Superbowl-ads.com Article Archive

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040130/daf026_1.html

Press Release

Source: 7 UP

PLANO, Texas, Jan. 30 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — 7 UP has purchased one 30- second television commercial scheduled to air during the fourth quarter of the NFL’s Super Bowl XXXVIII on CBS Sunday. It is the second appearance for 7 UP in a Super Bowl game since 2000.

“This is a terrific opportunity for 7 UP to showcase our popular and very funny ‘Make 7 UP Yours’ advertising campaign,” stated Jim Trebilcock, 7 UP senior vice president-marketing. “The game draws a huge number of viewers, which makes it a great venue to reach millions of consumers with our refreshment beverage message presented in a humorous way.”

7 UP will air Slam Dunk, which leads into the brand’s sponsorship of college basketball and is one of the campaign’s new 2004 commercials featuring comedian Godfrey. The “Make 7 UP Yours” campaign first aired in late 1999 and featured actor/comedian Orlando Jones. After two years of successful commercials produced by Young & Rubicam New York, Jones moved on and was replaced by Godfrey, who continues to increase the popularity of the 7 UP campaign.

7 UP aired one 30-second commercial in the 2000 Super Bowl telecast, and had multiple commercials air in the 2001 pre-game telecast. “We are thrilled to be part of the Super Bowl XXXVIII telecast,” concluded Trebilcock.

7 UP is a leading brand in the soft drink portfolio of Plano, Texas-based Dr Pepper/Seven Up, Inc., which is owned by London-based Cadbury Schweppes plc (NYSE: CSG -News ). For more information about 7 UP, visit www.7up.com . For information about Dr Pepper/Seven Up, visit www.dpsu.com .

http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/business/7770785.htm

Associated Press ST. LOUIS -Cedric the Entertainer is back. So is the bumbling referee as Anheuser-Busch Cos. is again the big spender among Super Bowl advertisers.

The St. Louis-based maker of the world’s biggest selling beer and light beer, Budweiser and Bud Light, has purchased five minutes of air time for CBS’s telecast of Super Bowl 38 on Feb. 1. That’s more than any other company.

Pepsi-Cola. Co. purchased three minutes of commercials. General Motors Corp., America Online and the NFL each purchased a minute and a half.

Advertising Age, a trade publication, reported the average price of a 30-second Super Bowl spot costs a record $2.3 million. That means Anheuser-Busch spent an estimated $23 million for its ads for an event that draws nearly as much attention for its advertisements as for the game itself.

Anheuser-Busch will unveil nine commercials: four 30-second spots and a 60-second commercial during the first half of the game, and four 30-second spots during the second half.

The commercials focus on Budweiser and Bud Light. One 60-second spot depicts a donkey who wants to be a Clydesdale horse. The spot is a variation of A-B’s previous Super Bowl commercials in which the Clydesdales play football.

A fourth-quarter ad promotes responsible drinking. In it, country singer Tim McGraw and Los Angeles Lakers forward Rick Fox show up at a club, where they receive plenty of attention from adoring fans. But the celebrities are upstaged by a frumpy man – the designated driver – who has his own posse of attractive women.

Bud Light ads typically are humorous, but one emphasizes quality.

“With Bud Light, you have the humor,” said Bob Lachky, A-B’s vice president of brand management. “But it’s just nice to remind consumers what the product stands for.”

Among the Anheuser-Busch campaigns that didn’t make the Super Bowl cut: Leon, the egotistical football player whose commercials have run throughout the NFL season; and Real Men of Genius, the television version of the popular radio campaign.

In both those cases, the audience already knows the general ending, Lachky said. Super Bowl spots are supposed to wow and surprise audiences, he said.

Anheuser-Busch has created many memorable Super Bowl commercials. Among them: 1995′s Budweiser Frogs (“Bud … Weis … Er.”); Louie the fame-starved Lizard in 1998; and the “Whassup?” guys in 2000.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=Q5KDMFHTMIRVCCRBAEOCFFA?type=industryNews&storyID=4181852&pageNumber=1

By Andrew Grossman

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) – The New England Patriots vs. the Carolina Panthers may seem far from the sexiest matchup ever seen in the Super Bowl, but even a team from Timbuktu could draw a 43 rating under the right circumstances, industry executives agree.

And speaking of sexy, the lineup of advertisers who ponied up an average of $2.3 million per 30-second spot will include for the first time as many as three erectile-dysfunction companies. Definitely in are Viagra’s generic rivals: Levitra from Bayer and GlaxoSmithKline as well as Cialis from Eli Lilly and Co. and Icos Corp. Media buyers said it was possible that Pfizer Inc.’s Viagra could join them.

Sources close to the matter reported that CBS had sold out more than 90% of its spots for the telecast and expected to close out its inventory by game time. That’s the usual practice for the Super Bowl as the networks typically try to wring the best deals out of the diminishing supply of commercial time.

With advertisers doling out $2 million-$2.4 million per 30-second spot for Super Bowl XXXVIII on Feb. 1 in Houston, it would be tempting to imagine sponsors gagging at the thought of their lavishly produced $500,000 ads being spent on a game with no big-name superstars, involving teams whose offenses score about as much as the “Average Joes” did last fall on NBC.

