I've seen this story on CNN and Fox News. He's getting more airplay than some of the commercials that were $5 million during the super bowl.
You're right, it isn't close to that. It's higher. You really think he has as strong of an advertising presence as Gallery does in a DMA as large as Houston with an annual marketing budget of $700k ("That 7MM is probably ten times his annual marketing budget")? His annual spend on billboard advertising alone is much higher than that -- and that's excluding just media spend alone on TV, Radio, print, SEM, SEO -- not to mention creative production on the hundreds of TV and radio spots he records, among many other marketing elements. As many have said in this thread already -- he's a very smart marketer and knows what he is doing. Would he have been better off in this case if Denver had won the game? Obviously. But he isn't just having fun with a few promotions and putting the very successful business he's been running for 30 years in financial jeopardy based on the outcome of a football game. As for this promotion not bringing him new customers? Of course it did. It brought new customers that participated in the contest and it will bring new customers in the future. And not having to market this promotion as much as he did in the past? He can thank the huge amount of advertising press he received off of the similar promo on the Conf. Championship games two weeks prior. He's been running these exact same types of promos on big football games for years and he'll continue to do so in the future.
10% of sales is a general rule of thumb for marketing and advertising costs. If he is doing 200M in revenue, he easily tops that in yearly spend.
my coworker bought $11K worth of stuff from GF.. needless to say her and her husband were ecstatic.. think about this, mattress mac's story is front page on some of the major news site... the whole nation knows about GF after the super bowl.. mattress mac is no dummy!