Hoping to see the same kind of boost in website traffic that it did last year, Century 21 Real Estate is creating four separate ads as part of its second consecutive Super Bowl XLVII TV ad campaign.
Last year’s Super Bowl campaign on NBC — the first by a residential real estate company in 21 years — included three separate 30-second spots depicting Century 21 agents besting real estate mogul Donald Trump, NFL Hall of Famer Deion Sanders, and U.S. Olympic speed-skating gold medalist Apolo Ohno.
This year’s Super Bowl ad will continue the “Smarter, Bolder, Faster” theme developed in conjunction with the franchisor’s 40-year anniversary in 2011, said Century 21 chief marketing officer Bev Thorne, who was in Los Angeles overseeing their production.
Directed by the prolific Greg Popp and coordinated by advertising agency Red Tettemer and Partners, the ads will highlight the skill and savvy of Century 21 agents in four Los Angeles locations: a church, a mini-mart, a college campus and a subway.
In this year’s spots, Century 21 agents will be the celebrities, Thorne said. The ads will have a fun, ironic feel, she said, and carry the theme “There’s a Century 21 agent in the house.”
One 30-second ad will air during the game, Thorne said. The other three will air during the pre-game show, which Century 21 will sponsor one hour of. The pre-game ad details are still being worked out, she said.
 Bev Thorne |
Super Bowl ads don’t come cheap. According to Ad Age, sponsors paid an average of $3.7 million to $3.8 million for 30 seconds of air time during this year’s game. That doesn’t include the cost of producing the ads themselves.
Thorne said Century 21, a subsidiary of real estate giant Realogy Holdings Corp., is returning to the big game because the firm saw such a great jump in website traffic — up 40 percent year-over-year. More than 100 million TV viewers tuned into Super Bowl XLVI, and the company attributes a significant part of its growth in website traffic to last year’s Super Bowl ad campaign.
The return also represents Century 21’s optimism about housing markets in advance of the 2013 spring buying season. “It’s a strong vote of support for the industry,” Thorne said.
Photo from the Century 21 mini-mart Super Bowl ad set.
As was the case last year, Century 21’s ad will air during the third quarter. But the timing will be a little different, Thorne said, reflecting expectations that the game may be not be as closely contested.
Last year, Century 21 chose to run its spot toward the end of the third quarter, thinking that the game would be close and that viewers would stay tuned in as the game built momentum to the fourth quarter.
“Our positioning was fabulous,” Thorne said of Super Bowl XLVI, in which the New York Giants scored the game-winning touchdown against the New England Patriots with just 57 seconds left to play.
This year, Thorne and Century 21 are thinking the game will be more of a blowout. They’ve positioned the ad to run during the first commercial break coming out of halftime. Even if it’s not a compelling game, Thorne said, viewers will be checking in to see if there’s a shift in momentum when the second half kicks off.
Century 21’s decision to run ads during the Super Bowl represented a dramatic shift in strategy. After suspending national TV advertising in 2009, in 2011, the company announced its re-entry into the TV market, releasing its Super Bowl XLVI ad plans.
In addition to the Super Bowl TV ads, in 2012 Century 21 sponsored U.S. Soccer, ran TV ads during last summer’s Olympics, launched an Internet radio ad campaign on Pandora and ran a Facebook-based gaming ad campaign.
Another Realogy franchisor, Coldwell Banker Real Estate, recently announced a “Blue Carpet” TV ad campaign in conjunction with movie, TV and music awards shows.