Sponsors, of course, buy their spots well in advance of the Super Bowl, and though buyers suggest that XXXVIII lacks the buzz of past games, a heartier-than-average rating remained possible.

The matchup in terms of geographical locations is overblown,” said Steven Sternberg, executive vp and director of audience analysis at Magna Global USA. “While it’s true Philadelphia-New England might have been the highest-rated because they were perceived as both being competitive and in very powerful markets, I think that Carolina and New England is also perceived as a fairly competitive game.”

This year’s advertisers are heavy on bigger traditional blue-chip companies, many in the Fortune 100, and even Procter & Gamble, an unusual presence in the game, has bought in.

“It’s the battle of the big brands,” said Tim Spengler, executive vp and director of national broadcast at media buyer Initiative. “People are focusing on ROI (return on investment). The midtier brands . . . do not want to take the risk.”

Advertisers signed so far also include American Legacy, Anheuser-Busch, America Online, Buena Vista Pictures, Chrysler, Walt Disney Pictures, Expedia, FedEx, Frito Lay, Gillette, General Motors, H&R Block, IBM, MasterCard, Mitsubishi, Monster.com, ONDCP, P&G, PepsiCo, Philip Morris, Reebok, Sony Pictures, Staples, Universal Pictures, Visa and Warner Bros.

Despite the huge price, Spengler said that advertising during the Super Bowl “has paid incredible dividends for a lot of brands over the last 10 years. . . . Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

While Spengler conceded that other teams would have elicited greater pregame hype, he said: “Fifty percent is how the game is going. I wouldn’t write it off as the lowest-rated Super Bowl yet.”

CBS Sports president Sean McManus, speaking on the network’s annual teleconference call with reporters Wednesday, said: “A dream matchup would be a game that went down to the final play of the fourth quarter and went into overtime.”

Last year’s game, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs. the Oakland Raiders, seemed like a great matchup, but the Buccaneers thrashed the Raiders 48-21, which resulted in a good but not great 40.7 rating/61 share on Fox. The five-year peak came in 2000 on ABC when the St. Louis Rams’ last-second stop of the Tennessee Oilers at the 1-yard line kept viewers tuned to a 43.3/63 rating, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Las Vegas oddsmakers have installed the Patriots as 7-point favorites over the Panthers for the game, which begins at 6:25 p.m. EST after a 7-1/2-hour pregame show that includes, for the first time, one hour of related children’s programing on CBS’ sister cable networks.

Consultant and former CBS Sports president Neal Pilson pointed to the Super Bowl’s incredible consistency as an American “national holiday.”

“Looking at this year, most viewers are curious how good is New England’s defense and how strong is Carolina, having beaten a lot of good teams,” Pilson said. “I don’t think there’s a lot of passion for these teams the way there might be for Dallas, Chicago, Green Bay or Miami, teams that have been in the national eye for many years. But New England did win a Super Bowl a couple of years ago, and the ratings . . . were pretty good,” he said.

Charlotte, N.C., might be a small market, CBS’ McManus said, but the team draws from four areas in the state that add up to being the fourth-largest market in the United States. And Charlotte’s 50.2 rating for Sunday’s game against the Philadelphia Eagles shows the passion the area has for the team.

And CBS analyst Phil Simms predicted a close game during the network’s conference call, saying that “if you look at the scores of both teams during the year, it almost tells you the game has to be close.”

The lack of a big superstar doesn’t faze McManus either, who pointed to Patriots quarterback Tom Brady’s appearance Tuesday night beside first lady Laura Bush during the State of the Union speech as evidence of his appeal. “The great thing is that you have two weeks,” McManus added. “Maybe a lot of people haven’t heard of (Panthers quarterback) Jake Delhomme today, but I guarantee you in two weeks everyone will have heard about Jake Delhomme.”

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

http://www.dailypress.com/entertainment/news/ats-ap_entertainment11jan21,0,6352814.story?coll=sns-ap-topentertainment

By CONNOR ENNIS

AP Sports Writer

NFL stars Peyton Manning and Donovan McNabb will be watching the Super Bowl. CBS hopes all of their fans do the same.

With the premier television event of the year 10 days away, the network is banking on the Super Bowl’s status as a quasi-national holiday to overcome any shortcomings there might be in the matchup between the New England Patriots and the Carolina Panthers.

At first glance, this Super Bowl doesn’t seem ideal for television.

Neither team boasts an instantly recognizable star or a high-powered offense. Both Carolina quarterback Jake Delhomme and New England’s Tom Brady are more effective than flashy, and the teams tend to win defensive struggles instead of high-scoring shootouts. Plus, Carolina and New England are — in terms of the NFL — close geographically.

It probably doesn’t matter when it comes to the ratings for CBS.

“To a large extent the rating is quite bulletproof with the one caveat that you don’t want a game that gets out of hand,” Sean McManus, the president of CBS Sports, said Wednesday.

“Most people who get excited about the Super Bowl, who are the casual fan … I think to those people it doesn’t matter who the teams are.”

Every Super Bowl since 1991 has had a rating of at least 40.2, with 1996′s game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Pittsburgh Steelers earning a 46.1. Last year 137.65 million viewers, the second-most in history for the NFL’s championship game, watched Tampa Bay’s 48-21 blowout win over Oakland on Fox.

