Yesterday was SuperBowl. A 30 second slot costs $2m+. Worth it?

That depends on what your objective is. Do you want to sell products or shape peoples perceptions of what you stand for?  

Apple paid $800k for a 60 second slot at SuperBowl 1984. It paid something like that much again to create the ad. What they got was an ad that generated more publicity and coverage than a campaign costing 10 times as much. It also became a rallying call for all Apple customers - we are different and proud of it. The ad itself was only shown once. That in itself made it a talking point.

At the time I worked for a software company that was rapidly seeing the world as being dominated by IBM and Microsoft. This ad really did make us think that maybe 'Big Blue' would have a fight on its hands and we did develop software for Apple as well as IBM. Maybe just maybe - it helped Apple find customer champions who would support them to the ends of the earth. To not become one of the crowd but to be proud to be different. Even today almost 25 years later that message still resonates with Apple's customers.