Superbowl Ad Teaser from Victorias Secret

Turn off the sound

At first blush, it seems a bit odd for a women's underwear company to run superbowl ads, but a recent Nielsen "Guide to the Super Bowl" Press Release tells us that

" Approximately 36.4 million women over the age of 18 watched the 2007 Super Bowl"

And while the statistics in this data rich "Guide" fail to discuss the number of Giants fans that are women, it does enlighten us with the interesting stat that

"Forty-three percent of Boston's Patriot fans are women (Source: Scarborough Sports Marketing)"

Does that mean that the "Pats" are less manly than the Giants?

And according to Mediapost in an article titledAds Target Superbowls Female Fans they suggest:

Victoria's Secret--which has been missing on Game Day since 1999--is back this year, using the game to kick off its big Valentine's Day marketing effort. Procter & Gamble has bought a spot for Tide to Go, a stain remover. And Unilever will use the game to showcase a spot for Sunsilk, a hair-care product aimed at young women.

While an estimated 100 Million viewers will be watching the Superbowl game on Sunday February 3rd on Fox, among those networks which specifically target women viewers there are some targeting those women who sneak off to the extra television in the spare bedroom to watch other things while the big game is on in the living room. Oxygen cable network will run a promo for it's planned Deion Sanders reality show and according to an article on Broadcast and Cable. That article also states:

Oxygen’s not alone in trying to draw females during the game. Lifetime Television last week announced plans to run original movies on both the main channel and Lifetime Movie Network in a stunt labeled "Football-Free Movie Extravaganza." And Animal Planet slated its fourth-annual "Puppy Bowl," a marathon of dog shows.

So what are we to conclude from the Victorias Secret "Teaser" ad found on YouTube? Are those Andriana Lima "Come Hither" gestures and the bedroom eyes meant for the men or women as we reach eight days and 8 hours Count down to Superbowl 42?

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VS is reaching for the Valentines Day market of men shopping Victorias Secret stores to buy the latest in lingerie for their lovers. Though I've often wondered what percentage of sales of VS and similar sexy nighties are purchased by men. When men do make those purchases, how often do they properly fit the women they were purchased for? How many are returned by women for things they'd prefer to actually wear, rather than provocative items meant to be hurriedly removed by the men who purchased them?

Do the Super Bowl Ads that cost an estimated $3 Million for 30 seconds pay off in sales? Well another interesting statistic from that Nielsen "Guide to the Super Bowl" suggests that one element of the advertising pays off handsomely for those Advertisers:

Super Bowl 2007 advertisers saw a collective 50% increase in Web traffic the day after the big game, from 8.5 million unique visitors on Super Bowl Sunday to 12.7 million unique visitors on Monday.

While it has an apparently measurable effect on web traffic for superbowl advertisers, few seem to take advantage of that fact by encouraging viewers to visit their web sites in those Super Bowl Ads. As MarketWatch tells us in coverage of the VS ads, Victorias Secret suffered a web site crash in their last Superbowl ad attempt, when over a million viewers left their television to log on to the Victorias Secret Web site. We'll see how marketers do this year in those ads to encourage web traffic.

Meanwhile, here's a sort of antidote to the softer side of advertising - (which won't be running during the SB) where snack food maker "Combos" shows us what life might be like "If your mom were a man" - a rather disturbing thought.