"The Most Expensive Day on Television"

Happy Super Bowl Sunday everyone! Today a little less than half of America tuned in to watch the Big Game. Since my blog is about advertisements, I'm incredibly happy it's going to cover the most expensive day on television. I thought that for today's post, I would make a compilation of the commercials, and I'll explain how much I'll spend on each of their products. Then there will be some sort of conclusion/results. :)

I won't count same-brand cars twice because I wouldn't own two of the same sedan, but it could be possible to own a sedan and a SUV. I will also only purchase one of some items, like the FLO TV (because I can only watch one at at time). But I will count most consumables more than once.

First quarter:
-Bud light house $6.99 for a six-pack
-Snickers: Betty White $0.79 for a single
-Focus on Family Free, religious service
-Hyundai $19,195 for a basic Sonata
-Boost Mobile $50 for unlimited talk, web, and text
-Doritos dog $2.99 for a bag
-Robin Hood $10.00 for a movie ticket
-Doritos play nice $2.99 for a bag
-Bud light observatory $6.99 for a six-pack
-Coke: Simpsons $1.39 for an average bottle
-GoDaddy Danica's massage $9.99 for a new .com
-Doritos miracle $2.99 for a bag
-Budlight voicebox $6.99 for a six-pack
-Monster.com beaver free to find a job
-Wolfman $10.00 for a movie ticket
-Bridgestone bachelor party $200.00 per tire
-Sketchers Shape Ups $110.00 for a pair of shoes
-Cars.com free service to find a car
First quarter: $20,217.11

Second quarter:
-Budweiser body bridge $6.99 for a six-pack
-Shutter Island $10.00 for a movie ticket
-Late Show free show on network TV
-Careerbuilder.com casual Fridays free service
-Dockers wear no pants $30 for a pair of soft khaki pants
-Hyundai already mentioned
-Bud light survivor $6.99 for a six-pack
-Dove You Are a Man $5-$20 for skin care products
-NFL Draft no product here, although most companies charge for NFL network
-NFL: The Who already mentioned
-Dodge Charger: Man's Last Stand about $30,000 for a 2010 Charger
-Teleflora.com $59.95 for a bouquet
-Papa Johns $9 for the 3-topping Super Bowl XLIV pizza
-Alice in Wonderland $10.00 for a movie ticket
-Dr. Peper and Mini Kiss $1.39 for a bottle
-TruTV Punxatawney Polamalu cable tv channel
-Universal Florida Harry Potter about $100 for a one-day ticket
-FLO TV $199 for the mobile TV
-Intel: Lunchroom about $400 average for the new chips
-FLO TV already mentioned
-NFL: Always Football already mentioned
Second quarter: $30,853.32

Third quarter:
-Prince of Persia $10.00 for a movie ticket
-Motorola: Megan Fox the Motorola Devour is available in march, <$199
-VW: Punching Game no specific car advertised
-Dennys Grand Slam free on Feb 9!
-Michelob Lance Armstrong $7.99 for a six-pack
-Homeaway.com no specific product advertised
-Bridgestone Future Car already mentioned
-KGB sumo $0.99 to get a text-answer
-Coke: sleep walking $1.39 for a bottle
-E-Trade Jealous Girlfriend $1,000 to open an account
-Census Bureau no cost
-Google: Parisian love no cost
-Kia Sorento average price of $25,000 for a 2011
-Select 55: Lightest Beer in the World not on the market yet, thank god
Third quarter: $26,219.37

Fourth quarter:
-NFL: Lift off already mentioned
-Vizio: Beyonce about $800 average for a TV
-Diamond Foods $2.99 a bag
-Dantes Inferno $59.99
-AB Clydesdale Friend no specific product advertised ($5.99 for a six-pack of Bud)
-Honda Accord Crosstour pricing expected to be $30,000
-Dennys Overworked Chickens already mentioned
-Audi Green Police A3 TDI starts at $29,950
-Taco Bell Five Buck Box $5
-Doritos: Weight Room $2.99 for a bag
-Bud Light Book Club $5.99 for a six-pack
-Hyundai New Sonata already mentioned
-E-Trade: Take Charge already mentioned
-GoDaddy.com Danica Interview already mentioned
-Denny's birthday breakfast already mentioned
Fourth quarter: $60,832.95

GRAND TOTAL: $103,509.17

It's expensive to advertise during the Superbowl: about $3 million for a 30-second spot this year. But it does reach over 90 million people. By simple math, this means companies pay about $0.33 to advertise to a single person. But that's not including production costs. It's pretty obvious that when you see my list of commercials and products, that they advise to men. Average aged, average wealthy, average everything... but I'm not the average male. At least, this month I'm not. That's because I buy everything that is advertised to me. It cost me over $100,000 to watch the Super Bowl!

