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A show twice as big as the Super Bowl is spinning off into the U.S., but what can marketers learn from their European colleagues who have struggled to make the most of it for decades?
The American Song Contest is coming to NBC in the Spring, but while it is a new show for American shores it’s actually building on more than 60 years of heritage from the other side of the Atlantic. Here’s everything marketers need to know about the format inspired by the annual singing extravaganza—the Eurovision Song Contest.
What is the show/contest about?
Founded in 1956, it is a singing competition made up of qualifying rounds, semi-finals and a grand final where each entry represents a country. The songs have to be original and released first for the competition.
Back in that first edition, a mere seven countries performed. Fast forward to 2022 and 41 countries have signed up to compete.
The winner is decided by each competing country awarding points to their favorite other songs (currently decided 50:50 by a public vote and a professional jury). During the final, each country reads out its points in turn, awarding their chosen countries eight points, then 10 points and a final 12 points to the favorite entry. A range of glamorous spokespeople read out the points in a process that is often more tense and exciting than the show itself.
With a range of eclectic entries, it’s worth saying that the show is a performance contest—you have to sing live and to stand out amongst such a crowd, you need to bring mind-blowing staging and choreography with you. Previous winners have included a death metal band dressed as monsters and some of the most eye-opening dance routines and props you can imagine.
When Conchita Wurst won for Austria with her powerful Bond-esque anthem, she was also notable for being a bearded drag queen, and one that took some global fame on the back of the show.
How seriously is it taken as a competition?
The Eurovision Song Contest is huge with 180 million live viewers in 2021, making it roughly twice the size of the Super Bowl. That’s before you add in the more than 50 million people who watched the contest on YouTube that week.
Attitudes do vary considerably across the continent but for the majority of countries it is a big deal to enter and a huge deal to win. The latter is especially important because the winner gets to host the event the following year. Countries like Ukraine and Azerbaijan have used wins as an opportunity to try to put their countries on the cultural map.
For a whole slew of reasons, not least the strong inclusion message throughout—and, frankly, the wonderful campiness of the whole thing—the show has proven particularly popular with the LGBTQ+ community, and it’s amongst the gay bars and clubs that you’ll often find the biggest celebrations of the evening.
Has anyone famous won?
There are a couple of notable winners that you might have heard of. ABBA is, without doubt, the most celebrated Eurovision winner of all time, but a certain chanteuse named Celine Dion first found fame winning the contest for Switzerland in 1988. You don’t really need any actual connection with the country you represent as long as they’ll have you. The U.K.’s last win in 1997 was thanks to Canadian soft rock band Katrina and the Waves and just this year Flo Rida took part supporting the San Marino entry.
While recent winners certainly haven’t been guaranteed global success, the 2021 champions Måneskin are breaking that mold a little. With some help from TikTok they’ve had a global smash, warmed up for the Rolling Stones and appeared on Ellen and late night TV shows. Previous winner Duncan Lawrence’s song “Arcade” has also been a slow-burning success, reaching the top 40 of the Billboard charts two years after he won (2020 was the first time in over 60 years where there was no formal contest and no winner).
With NBC’s format building in more qualifiers and a longer run, it should create more opportunities for marketers to activate.
Jerry Daykin, Eurivision fan and Senior Media Director, EMEA for GSK Consumer Healthcare Marketing
In many fans’ opinion the greatest winner, certainly of recent years, is the song “Euphoria” by Loreen which won for Sweden in 2012. Look it up—it’s also worth logging onto Netflix and watching their Will Ferrel-starring Fire Saga movie set around the contest.
And what about for marketers?
Despite its Super Bowl-dwarfing scale, the show is certainly not the equivalent European marketing moment. In fact, it’s not on many marketer’s radars at all. That said there have been some notable executions by brands such as Weller and Booking.com which have leveraged the event and content around it, and even brought it into stores with tickets as prizes and incentives.
The huge audience is of course split across dozens of countries, and unlike U.S. states, there are likely to be different brand teams or even brands in each. Even global brands which could benefit hugely from the show have struggled in the past to get the alignment around sponsorship, creative approaches and more.
In the U.K., the show airs on the BBC which is a non-commercial advertising station and suffers also with the show’s slightly mixed reputation as being “uncool” despite being unquestionably popular. This has biased a lot of media planning and decision making, and of course, London remains a regional hub for many of the brands that, biases aside, would otherwise be jumping on the show.
There is also the challenge that the European version really is for one night only each year. There’s a core group of super fans who watch with fascination as each country selects its entries for months in advance, sometimes through elaborate public selection processes. There’s also a small faction that watches the two mid-week semi-finals, but most people just think about the show for the big Saturday night event.
With NBC’s format building in more qualifiers and a longer run, it should create more opportunities for marketers to activate.
Could it actually be bigger than the Super Bowl?
Will it be bigger than the Super Bowl? No, of course not. Eurovision broadcasts in markets where, in total, the best part of 1 billion people live. A proportionally equal success might see 60 million people tuning in to the show.
Even at its most culturally relevant peak American Idol managed 38.1 million viewers for a final, while the Super Bowl itself did 100 million more that same year. The more recent series of Idol has dropped to as low as 10 million viewers for a final, and The Voice is lucky to get close to that most episodes. If the show can get anywhere close to capturing the excitement across America as Idol once did, it will regardless be a shot in the arm for advertisers looking for key event television moments to pull in light viewers and build an activation around.
