It’s ok to spend $3 million per 30 seconds on an ad, but don’t dare throw a party! The party aficionado weighs in on Super Bowl 43.

Once again, a news outlet does a story on event spending by a corporation that received bailout funds. This time it was ABC’s report on Bank of America’s sponsorship of Super Bowl 43. http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=6782719&page=1 . No surprise, there is never an event marketing professional on the panel or in a follow up piece to talk about the benefits of event marketing. At the same time, every news program praised and touted the millions spent by companies on super bowl ads - $3million for 30 a second spot.

I find it frustrating in a way that there are not as many discussions on the economic impact of those “parties” on the super bowl city and the jobs created before during and after the game. The same marketing theory applies in event marketing as applies to advertising. The management question becomes: do you spend $6million dollars on 60 seconds worth of TV ads to reach the millions watching the game, or $500,000 on an event to reach the thousands attending the game?

I found this article very interesting “Bowl Might Not Be So Super for City's Bottom Line”. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100118065 The article from NPR does discuss the financial impact on the Super Bowl city and how the economy has reached the extravagance of the Super Bowl. While I agree that some practices can be scaled down. Ex: The mandatory 5-7 night minimum hotel rooms could probably go away and the properties still make tons of money; however, I’m not sure I’m ready to go back to a time when the Super Bowl had high school marching bands instead of high priced entertainers. There has got to be a happy medium.

If the NFL experience was not sponsored by Bank of America, it would have been sponsored by someone else. Would it have been better if that was one of the oil companies who reported billions of dollars in profits for 2008? Exxon reported $45.2 Billion profit while we were paying $4.68 for a gallon of gas this summer. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/30/AR2009013003744.html?hpid=moreheadlines Where was the outrage when that story broke?

Our industry is suffering greatly from the economic conditions, negative press, and now frightened executives. While I don’t condone excessive spending, I would ask is that someone from the meetings/events industry or an event marketing specialist be included in the stories that attempt to “expose” expenditures related to this form of marketing.

I noticed recently, when CBS news first reported the story about the Wall Street bonuses of $18 billion http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4763297n and the president’s anger about it. They followed this piece with a story from Anthony Mason which attempted to explain how the word “bonus” was different on Wall Street than on Main Street.

“While it's true that more than $18 billion in bonuses was paid to Wall Street workers in 2008, that plunged nearly 50 percent from the record $34 billion two years ago. The average worker saw a 37 percent drop in bonus pay last year to $112,000. That's the lowest level in five years. What's more, Wall Street uses the term 'bonus' differently.” Viewers then heard from Scot Melland of Dice Holdings:

It's more than likely that the bonuses paid to these financial services people accounts for 50 percent or 75 percent of their total compensation and it's geared to revenue brought in or success they brought into the firm. So it's more akin to a sales commission than what you or I would think about as a bonus”। http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2009/01/30/network-news-embraces-obamas-wall-street-bashing


While you still might think that the “bonuses” were ridiculous, and many do. At least there was an attempt to have a different view point on the story when reporting it. As event professionals, we deserve the same opportunity.