So what can we learn from today's post? To be honest, I'm not sure yet. $3 million for 30-seconds of ad space is a ton of money, regardless of how many people see the ad, or on what day of the year it runs. The ads aren't life changing ads either. Buy some beer here, some chips there, maybe a snickers or two. Only a few ads really promote a product that is not really self-indulgent. And it's pretty ironic because the one religious ad had to pay the same amount as everyone else. Would that money have been better spent some where else? Probably, but it is their money and who am I to tell them what to do with it? If it costs $0.17 to prepare a meal for a starving child (as advertised on TV), then one Super Bowl ad could feed 5,882,352 people three-meals for a single day. To put a different spin on things, instead of advertising during the Super Bowl, companies could band together and buy an entire NFL team for a $1 billion. That's the cost of about 333 ads during the game. This year there was 69 spots sold, so after 5 years of saving (from this one day alone), Doritos, Budweiser, Coke and all the other guys... could buy their own NFL team. They could name them the New York Bud Lights, and logos would be all over the jerseys. The players would looks like Nascar hoods.

Ok, time to wrap it up. Today's ad was not as much about buying habits, as it was about spending habits. The spending of g-i-a-n-t companies. But that of course has a direct impact on our spending habits.

Your homework for this post: Is is ridiculous that ad companies spend so much money on Super Bowl advertising (and advertising in general)? Or is it ok because they profit so much? You DO have to spend money to make money, right? Do these ads make you want to buy their products?

The fine print:
Prices were researched & estimated individually
List of ads from: http://superbowlads.fanhouse.com/
Further research: http://adage.com/superbowl10/article?article_id=141168
Don't nab me on math or sources please :)

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"Men pitch Mighty Putty, not Tupperware."

I didn't want ANYTHING to be advertised to me today. Not that yesterday was horrible, and expensive, and I'm running out of cash... which is true, but today was to be a very important day for me at work.

I arrived at the office at 7:45am. On the way there I didn't see any advertisements that really caught my eye. I sat down and ate my homemade breakfast of instant oatmeal with dried cranberries and some fiberous weird grain crap I found in the bins at the store a few months ago. I got to work right away. We use mostly internal websites, so I don't really see many online ads throughout the day unless I go online to a social networking site or eBay, etc. Today I wouldn't really have time for that.

I made it all the way to lunch before I bought my first product. When lunch came at 3pm, I sat alone in the conference room eating a bowl of canned chili with spicy potato chips crumbled on top. I found the bag of chips in the room and snaked 'em for myself. Free: No advertising necessary. I turned on ESPN (we have a nice flat screen in there) and within a few minutes I was purchasing a "wow Tupperware set" that stacks neatly in a pile. The lids are bottoms and the bottoms are lids; everything is interchangeable. It's a good idea really. The spokeswoman (men pitch Mighty Putty, not Tupperware) had just doubled the offer for two sets for $19.99. Evidently, these things are so cutting edge that I couldn't even find a picture for them on Google to put on this blog.

Sadly, I think that's the only thing I bought today. Oh never mind, my sister Brigit just said we saw an "Umcka Swedish cold medicine" commercial. I just had to Google the price, which is breaking one of the rules of my blog. It's $9.99. Cutting edge medicine? Sold.

My lack of buying leads me to the lesson for today... I started the day very focused. I finished the day focused. I worked a lot in-between. I had homemade breakfast and lunch. Then for dinner, post-gym (which is an ad-free two hour chunk of my day), Brigit and I ate baked pizza, microwaved pasta, and microwaved potatoes. That reminds me that at the store tonight, among the thousands of point-of-sale items like gum, razors, disposable cameras, and pocket size lint rollers, there was one advertised item larger than the others: an eight-pack of AA batteries for $4.99. I'll count that as my third and final item. Oh yeah, back to the lesson... if you don't want to be advertised to you, they don't come to you. Well, they're still there, but you don't care. You don't notice them. Yesterday when I was out and about much more, and in a different mood, I had lots more advertised to me. Or so it seemed. But a more likely answer is that yesterday I was more susceptible to becoming a victim to the ads around me.

