Cost of 30-second commercial: $103,000
Adjusted for inflation: $512,958
Teams: Miami Dolphins vs. Minnesota Vikings
Network: CBS
Announcers: Ray Scott, Pat Summerall and Bart Starr
Nielsen ratings: 41.6
Market share: 73
Bottom line: The 1974 Super Bowl was the first time a 30-second ad spot broke the $100,000 mark. It was expensive then, but people would kill for it now.
In the 1960s, Master Lock debuted an ad wherein a man with a handgun takes aim at and fires a bullet into one of its locks. The lock remains closed. But when they released it, people didn’t believe it was real, and Master Lock shootings dramatically increased.
“People didn’t believe it, so they’d take a padlock and shoot at it and send in the lock,” former Master Lock advertising director Edson F. Allen told the Milwaukee Journal. “Master Lock looked at the locks, which had wadding from the shells stuck in the laminations, and realized that people walking up to locks and shooting at them was very dangerous.”
They pulled the ad from the airwaves but later retooled the ad for the 1974 Super Bowl. Instead of a handgun, they used a sharpshooter who positioned himself farther away.
Watch the Master Lock commercial.