“You’re talking about almost half the country that makes it appointment TV,” said Neal Pilson, the former president of CBS Sports and now a consultant. “No matter the matchup, usually you start off with a 40 rating.”

But how far up — or down — that number goes is often determined by what happens on the field.

St. Louis’ 23-16 win over Tennessee in 2000, which came down to the final play, had a 43.2 rating. In 1998, when Denver beat Green Bay 31-24, had a 44.5.

The only Super Bowl since 1971 to have a rating below 40 was in 1990, which had a 39.0 rating for San Francisco’s 55-10 dismantling of Denver.

The rating is the percentage of all homes with TVs, whether or not they are in use. Each rating point represents a little more than 1 million TV homes.

And, with the two weeks of coverage and hype that precede this year’s game, the public is sure to become familiar with previously anonymous players.

Brady is already relatively well known, even sitting next to first lady Laura Bush during President Bush’s State of the Union address Tuesday night. But he isn’t viewed in the same way as star quarterbacks like Manning, McNabb or Green Bay’s Brett Favre.

Delhomme, on the other hand, is almost completely unknown. An out-of-nowhere starter whose Louisiana drawl is as unassuming as his play, he had thrown just 86 passes in six seasons with New Orleans before signing with the Panthers in the offseason.

But whether Brady, Delhomme or any other player becomes a household name by the time the game kicks off, CBS don’t seem too concerned.

“Those used to be more important factors when the Super Bowl wasn’t the huge national holiday that it’s become,” McManus said.

Whether viewers tune in because they love the Panthers or Patriots, the commercials or the halftime show or merely because they just love a good ol’ party, and the Super Bowl seems as good an excuse as any to throw one, there’s guaranteed to be a huge rating number come Monday.

“The rest of the world celebrates the World Cup,” Pilson said, “we celebrate the Super Bowl.”

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/business/stories.nsf/Business/6EEDDFA86800E46686256E23001658F4?OpenDocument&Headline=A-B+turns+Super+Bowl+advertising+into+Bud+Bowl

By Thomas Lee

Post-Dispatch

Anheuser-Busch Cos. once again will rule the Super Bowl.

The St. Louis-based brewer has purchased a total of five minutes of air time for CBS’ Feb. 1 telecast of Super Bowl XXXVIII, far more than any other company.

Pepsi-Cola Co. bought three minutes of commercials, while General Motors Corp., America Online and the National Football League each purchased a minute and a half.

The average price of a 30-second commercial is a record-breaking $2.3 million, according to Advertising Age, a leading trade publication. That means A-B spent approximately $23 million for its Super Bowl dominance.

All together, the company will unveil nine commercials: four 30-second spots and a 60-second commercial during the first half of the game, and four 30-second spots during the second half.

The commercials, which focus on Budweiser and Bud Light, will feature a familiar cast of characters, including St. Louis native Cedric the Entertainer and a bumbling football referee.

One spot that has generated buzz is a 60-second commercial that depicts a donkey who wants to be a Clydesdale horse. The spot is a variation of A-B’s previous Super Bowl commercials in which the Clydesdales play football.

As usual, A-B will have a fourth-quarter ad that promotes responsible drinking. In the commercial, country star Tim McGraw and Los Angeles Lakers forward Rick Fox show up at a club, where they receive plenty of attention from adoring fans. But the celebrities are soon upstaged by a frumpy man – the designated driver – who has his own posse of attractive women.

A-B also will introduce a commercial for Bud Light that emphasizes quality. Normally, the company devotes its quality messages for Budweiser, its flagship brand. Over the years, Bud Light has been A-B’s primary platform for its signature humor ads.

“With Bud Light, you have the humor,” said Bob Lachky, A-B’s vice president of brand management. “But it’s just nice to remind consumers what the product stands for.”

A-B’s Super Bowl lineup is also notable for what it doesn’t include. Leon, the egotistical football player whose commercials have run throughout the NFL season, did not make the cut. Ditto for Real Men of Genius, the television version of the popular radio campaign. The brewery started running the television ads last fall.

In both those cases, the audience already knows the general ending, Lachky said. Super Bowl spots are supposed to wow and surprise audiences, he said.

The company also will not plug Michelob Ultra, its enormously successful low carbohydrate beer. Ultra already has a “monster” marketing budget, Lachky said.

Plus, “There’s nothing new you can say about it,” he said.

Over the years, Anheuser-Busch Cos. has created memorable Super Bowl commercials. Among them:

1989 – Bud Bowl. Budweiser and Bud Light bottles square off in a football game. Bud Bowl ads air for six Super Bowls.

1995 – Budweiser Frogs. Three bullfrogs, in turn, croak “Bud…Weis…Er.”

1998 – Louie the Lizard. Famed-starved lizard assassinates the Budweiser Frogs.

2000 – Whasssup? Men greet each other enthusiastically.

2003 – Clydesdale Football. In this sequel to a 1996 Super Bowl ad, the Clydesdales use instant replay to settle a dispute.

http://www.medialifemagazine.com/news2003/dec03/dec08/2_tues/news2tuesday.html

Yes, they’re back. This time you’ll know who they are.

