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Whether you’re tuning into this year’s Super Bowl for the spectacle of a promising Chief-49ers showdown; to re-live the noughties by tuning into Usher’s halftime show; or to check on the bizarre conspiracy theory surrounding football player Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift, your viewing will be interrupted by the infamous Super Sunday ads.
Historically, these adverts have been well received. Studies have previously found close to half of Super Bowl viewers tune in to watch the commercial rather than the game itself. They’re also the most expensive on-air advertisements around. In 2024, they’re clocking in at an eye-watering $7 million for a 30-second window.
The sheer scale of this investment is enough to have any marketing exec trembling at the knees or any CFO raising their eyebrows. And when you compare the list of brands that have made big bets on Super Bowl ads to the tune of several million dollars with the list of companies who have made substantial layoffs in recent months, it’s enough to leave any people leader scratching their head and fearing the threat of an employer branding crisis.
Flag on the play: Which ad-purchasing brands also made lay-offs?
Firstly, let’s have a quick run through some of the companies confirmed to have purchased million-dollar Super Bowl advertising slots that have also announced lay-offs in the past six months.
1. Anheuser-Busch In-Bev: The beer marketer will run 150 seconds of ads (circa $35 million for those doing the math) across its Budweiser, Bud Light, and Michelob Ultra Brands featuring the likes of Lionel Messi. The parent company announced layoffs to its sales team at the end of January.
2. Etsy: It’s a Super Bowl advert debut for Etsy this year. It laid off 225 workers in December due to stagnating sales.
3. Google: The big tech firm is returning to the Super Bowl this year with an ad that will feature an AI camera tool. The company cut hundreds of engineering jobs at the beginning of 2024 after substantial layoffs in 2023.
4. Paramount Plus: Paramount’s star-studded advert includes the likes of Patrick Stewart and Drew Barrymore. CEO Bob Bakish announced plans for layoffs in February citing a need to “operate as a leaner company and spend less.”
5. Unilever: Hellman and Dove are the two big hitters for Unilever this year with ads on food waste and body positivity. Unilever made job cuts at plants in New York in November and in January announced cuts to marketing teams for brands including Dove.
6. Volkswagen: VW is celebrating 75 years since entering America with an ad beginning a year-long campaign. In November 2023, it laid off 30,000 workers after promising it wouldn’t make lay-offs until 2029.
Plenty of other brands running Super Bowl ads in 2024 made job cuts earlier in 2023 including Verizon, OpenDoor, and Morgan Stanley.
Worth a punt or an employer branding fumble?
Plenty of the ex-employees from the list above who experienced the painful process of losing their job were no doubt frustrated, upset, and angry with their former employer. Those who remain are likely uncertain, insecure, and fearful of further cuts. But does this mean the company shouldn’t then spend mind-boggling amounts on Super Bowl ads?
Well, the Super Bowl ad spots are expensive for a reason. Over 115 million people tuned in to last year’s game and the adverts are always a hot topic for discussion. Nine of the top ten U.S. telecasts of all time are Super Bowls. These slots are highly competitive and understandably are invaluable opportunities to outdo competitors and drive much-needed sales. It’s not realistic to expect a company struggling with tough economic conditions or low revenue to freeze its investment in marketing or brand-building activities.
People costs and marketing spend come from different cost centers and it’s reductive to suggest it’s as simple as a CEO tossing a coin to decide between spending a spare $7 million on avoiding layoffs or a celebrity-packed ad slot.
But it’s inescapable that employees – either those who have been laid off or those who are ‘survivors’ of redundancies – will see their employer gladly dropping a cool multi-million investment on an advert that’s over before a viewer remembers to look up from their plate of buffalo wings and be left with no doubt what’s truly important to the company. In turn, it could pose a threat to the employer brand of such organizations.
If you’re a Paramount Plus employee, for example, uncertain about whether you’ll be in your job this time next month, how do you reconcile the incoming round of lay-offs attributed to the need to “spend less” with the $7 million outlay on a mere 30 seconds of adverts?
It’s not like the ads are a foolproof moneymaker. There are always winners and losers with Super Bowl ads. If the risk doesn’t pay off, was it worth alienating employees who see your company as happy to throw millions of dollars down the drain on advertising, but unwilling to find a route to keeping staff it laid off just weeks prior?
The relationship between workers and corporate America is on a knife-edge. HR leaders should consider the possibility that their employees may perceive this type of behavior as unfair, hypocritical, or even disrespectful. Most employees won’t understand or won’t care about the supposed return on investment of a Super Bowl ad, and could instead see it as a self-indulgent waste of resources that could have been spent on people during a cost of living crisis.
Of course, we might all be so wrapped up in the Kelce-Swift-love-story-turned-Super-Bowl-conspiracy-plot that everyone forgets to pay attention to the misdemeanors of corporate America and HR can rest easy. But it’s certainly something for employer branding and people leaders to mull over whilst Usher brings us back to glory days of R&B in Las Vegas for Super Bowl 58.
