Music Wins Big at the SuperBowl

By Susan Visakowitz

"As buzz and engagement goes, music is inseparable from the Super Bowl," says Pete Blackshaw, Nielsen Online's executive vice president of strategic services. And accordingly, music promises to be a very theme of Super Bowl XLII, which airs Feb. 3 on Fox.

Blackshaw notes that Pepsi and Amazon are teaming up for a hotly anticipated ad promoting Amazon's digital music download service. Doritos, building on a user-generated campaign from Super Bowl XLI, is using a "Battle of the Bands" competition to determine its XLII creative. And then, of course, there's the halftime show starring Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers.

Music has always been an important element of the Big Game, but performances by chart-topping superstars became de rigeur after 1991, when the then-irrepressible New Kids on the Block performed in the Super Bowl XXV halftime show. Prior to that, many halftime shows still revolved around marching bands and dance squads.

Although the New Kids' performance pre-dated the Nielsen SoundScan era, an examination of the immediate effect of halftime-show appearances on record sales since then reveals that music and the Super Bowl make a fine pair. All halftime performers since 1992 have seen week-over-week sales increases following the broadcast. Better yet, only once since 2002 has a halftime performer seen less than a 20% bump for either a current project or key catalog title, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

But there's more to music and the Super Bowl than halftime. For at least a decade, the commercial spots that air during the game have garnered as much attention from the media and viewers as the action on the field, and advertisers have often called upon the brand power of well-known musical acts to capitalize on all those eyeballs (and ears).

"Celebrity musicians, from Diddy to Britney Spears, have always been woven into Super Bowl ads," Blackshaw says. "And with the Pepsi-Amazon promotion that is coming, you can expect to see it taken to a whole new level this year."

Pepsi has regularly made use of well-known songs and artists in its Super Bowl ads. In 2004, two memorable Pepsi spots revolved around music: one, set to the strains of "Purple Haze," imagined a young, Pepsi-drinking Jimi Hendrix discovering the guitar, while another, a Pepsi-iTunes joint promotion, strategically employed a Green Day cover of the 1959 classic "I Fought the Law."

But this year, Pepsi goes one up on itself: the company has joined forces with Amazon to give away as many as 1 billion free songs thorough the latter company's download service. The promotion will be unveiled via a Super Bowl ad starring multi-platinum singer Justin Timberlake.  

Blackshaw thinks the spot will generate huge buzz due to the sheer size of the giveaway, as well as Timberlake's involvement in 2004's  infamous "Nipplegate" halftime incident with Janet Jackson. Blackshaw also thinks the ad will "fuel speculation about other players in the digital music space and whether all music will become DRM [digital rights management]-free."

Thanks to its consumer-generated approach, the Doritos "Battle of the Bands" spot is also likely to raise many eyebrows. The company first solicited videos of unsigned artists performing original songs. Singer Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas helped executives from Universal Music Group and Doritos whittle the entries down to 10 semifinalists. The voting was then turned over to consumers via the "Battle of the Bands"  MySpace page. The winner of the competition will be awarded both a Super Bowl ad and a recording contract with Interscope.

Beyond halftime shows and commercials, the Super Bowl provides artists with several other opportunities for impressive exposure: official pre-game shows, the singing of the National Anthem and even week-of concert events done in partnership with the NFL—like the Pepsi Smash Super Bowl Bash—all find musicians at the center of the action.

Big Entertainment owner Kerry Hansen, who manages Wynonna Judd, says the 2002 pre-game show Judd participated in was a "remarkable experience" and no less significant than her 1994 halftime appearance.

"It was special because it was just after 9/11," Hansen says. "The security was heavy and it was a pretty intense atmosphere, but it was also just what people needed. It was so uplifting and positive."

Judd performed "Let Freedom Ring" with Patti Labelle, James Ingram, Yolanda Adams and Barry Manilow, and Hansen points out that it was an opportunity for fans of other genres to discover Judd's voice.

"To have that mix of artists come together in that kind of event," she continues, "that's something only the Super Bowl would do."    

Hansen adds that "if you consider all your other opportunities to get your artists out there, nothing beats the Super Bowl. 'Grey's Anatmony' might draw an audience of 17 million, the Grammys might get 20 million, but the Super Bowl brings 90 million viewers in the U.S. alone. You're practically tripling the audience you can get elsewhere. And the diversity of that audience is unbeatable."

"Music is really woven into the tapestry of the event now," Blackshaw concludes. "It's part and parcel of the Super Bowl experience."