By Dave Lariviere

We may never see a repeat of 2000, when the dot.coms dominated Super Bowl advertising with more than 20 percent of the games spots bought by then-flush new media companies.

How easy it was to forget them, too–forgettable names of such forgotten dot.comers as LifeMinders.com, Epidemic.com and OnMoney.com.

This Super Bowl the dot.coms are back, and they’re upping the ad spending with a greater presence. The difference this time is that they’ll all be familiar names.

Two major dot.coms, America Online and Monster.com, are definitely planning to advertise in the upcoming game.

Another, Hotjobs, is still contemplating, according to media buyers and planners surveyed by Media Life, while Yahoo, a past advertiser, reportedly has not made a commitment.

America Online will replace last years halftime show sponsor, E*Trade, and run three 30-second commercials in a reported $7.5 million deal. The show, to be produced by MTV, will likely feature Janet Jackson and Outkast.

Monster will reportedly double its Super Bowl ad spending from last year.

The spots are about 80 to 90 percent sold, says GSD&M vice president and marketing director Eric Webber.

The biggest new advertiser is probably Gillette, they’re back for the first time in probably 10 years.

Also making their debuts will be Procter & Gamble, which awarded its spot to Charmin Friday, and Major League Baseball.

Some advertisers who bought time last year are passing this year, including Charles Schwab, Hanes and Reebook, which had one of the most successful spots last year with the Terry Tate, office linebacker character.

Average ad rates this year are between $2.3 million and $2.4 million, up about 10 percent over last year.

CBS, which is airing the game on Feb. 1, says that at 80 percent sold itis well ahead of where it was at this point three years ago, when it had sold only 65 percent of inventory.

Shawn Bradley, chief operating officer of The Bonham Group, says Anheuser-Busch has bought six to eight 30-second spots and will probably get the first commercial after the first time out, a prime spot that costs more than the average.

The Super Bowl is one of those events where it doesn’t depend on the season, the match-ups or whether major markets are involved, says Bradley. Its one of the stable platforms in sports.

John Bogusz, executive vice president of sports sales at CBS, confirms that Anheuser-Busch, General Motors and Pepsi would again be the top advertisers.

According to media people surveyed by Media Life, most of the advertisers look familiar.

Though CBS also refused to discuss specific pricing or placement of ads, its fairly well known that the earlier the spot, the steeper the price.

By halftime of a dull game, such as have been seen in several of the past few years, people are no longer paying attention to the commercials or have already drunk enough beer to forget them.

Thus the fourth-quarter spots are often available for companies who cant afford to appear in the first half.

Other advertisers who are returning this year include FedEx, Frito-Lay, Universal Studios, MGM, Warner Brothers, Visa and Gatorade, according to Bradley.

-Dave Lariviere is a New Jersey writer.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/lazare/cst-fin-lew24.html

BY LEWIS LAZARE SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

The name Bernice Kanner may not be familiar to many readers, but we remember her well.

Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, she wrote a breezy and opinionated marketing column for New York magazine called “On Madison Avenue.”

Kanner is one of the first scribes we know of who made the business of advertising and the personalities in it a fun, interesting read for those not closely associated with the industry. She seemed instinctively to know how to take potentially dry-as-dust material and give it a real spark.

But after a 13-year run, her column ended in 1994, and since then she’s been busy writing books. Her newest, out this month, is The Super Bowl of Advertising: How the Commercials Won the Game (Bloomberg Press, 215 pages, $29.95), which brings her back to an arena she obviously knows well. The new release is intended as an overview of what is touted every year — without fail — as the biggest single happening for fans of television advertising.

Of course, thanks to the relentless hype that starts months before the big game in innumerable media outlets, the Super Bowl of advertising is now a topic of interest to millions of people who used to tune in on the big Sunday to watch football, but now often find the game an afterthought when they have been instructed again and again to make the advertising their main focal point.

Kanner’s book starts exactly where you’d expect it to, at the beginning, and moves briskly through the years and decades as she briefly describes major ads in Super Bowl history.

In the second half of the book, ads are batched together in broad categories such as food, beer, sex and animals and sneaker wars, before ending with what appear to be tacked-on chapters about Pepsi Cola and the infamous dot-com Super Bowl in the year 2000.

Occasionally Kanner stops just long enough to mention a trend that surfaced at certain moments in the history of Super Bowl advertising, but she isn’t interested in dwelling on any commercial or any theme longer than a few sentences.

As you may have already surmised, such an approach is inherently problematic because the book comes off in the end as little more than a superficial and uninvolving list of Super Bowl advertising, instead of a probing analysis of how the advertising event has evolved. 

Kanner gets a few things quite right, though. For instance, she correctly pinpoints Apple Computer’s seminal “1984″ commercial for its then-new Macintosh computer as the one truly big event that set the stage for what is now known as the Super Bowl of Advertising.

That haunting commercial, shown only once, was a genuine landmark moment in the history of advertising. But Kanner, in her rush to lay out what came after, fails to adequately address the fact that almost every Super Bowl ad that followed “1984″ hasn’t come close to matching its big idea. 

The magnitude of “1984″ relative to most of the ads that have aired on the Super Bowl since then is especially apparent as Kanner’s book deals with the late 1990s and the still-new millennium. Here she only hints at some of the big problems threatening to do in the Super Bowl of advertising, such as a heavy reliance on lowbrow humor in lieu of great concepts and a cheapening of the overall quality of the work. 

