Fluency: the missing factor in Super Bowl effectiveness

Here’s an easy question. Why do brands advertise at the Super Bowl?

They want to reach the 120 million people who watch it, a unique and incredibly valuable mass audience in an age of fragmentation.

Here’s a more difficult question. Why do they make ads which leave 24 million of those people not knowing who the ad is for?

At System1, we’ve been testing every Super Bowl ad for over a decade. We’ve found that the average Brand Fluency score for Super Bowl ads is 80%. This means that 20% of viewers, on average, couldn’t tell who the brand was after seeing the ad. And that’s an average—for some ads, it’ll be far worse.

Brand Fluency, one of our three key effectiveness measures, is a little different from simple recognition. It covers accuracy but also speed. We know from behavioural science that attention to ads rapidly wanes, so it’s crucial for effectiveness to make an impression quickly with strong branding. Brand Fluency is particularly important for driving short-term sales gains, a critical metric for advertising: as a brand your ideal is to make a big, memorable emotional impact that’s also firmly tied back to your brand.

So why do brands at the Super Bowl - with so much money at stake - lose sight of Fluency and fail to register with a fifth of their audience?

Part of the problem is the unique information environment of a Super Bowl. The biggest audience on TV is also the busiest audience on TV. They’re not just watching the game but chatting, partying, and snacking all through, and that means it’s all too easy for them to miss the small details in your ad. If those small details include your brand - well, that’s an issue.

So when planning your Super Bowl creative, you have to put the brand first. That doesn’t mean you can’t be entertaining or interesting: that’s still a must. But it’s so important to pay even more attention than normal to the presence of the brand in your ad and make sure that nobody can come away without knowing what an ad is for.

The best Super Bowl ads weave the brand so closely into the fabric of the ad it’s impossible to miss.

This year’s best example so far might be Doritos, who has restarted its very successful Crash The Super Bowl campaign in which independent filmmakers get a chance to make the snack brand’s Super Bowl ad. We don’t know which of the three finalists will air on February 9th. But all three of them get exceptional scores on Brand Fluency with recognition at 95% or higher.

The reason is obvious - the ads are 30-second comedy sketches with Doritos chips absolutely central to the storyline and the product and pack on screen continually. In “Abduction”, for instance, a UFO enthusiast is thrilled to finally make contact with aliens. But they don’t want him, just his snacks. By casting the product in the starring role, Doritos still entertain and get laughs from viewers but leave almost nobody in any doubt as to the brand.

You don’t have to go that far to put brand at the heart of your ad, though. If you’ve been wise enough to invest in a brand asset over time, like Budweiser has with its Clydesdale horses, you can take a softer approach and let your distinctive asset do the hard work. While barrels of Bud play an important role in the beer’s Super Bowl ad, its star is a small Clydesdale horse. But Brand Fluency still hits 94%, well above the Super Bowl average.

The lesson is clear. You can entertain viewers, stand out, and still make sure they know who you are.

With something as vital to your marketing as a Super Bowl ad, there’s no excuse not to. Putting Fluency first when planning your creative will ensure that all those millions of viewers don’t just see a brilliant ad; they know it comes from a brilliant brand.