- In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady talks to Wieden + Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur about why companies still drop huge sums on the big game.
- The big story: Trump’s unrelenting purge of federal employees.
- The markets: All is calm as we await the jobs report.
- Analyst notes from Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest, JP Morgan, Convera, and Goldman Sachs.
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. This is the last business day before Super Bowl LIX, though any game where Americans are expected to bet $1.39 billion on the outcome (including the color of Gatorade splashed on the winning coach) is arguably a “business day,” too. While many will tune in to watch the Kansas City Chiefs take on the Philadelphia Eagles, plenty of us will be there for the commercials.
While there are naysayers that argue spending $8 million-plus on an ad is “about as smart as pinning your retirement on a scratch-off win,” the ad is typically the high point of a much longer branding campaign. My favorite last year was the DoorDash-All-The-Ads, which promised one winner every item advertised during that game, from a BMW electric car to a 30-pound bucket of mayonnaise. It made you aware that DoorDash delivered more than just food, roused our crowd from a Tostinos-induced stupor to copy the code down, and was part of a longer campaign.
I spoke with Neal Arthur, CEO of Wieden + Kennedy, which created the DoorDash ad, as well as this year’s version which will feature comedian Nate Bargatze as a profligate big spender. He says that branding has expanded far beyond ads to include “everything in a company's actions, operations, anything that makes up the business, anything that a consumer has access to and can see.”
The goal, he says, is not so much to put something out there that makes people laugh but to “really prove who you are as a company, and what you believe in.” And with prices in the millions, Super Bowl advertising is not just a CMO showcase. “You sit down with the CEO, not just the CMO, and you figure out, what's our objective? … How do I use the Super Bowl to further my agenda as a company?”
That also points to the shift in advertising agencies themselves. Arthur says his team is creating events, writing CEO speeches, managing social posts, and more. “Most of our clients understand the value of having a creative look from somebody who understands their brand's voice, the entirety of the way their brand shows up.”
That said, nobody hires Nate Bargatze if they don’t want to entertain the gameday crowd. “There’s definitely a desire to shift back towards more humor and levity,” says Arthur. “But the amount that we talk about advertising is going down and the amount we’re talking about brand is going up massively.”
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Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady, diane.brady@fortune.com, LinkedIn.
