INTU Intuit Inc

By Nathalie Tadena 

Intuit is returning to the Super Bowl this year with a strategy it hopes will help the buzz from the big game stick around for months.

The software company is reviving its "Small Business Big Game" program to give one lucky small business an all-expense-paid, 30-second commercial during Super Bowl 50 produced by ad agency RPA. Intuit first ran the contest for Super Bowl XLVIII in 2014, the company's first appearance in the game broadcast.

"We thought it was a breakthrough idea to do for small businesses what's never been done before," said senior vice president of marketing for Intuit's Small Business Group Ken Wach. "Normally you're looking at Budweiser ads or Chevy ads, so this was about putting small businesses on the national stage and shining the spotlight on them as heroes of the economy."

While Mr. Wach wouldn't disclose the cost of the ad or the overall program, a Super Bowl commercial is no small expense. Advertisers are paying as much as a record $5 million for 30 seconds of airtime during Super Bowl 50, CBS Corp. Chief Executive Leslie Moonves has said. CBS will broadcast the Feb. 7 game. Mr. Wach said Intuit will cover all production and media costs for the winning small business' ad.

By many measures, Intuit's first go at "Small Business Big Game" was a success. The campaign garnered national attention, resulting in 13 billion public relations impressions and a boom in business for the winning small business, GoldieBlox, which makes toys designed to develop young girls' interest in engineering.

"The biggest learning we had coming out of that was that we weren't able to sustain the momentum as much as we would have liked after the program ended," Mr. Wach said. There was a rush of brand awareness and publicity during the "Small Business, Big Game" program, peaking at the Super Bowl and continuing for a few weeks after, he said.

"Two or three months later, it was sort of done and gone," Mr. Wach said.

Intuit went a different route for Super Bowl XLIX this year with a Boston Tea Party-themed spot that promoted the company's TurboTax tax preparation software, rather than QuickBooks, its accounting software for small businesses.

The company took a lot of the money that had been used to fund the "Small Business Big Game" program for Super Bowl XLVIII and invested it into its inaugural QuickBooks Connect conference, which was held in October 2014.

"We skipped a year because again looking back at the first execution, we liked what we saw but didn't feel like we had quite the right formula," Mr. Wach said. "The year off gave us time to test another component of the strategy and refine that a little bit."

This time around, Intuit wanted to develop a more comprehensive campaign around its offerings for small businesses. It relaunched "Small Business Big Game" as part of a larger program that includes integration with its QuickBooks Connect conference. In September, Intuit partnered with OnDeck, a platform for small business loans, to create a $100 million small business lending fund.

To enter this year's contest, small businesses had to join Quickbooks' "Own It" network of small business owners. To help evaluate sustained engagement with small business owners, Intuit will examine how many of the more than 15,000 businesses that entered the "Small Business Big Game" contest are still engaged with Intuit's platforms six to 12 months after the program wraps up, Mr. Wach said. That will be a "huge measure" of the campaign's success, he said.

The contest began in June and was narrowed down to three finalists, based on public voting -- Chubbies Shorts, a San Francisco-based maker of shorts; Death Wish Coffee Company, a Round Lake, N.Y. coffee roaster; and Vidler's 5 & 10, a retailer from East Aurora, N.Y. The winner will be announced in January.

The second- and third-place finalists will each get $25,000 and a local newspaper ad promoting their business. The next seven runners up will get $10,000 and a local newspaper ad that will be co-branded with Quickbooks, thanking them for participating in the program.

Anheuser-Busch's Budweiser and Bud Light, PepsiCo brands, Hyundai and Mars' Snickers and Skittles are also among the advertisers in Super Bowl 50.

Last February's Super Bowl XLIX drew in 114.4 million viewers, the largest audience for a U.S. television program in history. Advertisers paid roughly $4.5 million for a 30-second spot in the 2015 game.

Write to Nathalie Tadena at nathalie.tadena@wsj.com

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 20, 2015 11:50 ET (16:50 GMT)

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