Superbowl-ads.com Article Archive

When the Super Bowl rolls around this February, the world’s most highly-priced advertising vehicle won’t be the only the game in town.

Fox, a unit of News Corp. Ltd. (NCP.AX) (NYSE:NWS – news) that is televising the game, is not only facing the worst advertising downturn in decades, but is also competing for advertisers with the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, which begins a mere five days after Super Bowl XXXVI.

Pitting the world’s biggest football game against bobsledding, figure skating and skiing, Fox says it has sold between 75 percent and 80 percent of its 30-second ad slots, but admitted it has not been the easiest of tasks.

Like the St. Louis Rams, HotJobs (Nasdaq: HOTJ – news), Monster.com and E*Trade (NYSE: ET – news) were edged out in Super Bowl XXXVI as AT&T Wireless’ mLife joined the New England Patriots in the winner’s circle. According to a survey by Jupiter Media Metrix (Nasdaq: JMXI – news), AT&T cashed in on its Super Bowl ad campaign to promote its new mLife wireless brand, registering 681,000 unique visitors on game day, up from 34,000 the day before.

Get an mLife

“mLife really came out of nowhere,” said Charles Buchwalter, vice president of media research at Jupiter Media Metrix, adding that the surge in Web traffic “bordered on breathtaking.”

How about that. For once the football game was as interesting as the commercials. Which meant that for almost four solid hours on Sunday, millions of viewers could not safely dash to the bathroom. The drawdown at approximately 10:10 p.m. EST must have made city reservoirs swirl like toilet bowls.

You can’t ignore the ads anymore. They have their own Web site. Ever since director Ridley Scott’s 1984 Macintosh spot, the commercials have been a major part of the annual Super Bowl show — a telecast that draws approximately 800 million viewers worldwide. (One survey claims that 16 percent of viewers tune in only for the commercials, and 58 percent pay more attention to the ads than to the game.) Even as endless player interviews and game prognosticators droned on through the week, particular ads were generating their own pre-telecast hype. This year’s advertisers included surprise newcomers — the White House — and surprising dropouts, like EDS, whose “Herding Cats” and “Running With the Squirrels” ads were previous Super Bowl standouts.

It’s an hour after the Super Bowl, and I am struggling to remember more than a couple of the ads that had been so hyped all month. It was the event that sport reclaimed, as the New England Patriots beat the hot favourites, the St Louis Rams, 20-17 with the last kick of a thrilling game.

If the game and the impressive half-time performance from U2 for once lived up to all expectations, the “ad bowl” was decidedly unremarkable. The notable exception was Pepsi, which produced a series of BBDO-produced commercials starring Britney Spears acting out Pepsi spots from the past four decades.

There were the usual yucks. The coy teasers.

And a commercial that some advertising experts said made them want to cry — and buy more Budweiser.

Anheuser-Busch and its nine spots during Super Bowl XXXVI won the most raves among a panel of filmmakers, commercial producers and advertising executives assembled Sunday by the Register.

Yes, it’s time once again to dip into the “commercial bowl” and pluck out the best TV ads shown during that guys-running-around-griddle-iron fight over a ball that’s not even shaped right.

This year, I’m introducing a simple rating scheme. Keeping in fashion with this bowl motif, I’ve assigned a specific number of bowls to each ad. Good ads get popcorn bowls, because there’s nothing like eating popcorn during great entertainment. Bad ads get toilet bowls, because, at $2 million a pop, these ads should NOT be flush with failure.

Rudy still rules.

Giuliani’s succinct message of appreciation for support shown after the Sept. 11 attacks stood head and shoulders above other Super Bowl commercials Sunday.

“Now more than ever, we are one nation,” the former New York City mayor said. “For all New Yorkers, I just want to say, ‘Thank you, America.’ ” The black-and-white ad was sponsored by Monster.com, a fact we tastefully didn’t learn until the commercial ended.

What it lacked in glitz, it more than made up for in effectiveness, proving that a heartfelt, bare-bones message means more than any overproduced, red-white-and-blue, song-and-dance, feel-good, pseudo-patriotic musical number ever could.