Kanner thankfully stops short of being a gutless cheerleader for the ad industry in The Super Bowl of Advertising , but she has the knowledge and the perspective to have written a much more hard-hitting and memorable book than the one she delivered.

monster.com – Their ad against trucking stinks.

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Response from a fan who has watched all televised super bowl games.
This is by far the worst and most ill conceived ad campaign ever. The
ads are more disappointing than the game.

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As a Professional truck driver for the past 7 1/2 years, I was appalled
at the ad for Monster.com about the unmanned truck careening carelessly
damaging property and almost killing people. I suppose you knew you would
be getting letters like mine and I sure hope you get many more. With the
safety record we hold, all this shows the non-truck driver is we shouldn’t
be on the road. But! We do deliver everything you eat, wear, drive and
live-in. Monster. com should ride with a trucker to find out it’s not
an easy job to drive with alot of idiots on the road. I know it’s only
an ad to promote jobs for truck drivers, but why couldn’t they go to a
trucking company and just look at the empty trucks they have sitting in
the yard without drivers. You don’t need the Hollywood touch to make it
more exciting. Why didn’t they have an unemployed worker robbing a bank
because the place he used to work for, took away his unemployment benefits
and his wife and kids are home starving and are freezing with no heat.
I liked the ad with the talking sock. That was cute and I still remember
Monster.com did that one. Tell Monster.com to stay out of Hollywood and
get with the real picture–people ARE out of jobs and they should concentrate
with a better commercial for them, not to ruin the image of truck drivers
who have a hard time keeping a good name. I also wrote to Monster.com,
but I’m so upset about the commercial, I’ll write to everyone about it.
What they should have done was show a truck driver going for a random
drug and alcohol test and passing because he is looked up to by young
adults.

Thanks for listening.

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Commercial re size of possible future mother-in-law, DISGUSTING.

Women should be checking out how the future father-in-law will look
later, after all it is mostly men drinking beer in commercials.

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I THINK THE BUDLIGHT AD WITH THE CLOWN IS THE BEST.

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more clydesdales, please, they are they best.

I can’t believe you don’t use them more.

I love the kick and the flip the coin, more of them please.

Thank you.

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Bud clown

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I vote Dexter Jackson for the MVP. Give up the Cadi’!!!

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Budweiser Clydesdales

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my choice af the super bowl ads is the Monster truck runnig wild

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Pepsi with the Osbournes!

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The best super bowl ad is the BUD one with the BIG BUTT

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this was the best commercial of all, most were very stupid especially
the osbourns and there were two which were gross the beefy jerky in the
truck and the super bowl ring regugertation.

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The best ad is BUd SUPER BUTT

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Bud commercial about the hair. Dog placed on head

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No doubt, hands down, the best commercial was the Bud Lite ad of the
guy dressed in the clown suit walking into the bar. A distant second,
but quite amusing was the guy who is about to meet his girlfriend’s mother.
Now there is a woman who when she has to haul ass, has to make two trips
…

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My favorite commerical was the Sierra Mist commercial where the dog
kicked the cap off the fire hydrant.

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The Levi ad with buffalo …..sucked. Please bring back the Whattssup
guys…. Or some more funny dogs. Budwesier Ads are always good.

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I think that you should have forwarded the Fed Ex box onto the Oakland
Raiders team so they could use the cell phone to call for HELP and the
GPS to find the end zone!!

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First Tn Bank Ads were the best over all

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( 1 ) Budweiser ” No Pets Allowed” ( 2 ) Osbornes ( 3 ) Budweiser “Zebra”

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Hey, I missed the survey, but I thought the Osbourne’s Pepsi Ad the
very best by far! Thanx for the ad list, as I checked them off as I watched
them.

Did the 3 armed beer drinker air? I didn’t see it.

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I want Ron Felcher to bring Terry to MY office…..Great ad!!!

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Miller Lite commercial is in BAD TASTE and I will rememebr not to buy
their product becuase of it.

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Sierra Mist with the dog and fire hydrant. FUNNY!!

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Hotjobs commercial might be one of the worst I have ever seen. Monster,
too. Why do they keep spending that much for crap?

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I vote for the Bud ad with Clydesdales and Zebra.

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I loved the Trident ad. It has to be the best one of the year, it was
“nuts”.

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Budweiser: and Bud Light

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First of all, let me confess that If I hadn’t been asked for a Minnesota
talk radio program to rate the superbowl ads, I probably wouldn’t even
have watched the game. But as long as I had to sit through it, and be
intelligent about it in the morning, I figured the least I could do was
to apply my scientific analysis skills to the exercise.

First thing I did was develop a proper, scientific metric based of course
on the ultimate objective of: would I want to buy anything from this company,
or have a relationship of any sort with the advertiser.

At the bottom of the scale was the Yuck factor. Ads that made me never
ever want to buy anything from the company again. Budweiser won this category
hands down. Their clown ad was not just dumb, but frankly revolting. But
that paled in comparison with the “Girlfriend and her mother” ad which
inspired me not to buy the product, but rather to call all my female friends
to join me in a nationwide boycott of Budweiser products. (Note to friends,
don’t even THINK of bringing Bud, Bud light, Michelob or any other Budweiser
product into my house.)

