Allyson Witherspoon, Chief Marketing Officer at Nissan U.S., sits down with Yahoo Finance Live to talk about the car manufacturer's return to airing Super Bowl ads, how brands engage with consumers, and the cost of Super Bowl ads.

Video Transcript

EUGENE LEVY: Nice ride.

BRIE LARSON: Want to give it a spin?

EUGENE LEVY: Coffee's enough excitement for me.

BRIE LARSON: Come on.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

EUGENE LEVY: Very nice. Catherine.

CATHERINE O'HARA: What the--

DANAI GURIRA: Is that?

DAVE BAUTISTA: Eugene Levy? Eugene.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: All right. That's a taste of Nissan's 60-second spot airing in the fourth quarter of Sunday's Super Bowl between the LA Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals. And as you can see, it is packed with celebrities. Joining us now is Allyson Witherspoon, chief marketing officer at Nissan US. Allyson, thanks so much for joining us. I see you have the car behind you. This is Nissan's first Super Bowl ad since 2015. So why was now the right time to come back?

ALLYSON WITHERSPOON: For us, obviously, advertising in the Super Bowl is a considered investment. And so Nissan doesn't go into the Super Bowl and advertise every year. What I was looking for in evaluating it this year was, one, we have been investing in the brand over the last year, and we've been running a year-long brand campaign.

The second piece of it was really about the product transformation that we've been on over the last couple of years. And the third one is that we have some exciting new products, and you mentioned them. They're right behind me. In 2022, we're going to be launching the all new Nissan Z and the all new, all electric Nissan Aria. So we felt that all three of these things combined gave us a really good opportunity to tell our story through the Super Bowl platform.

- Allyson, I've got to tell you, my very first job ever was working for a show called "CBS Sunday Morning." And the assignment was, we were tracking two companies who were putting their Super Bowl ads together. One of them was Ford, and one of them was Charmin.

And I'll date myself by telling you, in those days, the top spots went for $2.5 million for a 30-second spot. There are some companies now that are paying up to $7 million for this Super Bowl for a 30-second spot. You're taking a 60-second ad. There is so much pressure to deliver. And I'm wondering, is a return on investment worth it all? Or is it just about getting the buzz?

ALLYSON WITHERSPOON: I think it's-- obviously, in order to make this type of investment, you do have to be confident that there is going to be a return on that investment. When we go in and evaluate it, one, we're looking at, can we actually have a strong story that we can tell in the Super Bowl. And that's going to be really around our brand and the products that we have coming out. And the second one really is going to be about the efficiency of it. So we do do an ROI investment.

We did see that this was going to be positive for us this year. And then it's about proceeding. We have a very strong measurement framework that we have in place to determine whether or not this is going to be a success. It's going to be about measuring demand that the campaign delivers as well as the return on the objective. Is it moving the needle when it comes to the brand metrics and then, obviously, the return on the total investment.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: And Allyson, I'm wondering how you look at this holistically. Because the way we watch or consume things like a sporting event has really changed. And it doesn't mean the Super Bowl has to happen on a big screen TV anymore. Lots of folks are going to be looking at it piecemeal on social media. So how does this change, I guess, your advertising strategy when you have to factor in things like social media?

ALLYSON WITHERSPOON: Yeah, so the biggest change-- and this happened a few years ago. It's been going back for a few years now. But the biggest thing is that it's now not just about the game day. What's interesting about game day is that obviously it is a massive platform. It's a way for you to reach over 100 million viewers. And it's also, you have a very captive audience, and they're interested in the advertising.

But really what you need to be doing, and this is just because of basic consumer and human behavior, is how do you tap into those second screens? We know everyone is engaging in social media. They're engaging digitally. So how do you make sure that your actual spot in the game is going to be amplified a lot of times leading up to the game but also actually during the game. How are you going to make sure that you're engaging consumers? And all of that goes into the planning process and how we put together our plan for a Super Bowl.

- Allyson, it's really important to make sure you capture the right ad, so people are talking about it the next day for all the right reasons. So talk about some of the trends and some of the creative concepts and thought process that went into developing this particular ad.

ALLYSON WITHERSPOON: So what we were really looking for is we wanted to tell and talk about our transformation story and how one drive can change everything. And we knew that we wanted to talk about our all new Nissan Z and our all new Nissan Aria. And from there, we also knew that humor works very well in the Super Bowl. And humor, it's not just a linear path. You have to find the right type of balance with that. You have to find the right type of tone.

But we knew that we wanted to tell a more comedic, lighthearted story as well. And so the concepts came from there. It really started with talking about a transformation. We couldn't think of anyone better than Eugene Levy, who is a beloved character, and actually showing him in a way that's unexpected, that people haven't seen from him before to help us tell that story.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Any time you can get Eugene Levy into something, it's a positive. Allyson Witherspoon, chief marketing officer at Nissan US. Thanks so much.