Perhaps Anheuser-Busch should bottle and sell something besides beer: its Super Bowl ad formula.

For a fourth consecutive year, Anheuser-Busch broadcast the best-liked TV commercial in the USA TODAY’s 14th annual Ad Meter. The ad featured a Bud Light-loving guy whose wife lures him with a bottle but quickly loses him to some slick satin sheets that send him flying out the bedroom window.

To add insult to the rest of the advertisers, Anheuser-Busch broadcast four of the five best-liked ads. The No. 2 ad featured a beer-loving falcon that wreaks havoc on a café in search of a Bud Light. No. 3 featured a woman kickboxing a guy for an ill-spoken come-on line at a bar.

E*Trade Group Inc. will introduce a new name for itself Sunday in two advertisements during the Super Bowl football game, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The new name is E*Trade Financial, the paper said. The new name will continue to be advertised Monday with full-page advertisements in newspapers across the country.

E*Trade hopes the change will help the company break free of its image as a Internet trading operation and better reflect its growing product offering, which includes E*Trade Bank. An E*Trade official declined to comment, the paper said.

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/020201/nyf022_1.html Friday February 1, 8:02 am Eastern Time Press Release SOURCE: BBDO New York and Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. Barry Bonds and Hank Aaron Star in New Television Advertising For Schwab Commercial to Debut on ‘Super Bowl Sunday’ SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 1 /PRNewswire/ — Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. will debut new television advertising [...]

The battle between the Rams and the Patriots isn’t the only draw for Super Bowl fans this year, and neither is the half-time show featuring U2. Advertisers pull out the big guns during the Super Bowl, using both humor and drama in their commercials to convince viewers to purchase their products.

Memorable favorites include Pepsi’s 1995 commercial including a little boy who, trying to suck the last drop of his soda out of the bottle, gets sucked inside the bottle himself. An ad shown during 1998′s Super Bowl introduced Ali Landry in a Laundromat as she flipped backwards and caught a Dorito in her mouth.

After about a week of teaser ads, AT&T Wireless will unveil the mystery of “mlife” in a 60-second Super Bowl XXXVI commercial on Sunday.

The spot shows various belly buttons concluding with a birth scene. The metaphor: AT&T Wireless lets you live an untethered life.

The 60-second commercial will follow four teaser spots during the game. Since the campaign broke last week, AT&T Wireless has run TV spots showing various man-on-the-street types talking about an “mlife.”

AT&T Wireless Services Inc. (NYSE:AWE – news), the nation’s third-largest wireless operator, on Friday said it will launch a new branding campaign during the Super Bowl on Sunday that stresses the service’s ability to keep people connected.

AT&T Wireless declined to disclose the cost of the campaign, which was developed by the Ogilvy and Mather Worldwide unit of WPP Group Plc. (quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: WPP.L)

The Redmond, Washington-based company said it planned to unveil a 60-second ad during the broadcast of the National Football League championship game based on the theme “mLife,” a reference to mobile, as well as such other meanings as “multifaceted,” “managed” and “modern.” It also planned to refocus service offers, renovate retail stores and redesign its Web site to fit the theme.

“With this new brand campaig

Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. will debut new television advertising on “Super Bowl Sunday.” The new commercial pairs Barry Bonds, the holder of the single season home run record, with Hall-of-Famer Hank Aaron, the all-time home run king, in a spot which will help highlight Schwab’s advice capabilities, particularly in the area of retirement investing. It was created by BBDO New York and will premier during the Charles Schwab Kickoff Show — the sole commercial airing between the coin toss and the start of Super Bowl XXXVI. It will then be rebroadcast during the fourth quarter of the game.

News Corp.’s Fox network sold its final 30-second commercial spot for Sunday’s Super Bowl this afternoon, the network said.

Fox wouldn’t disclose who bought the ad, but FedEx Corp. spokesman Jess Bunn said the overnight delivery company was the buyer.

The network has been receiving between $1.9 million and $2 million for each of its 58 30-second ads, down from the $2.1 million average price that Viacom Inc.’s CBS got a year ago, said Fox spokesman Lou D’Ermilio.