Only slightly higher up the food chain was the “Huh?” factor – otherwise
known as “You’re confusing creative with effective” These ads were more
confusing than memorable, and so clearly driven by agency creatives, rather
than anyone with a business sense. These ads may have been intended to
be humorous, but in so doing not only did they fail to promote their brands,
but more likely to have damaged the brand by mixing their messages.

Levis, the Busweiser Zebra ad,Gatorade/Jordan ad, Honda, Coors and Pepsi
all fell into this category. Monster.Com made the list because I really
couldn’t figure out why a truck blowing up a building would make you want
to go to a web site to look for a job. On a couple of them, I simply assumed
they must be targeted to an audience that might understand better than
I. But in that case, at $4 million a minute seemed a bit excessive just
to make the point that you were so hip that anyone over 18 doesn’t need
to understand your commercials.

One step up from the “What were they thinking” rating is the “So What”
category. Into this category were the ads that weren’t memorable or effective,
but at least they weren’t offensive.

Most of the trailers for upcoming movies and television shows went into
this category. My guess is that many of them wouldn’t be there if there
weren’t joint ownership between the television station and the movie studio
- regardless, after awhile they all blended together. Same thing for the
car ads. Nissan, Mercury, Chevy Trucks and Honda all failed to make a
lasting impression. Cadillac was borderline. Their ads were certainly
nothing that would make you sit up and take notice, but they were at least
frequent enough as to be memorable.

I figured you really couldn’t have more than five or six really great
ads, so the rest fell into a category that could best be called “also
rans.” They were memorable, and probably effective, but they just didn’t
earn the Superbowl ring.

The Sierra-Mist ads were a great example. Compelling ads, but I had
to go look up the sponsor – clearly lacking some branding. The Trident
ad was funny and memorable, just not stellar. Mastercard ads do a brilliant
job at building on their brand, but I didn’t think their debit card ad
was as effective as some of their others. W.B.Mason did a great job with
tying their brand to Perry Mason, but unless they couple the ad with some
other significant marketing effort, the one shot ad will not be remembered.

And the winner is – well actually, we’ll start with the runners up for
the Superbowl Trophy.

Honorable Mention goes to Visa for its ads that made fun of celebrities
and other who needed cash was brilliant, and also did an effective job
of getting its messages across.

Another Honorable Mention goes to the anti-drug ads, particularly the
one in the subway, It was so chilling and compelling and I can only keep
my fingers crossed that they had as much impact on everyone else as they
did on me.

In third place is H&R Block’s ad with Wilile Nelson was a terrific use
of humor plus celebrity plus strong tie in to brand and message – Second
place goes to Sony. My heart wants to Sony the first prize for the most
measurable ad. Viewers were asked to go to the web site to download the
song – a nice way to tie customer behavior with the ad. The ad itself
was terrific, great music and a way cool message, and in another year
would have won hands down. But this year the competition was just too
fierce.

And tied for first place (okay, I’m a Libra, I can’t make up my mind)
is Fed Ex and M-Life. Fed Ex effectively used humor to really get its
message across with its Fed Ex driver emerging from a desert island to
deliver a package. It clearly communicated the company’s positioning in
a highly memorable way and did a nice job of keeping the brand in front
of the viewer.

M-Life, that previewed its product line in a series of incomprehensible
ads last year wins both first place and “most improved.” Its Gilligan’s
Island and

———————————————————————————

I thought Reebok’s “Office Linebacker” beat all these others but you
don’t have it listed here. Why?? Get with the program!

———————————————————————————

reebock

———————————————————————————

we vote for the Ozzie Osborn ad for Pepsi Twist

———————————————————————————

Hanes Tagless TShirts with Jackie Chan! Hahahahahahhaha It was so funny!

———————————————————————————

They should be ashamed! There are far too many people who mistreat
animals in this world, we shouldn’t use that fact for humor. Quizno’s
showed their chief chef so absent minded that his parakeet died. I for
one won’t be eating at a Quizno’s any time soon!

———————————————————————————

I would like to vote for the FedEx commercial.

———————————————————————————

um……. the bucs won

———————————————————————————

My favorite ad was the ‘upside-down’ clown drinking a beer and being
refused a hot dog.

———————————————————————————

THE ADVERTISEMENTS YOU HAD ON STUNK. THEY WERE NOT ENTERTAINING. THE
HORSES WERE ABOUT THE BEST. HALFTIME MORE THAN STUNK AND I LOVE SHANIA
LOOKED LIKE A HOOKER THE OTHER BROAD LOOKED LIKE A JERK WANNA BE MADONNA
OR MARYLIN. IVE HAVE NEVER SEEN SUCH A LOUSY SUPERBOWL. THE GAME WAS GREAT.
TELL THEM TO GET BETTER ADVERTISERS TRY A LITTLE MORE MATURE THEMES

———————————————————————————

Why was the company in the Reebok ad called “Felcher and Felcher” I
mean, isn’t that unnecessarily disgusting???

———————————————————————————

I really enjoyed the following: Reebok featuring Tery Tate and Tike
and Ronde Barber commercials.

