Why many Super Bowl ads aren’t so super

If you’ve been trolling the web and browsing through retail circulars looking for an amazing “Super Bowl” deal on an HDTV only to find the pickings slimmer than Nicole Richie after a three-day fast, we have another suggestion: Try substituting the term “The Big Game” for “The Super Bowl” in your search engine. Get a bit more action? That’s because retail ads and promotions can’t legally use the phrases “Super Bowl” — or even “Super Sunday” — unless the companies have paid big bucks (really big bucks) to the NFL, which owns the trademarks to the two terms. (Fortunately, exceptions are made for news organizations like Consumer Reports, or this article would have a different headline.)

It isn’t surprising that the NFL vigorously tracks down violations: Organizations that don’t aggressively act to protect their trademarks can lose them (just ask the makers of aspirin, escalators, or yo-yos, all trademarks that became generics due to common usage). As a result, TV retailers have to be very creative about advertising Super Bowl specials without using the words “Super” and “Bowl” together in the same sentence. That’s why over the next few weeks you’ll see numerous ads announcing “super” sales in time for “The Big Game,” or perhaps even “The Mash-Up in Miami,” but surprisingly very few that tout “Super Bowl” specials.

This year, however, there’s an interesting wrinkle: Samsung, a major supplier of high-def TVs, has paid the NFL for the right to be called “the official HDTV of the NFL.” As such, Samsung can use the term “Super Bowl,” as well as the Super Bowl XLI and NFL logos, in its advertising and commercials (not to mention the NFL-themed Samsung Web site pictured above). And that has given retailers that carry Samsung TVs some creative leeway. For example, as we began tracking Super Bowl-related HDTV promotions, we noticed that several major retailers were using the term “Super Bowl” and the Super Bowl XLI logo in Sunday circular ads, despite the NFL’s restrictive trademark policy.

Sure enough, closer inspection revealed that all references to the Super Bowl were on ad pages that featured Samsung TVs. Circuit City, for example, is offering “the Super Bowl of savings” on select Samsung DLP TVs. Best Buy leverages the Samsung-NFL connection even more prominently, festooning its circular’s front page — featuring big-screen Samsung LCD and plasma HDTVs — with large Super Bowl XLI and NFL logos, a tactic one wag inside the company called “Super Bowl advertising by Samsung proxy.” On those pages without Samsung TVs, the two retailers referred only to “the big game.” But Best Buy may be missing out on yet another trick: An ad inside the same Circuit City flyer explicitly guaranteed installation of DirecTV “before the Super Bowl.” Best Buy’s DirecTV ad only promised installation “before the big game.” We’re assuming that DirecTV’s partnership for its NFL Super Fan programming package is behind the Circuit City Super Bowl promotion. To keep things interesting, we pointed this out to a Best Buy spokeswoman. It’ll be interesting to see what future Best Buy circulars are advertising.

— James K. Willcox