Many marketers could learn a lot from The National Football League. Over the past forty years the professional football league has created an unofficial winter holiday for marketers. The Super Bowl is an event that tens of millions of Americans look forward to, a date in between Martin Luther King Day and President’s Day. Even in a today’s multichannel environment, a typical Super Bowl game will average a household rating of over 40 (or 40% of all TV sets watching the game) and attract around 90 million viewers.

Before cable came along, you could count on several shows that would average a 40 rating each year. They include the Academy Awards and the Miss America Pageant. Even regular episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies produced a 40 rating regularly. The last non-Super Bowl program to average a 40 household rating was the final episode of Seinfeld over ten years ago. By comparison, 36 of the past 37 Super Bowls attained a household rating in excess of 40.

One of the reasons why The Super Bowl is an anomaly is that it will deliver a huge viewing audience regardless of what network is broadcasting the game, the teams involved, what the other networks are programming (which is typically not much) or whether the game is nail biter (like last year’s game) or a blowout. The Super Bowl is a mass marketer’s dream, reaching 90 million consumers with only one ad. To embellish the strength of Super Bowl, consider this; The Super Bowl is, by a wide margin, the highest rated kids and teens program on television each year. For a football game, it has an enormous appeal with women; for last year’s game, 45% of the audience was women. While the Academy Awards has been called “The Super Bowl for Women”, it’s not even close when compared to The Super Bowl. Last years’ Oscars (the least watched in 39 years) attracted 32 million total viewers. By comparison, The Super Bowl last year had 37.7 million women viewers.

Since The Super Bowl is such a big event, many households are inclined to have parties with families and friends watching the big game together. This unusually large “co-viewership” is an inviting target for beer, soft drink, snack foods and movie studio advertisers. When people are together at a party they can be drinking, munching or discussing movies. Another anomaly about The Super Bowl is that viewers actually look forward to the ads, even in this era of DVR’s. Although the ads are much anticipated and talked about the next day, in most instances they are soon forgotten by viewers, even if they do cost millions of dollars in ad time. Consumers are bombarded by ads all the time.

Many sponsors are using the Internet as part of their Super Bowl buy. Last year, 70% of Super Bowl sponsors, used paid search as part of their Super Bowl marketing strategy. Audi reported that they were the most searched item on Google immediately after their ad ran in last year’s big game. This year, as new marketing opportunities become more mainstream, Super Bowl sponsors are creating multi-platform messages with cell phones or social networks.

Despite the current economic climate in which such long time sponsors as Fed Ex and General Motors have backed out, NBC has been able to sign on many sponsors at the three million price tag led by the aforementioned beer, soft drinks, movie studios. The most anticipated ad will be the 3-D from DreamWorks and Pepsico. Not to be outdone, Coca-Cola will bring an ad with an avatar and an updated version of the classic Coke ad with Mean Joe Greene. Clearly, the cola wars are returning in a high tech 21st century world.

As television continues to fractionalize and many other popular TV shows continue to suffer from audience erosion such as The Academy Awards and even the mighty American Idol, the value of the Super Bowl as a mass marketing, DVR-proof, multi media strategy will only become more enhanced.

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