Superbowl-ads.com Article Archive

Cartoonish violence ruled the day at the annual knockdown competition among advertisers Sunday, as Bud Light, Diet Pepsi, Michelob and Sprint all used physical gags to hawk their wares at the Super Bowl, the most-watched television broadcast of the year.

Borrowing inspiration from Buster Keaton, advertisers used mauling bears, flying dinosaurs and even action movie star Jackie Chan to wow viewers with sight gags.

Commercials that air during the Super Bowl generate as much, if not more buzz than the game itself. But breaking through that buzz and selling the product is a challenge for advertisers. Sometimes the product can get lost in the entertainment.

“People are getting so much buzz before and after that you’re really getting more than you spend,” said Linda Kaplan Thaler, CEO and founder of Kaplan Thaler Group. “I’ve never seen so much buzz on the ads beforehand. Now you can download ads on your cell phone. You’ve got viral marketing.”

The overall winner in this year’s Super Bowl ads had to be Anheuser-Busch with at least five good spots. Almost all the Bud Light commercials featured comedy, and regular Budweiser — with its beautifully shot Clydesdales — had several touchdowns, scoring points in both the humor and tasteful nostalgia categories.

Both the revolving wall/Magic Fridge spot and the guys hanging out on the rooftop supposedly “fixing things” while they drink Bud Light with their Buds had great “dude” appeal.

The commercials that aired during Super Bowl XL Sunday night, like the game itself, probably won’t go down in history as being all that memorable.

“It was pretty much standard fare,” said Paul Murray, creative director at Pavone, a brand consulting firm based in Harrisburg, Pa., that runs SpotBowl.com, a Web site where viewers can vote for their favorite commercials. “It was a lot of animals and broad humor. There were not too many surprises.”

Among the bigger winners, according to several ad experts as well as online polls of Super Bowl viewers, were many of the usual suspects, including Anheuser-Busch, which bought 10 spots during the game.

The commercials that aired during Super Bowl XL Sunday night, like the game itself, probably won’t go down in history as being all that memorable.

“It was pretty much standard fare,” said Paul Murray, creative director at Pavone, a brand consulting firm based in Harrisburg, Pa., that runs SpotBowl.com, a Web site where viewers can vote for their favorite commercials. “It was a lot of animals and broad humor. There were not too many surprises.”

There are many Americans who will tune into the biggest football game of the year not for the Pittsburgh-Seattle matchup, but for the commercials that will air.

From the beloved to the controversial, some Super Bowl commercials remain etched in American memory for years. Even many of those too young to have seen the ad first air are familiar with the Coke commercial featuring football player Mean Joe Green throwing his shirt to a young fan. Budweiser beer ads, which have often pushed the propriety envelope in the past, also tend to live in infamy.

Companies are banking on the fact that these Super Bowl commercials will stick in the memories of the game’s 90 million viewers. Advertisers are paying a record $2.5 million for a single 30-second spot — up from $2.4 million last year. A 30-second prime-time spot during the Olympics costs about $700,000.

TV is just one way viewers can have Burger King’s first Super Bowl ad in a decade.

The Whopperettes will star in a Burger King ad during the Super Bowl.

Shortly after Burger King’s 60-second ad airs before an expected 90 million Super Bowl viewers on Feb. 5, it will go out over one of the newest ad media. Millions of Sprint wireless phone subscribers with video service will have the chance to watch a longer version that includes outtakes and behind-the-scenes footage.

Have a great Super Bowl ad idea?

It may not be too late to sign up for the ABC broadcast. At the end of the week, ABC still had a few 30-second ad slots up for grabs — good news for an advertiser looking to get a deep discount on the average $2.5 million price tag.

MasterCard took advantage with a late entry, signing on late last week. They didn’t get the choicest real estate — the ad will air in the fourth quarter — but Amy Fuller, who oversees marketing in the Americas, says every quarter is worth it: “The ratings hold strong. There isn’t a dud quarter. It’s a good value.”

