PEOPLE who plan to watch Super Bowl XLV on Fox on Feb. 6 are likely to be, to borrow a word from the gossipmonger Walter Winchell, infanticipating. When Winchell coined the word, he meant that a couple was expecting a baby. In 2011, it means that potential Super Bowl viewers are expecting to see — in addition to a football game — a batch of busy, glossy new commercials infused with time-tested entertainment elements like celebrities, animals, attractive young women and yes, babies.
Critics deride such content as corny or predictable. AdAge.com, the Web site of the trade publication Advertising Age, mocked conventions of Super Bowl advertising on Thursday by asking readers to “vote for your favorite Super Bowl simian spot” among eight choices.
But commercials that are replete with mainstays or memes are meant to appeal to the mass audience that tunes in each year for the Super Bowl. Last year, 106.5 million people watched the game, according to Nielsen, setting a record for viewership for an American television program.
“I’ve seen the estimates” for Super Bowl XLV, said Nick Utton, chief marketing officer at the New York office of the E*Trade Financial Group, “and 110 million is very definitely within reach.”
So it is not surprising that E*Trade, which has featured “talking” babies in its Super Bowl spots for the last three years, will bring the characters back again.
“We don’t presuppose each year we’ll be in the following year’s Super Bowl,” Mr. Utton said, because the expense and scrutiny mean “it’s not for the faint of heart.”
Still, the game is “the only event of the year where advertising is not the uninvited guest,” he added, and when “commercials come on, people stop talking.”
E*Trade intends to run one commercial in the third quarter of the game and another immediately after the game ends. Plans also call for a baby to “talk” with Fox Sports during a segment of the pregame show.
The commercials are part of an elaborate campaign that also includes social media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube; commercials in movie theaters; and a redesigned version of BabyMail, an e-mail service introduced last year.
E*Trade and its agency, Grey New York, are deciding between two commercials for the two slots. One spot features a baby who does well enough investing through Etrade.com that he can afford a tailor — and the tailor is not doing too badly, either.
The other spot presents “a very educated baby,” Mr. Utton said, “discussing the merits of E*Trade” with a character that he declined to identify until next week, when the cat may be let out of the bag.
The baby was introduced for the 2008 Super Bowl to illustrate that using Etrade.com is “so easy, a baby can do it,” Mr. Utton said, and for Year Four the message is “that we empower investors through technology, so they can take control.”
Mr. Utton acknowledged “there are skeptics out there” who question the value of commercials with familiar elements like babies, animals or scantily-clad celebrities.
As a result, “we want our baby to grow,” he added, “not physically, but metaphorically.”
Tor Myhren, president and chief creative officer at Grey New York, said he, too, has “heard the argument” against the tried and true in Super Bowl advertising.
“With the baby, we created a celebrity,” Mr. Myhren said, rather than borrowing the fame “from someone else.”
“As long as everyone says ‘the E*Trade baby,’ I know we’re doing our job,” he added. Grey New York is part of the Grey unit of the Grey Group, owned by WPP.
Fox, part of the News Corporation, has sold all the available commercial time during Super Bowl XLV for an estimated $2.8 million to $3 million for each 30 seconds.
Demand was stronger than usual, reflecting the recovery of the ad market along with the record ratings last year.
Among the brands and companies to appear in the game, in addition to E*Trade, are Anheuser-Busch InBev, Audi, Best Buy, BMW, Bridgestone, CareerBuilder, CarMax, Chrysler, Coca-Cola, General Motors, GoDaddy.com, HomeAway, Hyundai, Kia, Mars, Mercedes-Benz, PepsiCo, Pizza Hut, Skechers, Teleflora and Volkswagen.
Several advertisers are buying more than one spot. BMW, for instance, will run two, for models that include the new X3 compact sport utility.
The Anheuser-Busch division of Anheuser-Busch InBev will run five spots for three beer brands: Bud Light, Budweiser and a Super Bowl rookie, Stella Artois.
Two agencies — DDB Worldwide, which is part of the Omnicom Group, and Cannonball in St. Louis — are creating three 30-second commercials for Bud Light.
A 60-second spot for Budweiser, part of a new campaign that carries the theme “Grab some Buds,” is being created by a New York agency named Anomaly.
And a 60-second spot for Stella Artois is being created by the London and New York offices of Mother.
Anheuser-Busch is well-known for Super Bowl commercials that use mainstay creative content like animals and celebrities.
This time around, the commercial for the Budweiser brand “may be doing things a little bit of a different way,” said David Peacock, president at Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis, because the “Grab some Buds” campaign is “driving reappraisal” — that is, it seeks to get consumers who do not usually drink Budweiser to reconsider the brand.
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