———————————————————————————

Monster.com’s ad with the truck was alright…but the whole super bowl
was RUINED with that HORRIBLE “don’t smoke pot” ad involving the pregnancy
test…. Who comes up with these ideas? George Bush himself??? What a
bunch of CRAP!

———————————————————————————

I am so sick of hearing about the osbournes! Those animals are the scum
of the earth! They are totally sickening!! The media in this country want
to shove these creeps down our throats. I saw one TV news cast that referred
to them as ‘America’s Newest First Family’ America is NOT represented
by these foul-mouthed, burnt out drug addicted, no talent jerks!!!!!!

Put the osbournes where they belong – in the toilet, and flushed as
quickly as possible!

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Hanes is my choice for best ad.

———————————————————————————

Clysdale football commercial was by far the best(Zebra,etc.)…..Almost
as good as last year re: World Trade Center with the horses bowing at
Liberty Island

———————————————————————————

My favorite ad was the teen-age daughter getting pregnant due to drugs
impairing her judgement. Along the same lines, I also vote for the ad
that showed a little boy playing baseball with his dad and getting older
- it was a “Talk to your kids about smoking…they’ll listen.” I was so
glad to see that all of the commercials weren’t advocating beer and sex.

Full-time student, waitress, and mother

———————————————————————————

The Terry Tate ad is a classic! Best Superbowl ad in years!

———————————————————————————

Terry Tate-Office Linebacker commercial

WAS The BEST!!!

I WANT to SEE MORE!!!!

The PAIN TRAIN has ARRIVED!! Totally AWESOME!!

———————————————————————————

It’s interesting how the superbowl advertising changed. 2-3 years ago,
the bowl was flooded with dot com hopefuls spending their last dime for
a spot. Thankfully all that crap is gone and the companies have returned
to advertising. Things were really bad in 1999 and 2000. THis year showed
some good old cleverness and humor across the board as well as some good
advertising. Use of music totally worked for some, like SOny’s remake
of CSN&Y’s “Carry On” for their Man in Space commercial and Cadillac’s
series of Led Zepplin’s “Been a long Time” spots. Lots of good animal
commercials including the king of ad animals, the Budweiser Clysdales
waiting for the Zebra replay. THe best animal of them all was no doubt
Terry Tate, Office Linebacker. Just when you thought commercials couldn’t
make you laugh anymore. “If it’s gametime, then it’s pain time! You know
what I’m talking about?!? Woooo!” Reebok definitely wins my vote this
year. My ranking:

1) Reebok “Terry Tate”

2) Budweiser “Replay”

3) Sony “Man into Space”

4) Sierra Mist “Fire Hydrant”

5) Sierra Mist “Monkey”

6) Hotjobs – “Rainbow Connection”

7) US Govt – “Subway Visit”

8) Universal “Hulk”

8) Mastercard – “Presidents”

10) Gatorade – “23 vs 39″

———————————————————————————

chexchecking with the very tall basketball player

———————————————————————————

Not as good as the usual fare….

———————————————————————————

I vote for the Reebok Commercial with Terry Tate

———————————————————————————

I Love Ozzy…and I Love Pepsi…Don’t like Football, but watched the
superbowl just for the commercials!!!

———————————————————————————

super bowl ad w Jordan I beg to differ. While it could have been better
produced, it was a GREAT idea and a good ad.

———————————————————————————

FedEx Castaway Spoof – Great concept, & hilarious!

———————————————————————————

The Ozbournes – Ozzie’s dream.

———————————————————————————

Hi, tried to vote on the Dogde commerical. Loved it during the Superbowl!

———————————————————————————

1. Bud – Zebra

2. Bud – Clown

3. Pepsi – Ozzie Osborne

4. Fed-Ex – Man on deserted island

———————————————————————————

I liked the Willie Nelson H & R Block Ad

———————————————————————————

Budweiser & Bud Light never fail ( Third Arm, Motormouth, etec.)! Their
ads were great. I also loved Visa Checks Cars with Yeo Ming. How you fail
with an ad featuring the Osbournes! Loved this year’s commercial’s!!!!!!!

———————————————————————————

IT WAS THE ZEBRA!!!!

the best ever…..

———————————————————————————

where’s the voting box for “Office linebacker” and the “wb (perry) mason”
ads? they were both worth watching.

———————————————————————————

i have many thoughts on the game and the commercials. i think that pitt
*my home team, may i add* should have been in the super bowl. we would
have killed either team. they both played horribly last night, with the
exception for tampa in the 2nd half. that was their come back. as far
as the commercials, THEY WERE GREAT! last year was a great dissappointment
for commercials, but this year they out did it. I personally liked the
one with the clown and the one with the ref. budwieser def. out did themselves
this year. the one commercial that i heard so much about *i was in the
darn bathroom!* was the one where a guy was set up on a blind date, and
they were like…’look at the mother, and thats what she will look like
in 20 years.’. well, if you saw it, you know the rest.

well, those are my thoughts, accept them or not, and im outta here.
peace

———————————————————————————

I would like to vote for bud clydesdales “Replay”

———————————————————————————

we liked the pepsi twist commercial with the osbournes and the osmonmds.

It really showed how far our society has changed in entertainment values.
Please bring back the good old days!