It almost didn’t happen, but GoDaddy.com, the domain-name registrar that was scolded last year for running a racy commercial during the Super Bowl, got approval from ABC today to run a spot during this year’s big game.

“This showdown went down to the wire. We were about out of time and had produced our 14th and final attempt. I’m ecstatic about being in the Super Bowl again,” said Bob Parsons, founder and president of GoDaddy.com, in a statement.

GoDaddy said it went through multiple revisions of its ad and had negotiated with network censors before it finally won approval.

Nationwide, which quietly dipped its toe into network advertising last year with spots in pro golf tournaments and college football, is spending more than $1 million for a 30-second ad during the third quarter of the Super Bowl.

The commercial, featuring romance-novel-cover king Fabio, is the latest production in the “Life Comes at You Fast” ad campaign, now in its third year. The company has two other new spots in the pregame show.

The decision to pony up big bucks for the Super Bowl “is as much to raise awareness” about Nationwide as it is to sell products, said Steven Schreibman, vice president for advertising and brand management.

Super Bowl XL will feature a mix of longtime advertisers, such as beer giant Anheuser-Busch, and others making their debut, including American Home Health, marketer of industrial-strength cleaning products.

Anheuser-Busch, brewer of Budweiser, won’t select the final choices for its 10 slots until the eve of the game, but it’s hard to imagine they’ll pass on one, described in the New York Times, that features a young Clydesdale getting the attention of his parents. The ad agency is DDB Worldwide.

The popular chimpanzee stars of CareerBuilder.com’s Super Bowl ads by Cramer Krasselt are returning in two humorous tales of a human employee working in an office populated entirely by apes.

If Miss Piggy is dressing up like Jessica Simpson, monkeys are rampaging around office cubicles and networking druids are yammering into cell phones, it can only mean one thing: Super Bowl ads are on the way.

Despite nagging worries about declining TV viewership as more people plug in to their iPods and the Internet, the Super Bowl has proven to be a resilient stronghold of truly mass media. The game, which airs Feb. 5 on Walt Disney Co.’s ABC, is expected to draw some 90 million viewers, along with the advertisers who want to reach them.

By the time Super Bowl XL kicks off in Detroit in 11 days, Marlene Coulis will have clocked hundreds of hours in effort and thousands of miles in travel preparing for the moment.

A marketing executive at brewer Anheuser-Busch Cos., Ms. Coulis has almost as much at stake in the game as the players. Long one of the Super Bowl’s biggest sponsors, Anheuser this year has bought five minutes of ad time for its brands including Budweiser and Bud Light — more time than any other advertiser in the broadcast.

Anheuser sees the Super Bowl and its expected U.S. audience of 90 million viewers as more than an opportunity to promote its brands or sell beer. It sees a chance to be seen as funny, prompting favorable reviews Monday morning by workplace advertising critics.

THE players on the Pittsburgh Steelers and Seattle Seahawks who will participate in their first Super Bowl have a counterpart on Madison Avenue. On the biggest day of the year for advertising, the biggest advertiser is entrusting a newcomer to select its commercials.

The rookie is Marlene V. Coulis, who last August took over as vice president for brand management at the Anheuser-Busch beer division of the Anheuser-Busch Companies in St. Louis. Ms. Coulis succeeded Robert Lachky, who had long overseen the decisions by Anheuser-Busch about which spots would run during the Super Bowl for which brands.

Under Mr. Lachky, Anheuser-Busch’s commercials often ranked highly – frequently coming in first – in the many postgame polls and surveys asking consumers which spots they liked the most. Each year, Anheuser-Busch usually buys more commercial time than any other advertiser during the Super Bowl, which is typically the most-watched TV show of the year.

When paying $2.5 million for 30 seconds of advertising time, you might think you could pretty much do anything with it.

No so when that half minute is airing during the Super Bowl, now in its 40th year.

Long known as an advertising showcase that can eclipse the on-field action, America’s Big Game remains a top venue of choice for marketers to roll out new campaigns or build on old ones. And the amount of time, money and talent they put behind those spots remains undiminished.