SEE OUR UPDATE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE
Our readers knew that Scientology ad was coming during last night’s Super Bowl, but judging from the reaction at Twitter, most people were shocked when it showed up right after the first half.
We’ve run through thousands of the reactions that hit Twitter right after the ad aired, and we’ve pulled together some of the best. In general, Scientology’s attempt to burnish its image didn’t go over too well!
The ad was a 30-second version of the following 1-minute “Knowledge” spot…
The ad appeared at 8:01 PM Eastern, and this appears to be the first of thousands of Twitter reactions to it…
Some other typical early reactions…
Some realized that the ad wasn’t really very truthful…
Even the pros were stunned…
And these capture many of the reactions as people in New York and LA and the Bay Area and Dallas and a few other markets saw the spot…
Comedian Colin Quinn got into the Atlantic magazine spirit of things…
And finally, one of our favorites…
UPDATE: From the beginning of this process, when we noted several weeks ago that Scientology was telling its members that it had placed an ad in the Super Bowl, we questioned whether that was true. Advertising web sites that closely track who is buying the super-expensive ad time were not listing the church among those who had paid about $3.8 million for a thirty-second spot.
We got an answer to that question when the 30-second version of the “Knowledge” ad ran during the AFC Championship two weeks ago, but only in certain markets — it was not a national ad.
Scientology followed that same plan last night for the Super Bowl, also purchasing regional airtime to broadcast the ad just after the first half. We cautioned that buying local time may not have cost as much as the $3.8 million for a national spot.
Now, Jim Edwards over at the Business Insider confirms that this was a very clever way for the church to leverage its money. By purchasing local ad time in certain markets, Scientology gets some of the exposure of national Super Bowl ads but at a much lower cost. How much lower? Even Edwards doesn’t say, and we’re going to try to find out, but it may be orders of magnitude less. Unfortunately, the Daily Mail went charging ahead with bad information (as it has a tendency to do), so many people are under the impression that Scientology paid $8 million for a 60-second ad, and neither of those things is true.
UPDATE #2: Jefferson Hawkins weighs in, explaining that this ad buy was not about bringing in new members, but motivating Scientology’s big donors, who are constantly hit up for campaigns like this. And Hawkins would know. For years, he oversaw Scientology’s promotional campaigns during the last period it actually was expanding…
It’s all about schmoozing their big donors. You can bet that their fundraising for this was at maximum and their spending on this was the least they could get away with. What would be interesting would be the accounting of how much was taken in for this promotion versus what was actually spent. My guess is that they took in more than they spent and the balance went into their coffers. They literally don’t care whether or not this is effective in bringing new people into the fold, and I say this from years of experience dealing with them and trying to overcome their insular and greedy profit-based attitude (as I chronicled in my book). They don’t want new people. New people are expensive to recruit and indoctrinate — they lose money on it. Where they really make money is on milking the already indoctrinated for as much as they can get, over and over again. That’s where the profit is. So this is really a show for the big donors: “Look at the huge dissemination effort w e are making! Look how big and popular we are!” You can bet they won’t mention this “spot market strategy” to their heavy hitters.
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Posted by Tony Ortega on February 4, 2013 at 09:20
