The Effects of Superbowl Advertisements on European Advertisement Trends

Abstract

The purpose of the thesis was to find out the impact of Super Bowl advertisements and general trends on European trends and consumer behavior within the European continent. One objective was to research how these trends impacted the trends over the last decade in general and how impactful it was being presented at the Super Bowl event. Another objective was to see what the effects were on Europe-based brands and how branding and advertising agencies are impacted. While also keeping in mind the third objective is to see how much consumer behavior is affected directly or indirectly. Lastly combining all these objectives, we also studied how brands and their representatives can be reactive to the ongoing trends and trends presented during the Super Bowl.

The theoretical framework was based on literature about marketing, consumer behavior, and forecasting. Kotler's book on marketing management and his research with Armstrong on the principles of marketing were used to lay the foundation. After which publications by Blackwell and Solomon on consumer behavior, and by Armstrong on forecasting were used to create the theoretical backbone of this research.

The study was conducted by initially researching secondary sources, to create a guideline for the questionnaire used during the qualitative research part. The qualitative research was conducted by interviewing an advertisement professional working for a leading Finnish advertisement company, Hasan & Partners, creating advertisement campaigns for the Finnish market and Nordic markets. And a lead strategist from a London-based global social media agency, Born Social, in charge of campaigns mainly based in Europe. The information gathered from these interviews was analyzed and compared to the tabletop research.

The findings indicated that in the professional creative agencies within Europe, there was little research done into the Super Bowl advertisements. However, they did show that the event itself might not spearhead trends, but it does show the existing trends in an amplified manner, making them a useful tool to use as a benchmark while they conduct their own first-hand research. The results also showed that as with the trends, European consumer behavior is not affected directly by the Super Bowl event, and it shows a stronger emphasis on the social media impact on consumer behavior, something that both the Super Bowl enhances with its use of handles and other technological advances. It became clear as well that the current trends brands are reacting to are coming more from a social environment over the Super Bowl created. Coming out of a financially harder time, through COVID-19, made brands more focused on their brand rather than their product. This was something shown during the event and confirmed as an ongoing trend by the European agencies. Lastly, the results indicated that with the rise of social media, the impact the Super Bowl commercials have over the trends has declined. Before the rise of social media, big-budget advertising had a stronger impact over global trends, however, now this has shifted to social media.

In conclusion, in a world so interconnected through the availability of social networks, the Super Bowl advertisements’ impact on trends has decreased over the last decade or so. However, there is still an importance to the event itself as seen in the ever-growing pricing per second of advertisement time during the event. Brands still use it as a major platform to show themselves to the global public. European brands and creative agencies have every benefit from using the data and tendencies shown during the Super Bowl as a benchmark for their own research and emulate it towards their own demographic target group.