During the Super Bowl, a company called Temu aired the same commercial three times with the catchy tagline, “shop like a billionaire.” While we can’t be sure exactly how much they spent on these advertisements, according to the New York Post, each 30-second time slot for the Super Bowl cost $7 million. That means Temu spent at least $21 million! So what exactly is Temu? How did people react to them? Let’s find out if Temu’s Super Bowl Ad paid off!

Where did Temu come from?

Temu is an online retailing company that is based out of Shanghai, China. If you look at the website’s homepage, you can see that they sell everything under the sun. Temu’s main selling point, though, is their low prices. You can buy a pair of sneakers for less than $8, or a home security system of $15! That’s why their Super Bowl ad promised that customers could “shop like a billionaire.” Amazing, right? USA today has reported that Temu claims to be able to have these prices by shipping items directly from the manufacturer or supplier.

Temu’s growth has mainly been through massive spurts, but they struggle to keep the customers around. According to the New York Post, Temu’s sales increased 805% at the beginning of 2023. By the end of the year, however, sales in the U.S. were already falling fast. Temu quickly gained a reputation for having long delivery times and low quality (maybe another reason for those rock-bottom prices!). Many customers have begun to call the website a scam, and there have even been security concerns about what data the company collects.

Now it makes sense why Temu would want to tell people that the truth is that with them you can “shop like a billionaire.” So how did it go? Did Temu’s Super Bowl commercials help?

Temu’s Super Bowl Ad Results

Responses to the commercial were very reminiscent of the company’s sales last year. There was a huge spike in interest followed by a very quick fall. According to Google trends data, on the day of the Super Bowl, searches for Temu skyrocketed. Even related searches like “what is temu?” went up over 850%!

However, the spotlight seems to have faded just as quickly as it appeared for Temu. Google’s interest rating for Temu had dropped from 100 (peak interest) to 21 by the morning the day after the game. Since then, it has only gone down more, falling to no more than two or three points higher than before the commercials aired.

Despite all of the work and money poured into the commercial, it seems unlikely that it will amount to much. Right now, all signs are saying Temu will continue its pattern of short bursts of sunlight followed by faltering results.

What can we learn from Temu?

Temu’s Super Bowl advertisements can teach us one very important lesson. A campaign – whether it is advertising, communications, or marketing – is only as good as what it is promoting. People were already calling Temu a scam because of the lack of security on the website, low quality products, and egregious delivery times. Since seemingly nothing was done to improve these issues, its no surprise that the commercials have come and gone.

Communication from companies, whether digital or otherwise, needs to be authentic to establish trust with consumers. If we can’t provide that, our efforts will end up like Temu’s Super Bowl Ad: a Hail Mary that was incomplete.