At a cost of around $100,000 per
second, ad slots during American football’s Super Bowl are arguably
the most expensive in the ad industry. One US financial services
company, brokerage E*Trade, buoyed by the success of past Super
Bowl ads, dug deep in the hope of repeating the trick, reports
Douglas Blakey.

The biggest advertising event of the year in the US
– American football’s end-of-season showcase, the Super Bowl – has
again formed the centrepiece of an ad campaign from leading US
retail brokerage, E*Trade.

Despite the troubled economic climate, Super
Bowl advertisers paid around $3 million each for a 30 second slot
in a bid to reach an estimated US television audience of 95
million. In total, broadcaster NBC netted around $206 million in
total, with all ad spots selling out.

For E*Trade’s chief marketing officer,
Nicholas Utton, the decision to allocate marketing dollars to Super
Bowl for a third time was vindicated by the success of its
participation last year. “We saw a 32 percent increase in newly
opened and funded brokerage accounts during the week following the
2008 Super Bowl compared to the week following the 2007 game,” he
told RBI.

Online, the firm’s complementary viral
campaign was also deemed a major hit, with over five million
viewings of the E*Trade ad and a similar number of online searches
for the ad being recorded. As for company searches, Utton said
searches for ‘E*Trade’ increased by 1,000 percent between the hour
before and the hour after the 2008 game.

The firm’s 2009 ad creative again featured the
E*Trade ‘Talking Baby’ (see image) which generated much media
industry comment, the majority of it positive, following its debut
last year. The idea of generating humour from a baby playing at a
computer making stock trades is a risky marketing trick to pull off
but E*Trade‘s creative agency, Grey New York, a subsidiary of WPP,
is widely regarded to have had another hit this year.

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YouTube‘s Brand Channel

In particular, Utton is proud of the
buzz generated by the star of the advert, with over two million
views of the outtakes video showing footage of the baby that failed
to make the cut for the final commercial on YouTube’s Brand Channel
and a consumer rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Last year’s campaign was also the most viewed
Super Bowl ad as measured by TiVo, the device which measures the
popularity of an ad based on viewers who rewind and watch the ad.
In addition, social media tracker Collective Intellect said
E*Trade’s ads produced the most positive social media sentiment of
any game advertiser.

“It also got many mentions on top TV shows
such as Jay Leno, David Letterman, Saturday Night Live and the
Today show as well as hundreds of spoof ads being uploaded on
YouTube,” he added.

Utton is, however, at pains to stress that its
2009 ad campaign is about more than just a 30 second slot during
the Super Bowl. A major viral push incorporates popular social
networking sites Facebook, Twitter and YouTube; it also launched a
pre-Super Bowl teaser ad on YouTube and in cinemas to flag-up the
ad slot during the game.

“Our integrated campaign is designed to
generate considerable return on investment before and following
Super Bowl,” he stressed. The campaign also includes traditional
marketing, with print ads running in a number of newspapers
including The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and USA
Today.

As for the suggestion that expensive ad
campaigns in the current climate are a gamble, Utton is vehement
the opposite is the case.

“History repeatedly has shown that those who
continue to make smart marketing investments when economic times
are uncertain are best positioned for success when the economy
rebounds.”

Results

Losses narrow, retail
accounts hit 4.5 million

E*Trade posted a full-year net loss
of $512 million on total revenue of $1.9 billion compared to a net
loss of $1.4 billion in 2007.

For the fourth quarter, the loss narrowed from
$1.7 billion a year earlier to $276 million in 2008, despite $513
million of extra provisions to cover losses mainly in the firm’s
portfolios of mortgages and home-equity loans. The company said
that it now has a total of $1.1 billion set aside to cover loan
losses.

At the end of the year, the firm reported Tier
1 and risk-based capital ratios of 6.29 percent and 12.9 percent
respectively and said that its application for an investment from
the US Treasury Department’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)
remains under review.

Total delinquent loans jumped 92 percent, to
$1.98 billion from $1.03 billion a year ago.

Highlights included a record number of retail
accounts at 4.5 million in the fourth quarter, adding 246,000 net
new accounts year-on-year, with net inflows of $5.4 billion
compared with a year ago.

“In 2008 we took aggressive steps to stabilise
and return the retail franchise to growth,” said Donald Layton,
chairman and CEO.

Performance

E*Trade – key
indicators

 

2008 ($bn)

2007 ($bn)

% change

Net interest income

1.27

1.58

-19.6

Commission income

0.51

0.66

-22.7

Total non-interest income

0.66

-1.42

n/m

Total net revenue

1.93

0.26

642.0

Provision for loan losses

1.58

0.64

146.8

Total assets

48.53

56.84

-14.6

Net profit/loss

-0.51

-1.44

64.5

Source: E*Trade