SUPER BOWL PR PLAYBOOK

By Jeff Sweat

So, when you land a Super Bowl spot next year, how should your agency handle its PR campaign for the game?

Tease, tease, tease

Besides keeping up with the Joneses (Agency), there’s a better reason to tease your work. Super Bowl is the one time of year that non-ad people ever care about ads.  If you release it early, you not only get seen the day of the game, but you capitalize on the extra weeks of attention. And don’t just release it. If you have the budget and the time, tease it with something like, say, a series of leaked corporate videos warning employees how to defend themselves against ravenous burger-eating crowds. Sometimes the teasers are better than the ad itself.

Hold your fire

Sometimes the best way to get noticed is to wait until the big game. That way if there’s something truly surprising, it won’t feel tired by game day. But beware that not everyone will think it was worth the wait. Even more importantly, the journalists who have been frantically covering the Great Ad Blizzard will write their final Super Bowl stories on Monday morning and then hibernate, much like Punxatawny Phil after he sees his own shadow. So if you’re going to stick to that reveal, make sure that you’ve already shared it with journalists you trust before the game.

Step out of your comfort zone

The Super Bowl is the one time of year that outlets who aren’t ad trades care about advertising — so open up your PR efforts to them, too. I’ve seen almost every kind of coverage possible, from People to CNBC to Complex to your local morning news show. But they may not cover you just because of your ad, so you have to mix up your techniques. We once landed on the front page of USA Today (and no, I’m not talking about the Ad Meter) by inviting a reporter to the shoot. Talk about stepping outside your comfort zone.

Smile politely…and throw a few elbows

Every campaign ever requires you to run things by the client PR team. In the Super Bowl, PR is usually part of the brand’s KPIs — which means that, unlike most ad campaigns, the client’s PR agency usually runs the point. Your job is to play nice with their PR team…but not so nice that you forget to advocate for yourself.

Remember that the brand’s PR agency doesn’t work with your reporter contacts as often as you do, and they’re not paid to make the ad agency look good. So it’s entirely possible that they could leave you out of a big story, deliberately or not, or forget to send things like quotes or credits. So ask to handle the publications where you have good relationships — and, failing that, work the back channels to your friendly reporters to make sure they have all the details.

Look, it might be a long time before you get a chance to make another Super Bowl ad. Make it count.