #SuperBowl commercial, what would it say? #chsocm
— Pastor Daniel Flucke (@danielflucke) January 30, 2014
Here’s one response:
https://twitter.com/Rev_Vermette/status/429012167212298240
The only time I think I remember seeing a church television commercial (not counting televangelists, or anything on a specifically religious channel) was last Christmas, when I saw a spot from the United Methodist Rethink Church campaign. It appears to be unavailable on YouTube, but it’s downloadable from this resource page.
What about you? What would you communicate in 30 seconds about your church? Answer in the comments, or if you want to make a video, tweet me @ChurchWebTips and I’ll add it to this post. And obviously, if you make a good video, add it to your church website and social media!
Here’s the video from @Rev_Vermette:
[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ7l_xqEn00″ modestbranding=”1″]