Today's total: $34.97
Running month total: $630.01

Today's homework: what moods make you want to purchase more? Do you do retail-therapy when you're sad or upset? Or do you do extra shopping when you're happy?

"Hey self, Monday sucks, let's go have a $1 double cheeseburger."

Today is the first day of the most expensive month of my life. Last night before I went to bed, I had the tv on after midnight, and *poof*, in just a few short minutes it was suggested that I buy the "Perfect Brownie Maker." For only $19.99 I'll own a cooking device that gives crust to every piece of brownie cut from the pan. It's totally the opposite of what I'd want (crustless brownie). Alas, the infomercial sold me on it. Then two commercials later, Ikea suggested I buy the Sultan mattress for $549. Our current mattress sinks in the middle. So I guess I would consider myself in the market. This one looks comfy. Sold. My wallet already thinning, I went to bed.

This morning I read the comments on my blog. Fuki questioned how I would determine what I would buy and what I wouldn't buy. He informed me that simply driving to my office from my apartment, I'd encounter thousands of ads. My answer... I don't know yet. But I did decide that I should start to establish criteria that would determine what I would purchase and what I wouldn't. Rule #1: The ad should probably have a price. Rule #2: it must be a relevant product that I would consider purchasing. I'm not going to buy tampons just because I see a convincing ad on television. Now, back to my day...

After I ate my homemade lunch of grilled salmon, a co-worker and I drove to the local upscale grocery store, where I am addicted to the $2.50 two-days-away-from-being-ripe mangos. The last one I ate, I declared it the most delicious piece of fruit I've ever had. (This reminds me to inform you of an unspoken rule for this blog: I'm not going to count purchases I was going to make anyway.) So, while at the store, I wondered what "advertisements" I would have to buy. There's a hundred thousand little advertisements at the store, but really only one is a "promotion/forceful advertisement of sorts," and that's the marquee at the front of the store highlighting the sale items. (On a side note, I would also consider taste-test items at Costco in the same category). The handwritten sign at the premium Zupans store read: "Kabobs $4.99/lb... Honey Crisp Apples $2.99/lb... Shrimp Meat $4.99/lb..." I think it was of pure coincidence that all of the advertised items were "per pound" items. I bought all three. But how much? I would say that as I general rule I will purchase one person's worth; one serving worth of Honey Crisp Apples, etc. Spending almost $5 just on fruit, I went back to my office.

Believe it or not, I didn't really tally anything up while working. Even online; I didn't click on every ad that came up (but if you, loyal audience feel that I should, then I will) since my rules are to only buy relevant stuff. The only money spent was $1 on Facebook as part of a donation-matching program for the Boys and Girls Club. Then another $5 went to a pop up that claimed it could "drive more traffic to my website." It was for some trial membership, when next month the price raises from $5 to $70. Facebook and Myspace have recently lead an ad revolution because of their targeted markets. If a small business owner, or Nike or anyone, wanted to advertise only to moms, who are over age 28, who live in California... they could easily do so. In fact, Facebook is under some heat right now because of a controversial privacy update that left many of it's users over exposed. You can't blame them: the more information they know about you, the more you can be advertised to.

Due to the nature of the rest of my day, I wasn't really exposed to any other advertisements. I was on YouTube listening to music and a few live songs from last night's Grammys when an ad popped up for a dance music compilation CD. It read "Download on iTunes for $7.99." Since I own similar CDs, I figured my new rules dictated that I just had to buy this item.

Being one of the last people to arrive at the office today, I was the last person to leave. It was late and I was starving so I thought, "Hey self, Monday sucks, let's go have a $1 double cheeseburger." Burger King had bigger plans for me. I had barely pulled into the drive thru when I saw the first advertisement. It was for one of those gourmet "real meat" burgers. The signed suggested I add bacon for the random price of $1.10. This brought my total to $6.09. I am going to count this purchase, because the gourmet burger is not what I intended to buy. I wanted only one of the $1 double cheeseburgers, but due to the amazing ad efforts (and sign placement) of Burger King, I was upsold five bucks. I ate the burger along with a homemade spinach salad and glass of milk, watched the finale of For the Love of Ray J with Marie, and now I'm going to bed.

Today's total: $595.04

Running month total: $595.04
(p.s. don't get on my ass about the math being exact, I'm an art major)

So today's post was a little stream-of-consciousness, sorry.... I have to explain myself as I go along sometimes. Your homework for this post is to help me finish my list of rules. What are some of your proposed rules for how I determine whether or not I should purchase an advertised item or service?