Superbowl-ads.com Article Archive

This was the eighth Super Bowl of the 21st century, but if you were only paying attention to the commercials, you might have thought it was the 1970s, ’80s or ’90s.

It wasn’t just older themes that played during the between-plays breaks in Super Bowl XLII, such as Budweiser’s Dalmatians and Clydesdales, which have been commercial stars during the big game for decades. Sunday’s Super Bowl ads also referred to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” the Andrea True disco song “More, More, More” and the “Saturday Night Live” skit that led to the 1998 movie “A Night at the Roxbury.” And that was just in the first half.

Miller is calling out the dogs again.

Beginning tomorrow and running through the Super Bowl, the brewer will blanket the airwaves with a new Miller Lite ad featuring a Dalmatian, a longtime mascot of its chief rival, Anheuser-Busch.

The spot shows a Dalmatian sitting on a couch watching an earlier Miller ad. After seeing the commercial, the dog leaps off the couch and runs down the street, where it’s joined by other Dalmatians, which scamper out of a barn full of Clydesdales (another reference to Anheuser). The pack of pooches follows a Miller truck that reads: “Miller Lite Has More Taste Than Bud Light.”

The Super Bowl battle of beverages between PepsiCo (PEP) and Coca-Cola (KO) will feature ads for their growing non-carbonated drinks.

Coke will make its biggest appearance in recent years with three minutes of ad time that includes one with NBA star Shaquille O’Neal for Vitaminwater. Pepsi’s lineup will include promotion for a low-calorie Gatorade called G2, featuring New York Yankee Derek Jeter. Pepsi also is expected to run ads for energy drink Amp and SoBe LifeWater.

Anheuser-Busch spent about $2.7M a pop on nine ads in this year’s Super Bowl – with seven of the spots devoted to Bud Light.The lineups are just about set for Super Bowl Sunday – not on the field, but for the glitzy, star-studded TV commercials that will cost close to $3 million apiece.

“The advertisers this year have learned how to do it,” says Walter Guarino, advertising professor at Seton Hall University. “They’ll keep it light and humorous, and I think it will be a real good year.”

Like Eli Manning and Tom Brady on the field, Super Bowl legend Justin Timberlake will lead a team of stars through 63 ad spots with an airtime tab that will run about $175 million.

NASCAR superstar Dale Earnhardt Jr. will go bumper-to-bumper with his former backer before the Feb. 17 Daytona 500 if he makes the starting grid in a Feb. 3 Super Bowl ad for the company sponsoring his new ride.

Earnhardt, a five-time Most Popular Driver Award winner whose 17 major victories include the 2004 Daytona 500, recently shot two ads for Pepsi’s (PEP) Amp energy drink, sponsor of his race car this year.

Pepsi is the No. 2 Super Bowl ad spender this year behind Anheuser-Busch (BUD), which was Earnhardt’s sponsor last season. He moved to Pepsi and the Hendrick Motorsports racing team after a highly publicized split with his family’s team and says he’s eager to help Pepsi overtake marketing rival A-B as a Super Bowl ad favorite.

By Bruce Horovitz, USA TODAY

Anheuser-Busch continued its Super Bowl ad supremacy with a commercial that pure and simple made folks smile.

For a record ninth-consecutive year, the beer giant won USA TODAY’S exclusive Ad Meter real-time consumer focus group ranking of Super Bowl commercials.

The winning ad featured a group of computer-generated crabs on the beach bowing down at the altar of an ice chest filled with Budweiser. The red chest with two Buds for antennae looks like a giant crab — which a crab army worships as the sun sets behind it. That’s the kind of gentle, visual humor folks apparently wanted most this year.

By John Kreiser

(CBS/AP) Katie Crabb says she constantly struggles to speak up and get her ideas across.

But executives at Chevrolet liked what they heard — and for the past four months, this self-described shy 19-year-old has kept a $2.6 million secret: She’s a big-time advertising guru.

Crabb won a nationwide competition for college students sponsored by Chevrolet to design a 30-second commercial for the company’s new line of crossover cars.

Chevrolet aired the ad during the Super Bowl, an event watched as much for the commercials as for the game itself. The average price for a 30-second spot during the game, which was broadcast Sunday on CBS, is $2.6 million.

by Andrew Keen

It’s amateur hour at the Super Bowl this year. On Sunday, 90 million television viewers on CBS will be subjected to commercials made by “You” — Time magazine’s Person of The Year for 2006. Three Super Bowl XLI advertisers — Doritos, the National Football League, and Chevrolet — will all be running 30-second commercial spots made by amateurs. The Web 2.0 revolution in user-generated content has infiltrated the American living room. These amateur creators, who Time praise as “people formerly known as consumers,” are now providing the entertainment at the biggest event in the media calendar.This is not good news. The shift from professionally produced to user-generated advertising makes us poorer in both economic and cultural terms. The arrival of user-created commercials at Super Bowl XLI represents the American Idolization of traditional entertainment — the degeneration of professional content into a “talent show” for amateurs.

We, the conventional television audience, are certainly losers in this new fashion for user-generated advertisements. We have traditionally watched Super Bowl commercials to be entertained by memorable ads. Often, these commercials are more memorable than the game. Occasionally, they even represent significant cultural moments in American history. Few of us, for example, can remember who won Super Bowl in 1984 (Los Angeles Raiders 38, Washington Redskins 9), where it was played (Tampa), or who sang the national anthem (Barry Manilow). But most of us can remember the Chiat/Day produced, Ridley Scott directed, commercial for the Macintosh computer, with its Orwellian subtext and its indelible explanation of why “1984 wasn’t going to be like 1984.”

Anheuser-Busch (BUD)— the biggest Super Bowl advertiser by far — will go slightly less patriotic and be more worldly in its ads this year. It also will give its declining Budweiser brand more air time.

Unlike during some recent Super Bowls, there will be no A-B ads in emotional support of American soldiers or 9/11 victims. Rather, the ads will mostly have a more humorous and even international feel, says Bob Lachky, executive vice president of global industry development.

The Budweiser brand — which has been losing market share domestically for several years — is being re-billed as a “world” beer. As imported beer sales have climbed, Anheuser-Busch has been buying up import brands in recent years. And its Super Bowl ads seem to be doing less flag-waving and more global hugs.

When the Chicago Bears and the Indianapolis Colts run onto the field at Miami’s Dolphin Stadium for Super Bowl XLI, each will have a strategy to win the big game. And along with those NFL teams, a number of corporations are betting up to $2.6 million per 30-second advertisement that their strategy also will be a winning one, according to a University of Delaware professor with expertise in Super Bowl advertising.

“We know that one team will win and one will lose, but there will also be winners and losers in the high stakes competition among the companies that bought TV’s most expensive ad time,” John Antil, associate professor of business administration, said. “We know the teams involved, but we still do not know all the companies who will be gambling they have the best strategy.”