———————————————————————————

I liked the Zebra Ad

———————————————————————————

~From Tampa Bay, Florida – Home of the World-Champion BUCCANEERS!!~

The concensus at our Super Bowl party was that the BEST commercial is
one that is not even listed in your poll.

The Reebok “Terry Tate – Office Linebacker” ad got EVERYONE’S vote &
the biggest laughs of the game! We appreciated its creative depiction
of “Extreme Office Management.”

———————————————————————————

The top 5 were: 1)The 2 guys working out in the gym 2) the Football
tackler- Reebok 3) the girlfriend’s mother with e huge butt. 4) The Clydedales
replay.

———————————————————————————

The Quiznos ad has to be the worst ad I have ever seen. It has the bird
community in a up roar. People on hundreds of email list are planning
to boycott Quiznos for their showing of a dead bird that was starved to
death due to chef Jimmy. Why didn’t they use a dog or cat? Do they think
that people don’t care about birds? I for one will never again buy from
them.

———————————————————————————

toss up between reeboks office linebacker and bud lights clown……….

———————————————————————————

I thought the Sierra Mist commercials, specifically the one at the zoo
was brilliant as was the dog and the hydrant! Animals in any ad are always
a big plus for me. I would definitely try the product. Of course, the
Clydesdales were once again the #1 pick with me. Not only was it hysterical
but beautifully filmed. I hope to see it again during the Pro-Bowl.

———————————————————————————

That Rebok commercial with the football player in the office was the
best.

———————————————————————————

the fed x man is the one I pick

———————————————————————————

The best ads were the JEEP ads.

The dot com ads were really strange!

The worst ad was the truck with the guy choking and throwing up on the
windshield.

The one probably most insulting to females is the one with the “mother-in-law
to be” with the fat butt.

———————————————————————————

Sierra Mist!!!! So cool. I’m a mother and I socially drink, I thought
it was a beer commercial. The monkeys(?) turning into the seal thing and
being catapulted-too much. Congratulations to whoever thought that one
up.

———————————————————————————

that was a pitiful, pitiful game yesterday….I think seeing No Doubt
and Santana play were the high points…I miss the Whazzzzup ads, too!
On the plus side, it was a good excuse for me to lie on the sofa with
my feeties elevated.

———————————————————————————

http://www.salon.com/ent/tv/diary/2003/01/27/super_ads/index_np.html

Brewskis, butt jokes and reefer madness

This year’s Super Bowl ads reflect a depressed nation: We need jobs, our animals don’t talk anymore and we’re terrified of big butts and bad drugs. How ’bout a beer?

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

By Carina Chocano

If Super Bowl ads express the collective male mood, then this year they were like a monosyllabic grunt. Pepsi traded Britney for Ozzy. Honda featured boys who didn’t but said they did. Chrysler — in a move apparently calculated to have the same effect as thinking about baseball — featured Celine Dion driving a big, van-like thing and singing. Dodge wooed us with a close-up of regurgitated beef jerky. Anheuser-Busch achieved near-hegemony with a series of disjointed ads that ranged from gross to goofy to glazed and defeated. Aside from Coors’ suggestion that everybody just fast-forward to the booby portion of the familiar “twins” ad (and remember to thank the remote), sex was mostly just that thing blocking the TV.

Is it weird that the bad butt jokes outnumbered the bikinis? I don’t know. But between the rueful financial services ads, the wistful, down-to-earth job-board commercials, the histrionic, “Reefer Madness”-style public service announcements and the triumph of the beer-for-beer’s-sake ethos, a weirdly dispirited message emerged: Get a job, any job, because the fact that your stock portfolio sucks doesn’t mean you won’t be audited at any minute. So don’t smoke, don’t do drugs and – buddy, you look like you could use a beer!

Several advertising trends emerged last night, although it’s unclear exactly why. They went something like this:

When making a cultural reference, make sure it’s outdated and/or irrelevant.

Two ads borrowed heavily from feature films long-since available on video. An anti-drug public service announcement paid homage to the 1999 ghost thriller, “The Sixth Sense,” and a FedEx spot resuscitated the 2000 Tom Hanks one-man show “Cast Away.” Not to be outdated, a third commercial, for AT&T’s mLife, exhumed the 1964 hit show, “Gilligan’s Island.” Curiously, both the mLife spot and the FedEx spot riffed on the ways in which technology improves our lives. AT&T imagines what would have happened if Gilligan had owned a cell phone (he would have gotten off the island much sooner), and FedEx wonders what would have happened if the package the castaway neglected to open in the five years he was marooned had contained a satellite phone, a GPS locator, a water purifier and some seeds (he would have felt like an ass.)

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/football/2003/playoffs/news/2003/01/27/superbowl_ratings_ap/

Game draws second-largest TV audience

Updated: Monday January 27, 2003 4:04 PM

NEW YORK (AP) — This lopsided Super Bowl had the second-most TV viewers in NFL title game history: 137.65 million.

ABC’s telecast of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ 48-21 victory over the Oakland Raiders on Sunday registered a national rating of 40.7 — 1 percent higher than last year and the best since 2000.

That means an average of 40.7 percent of the country’s TV homes were watching at any given moment.

The viewership estimate, based on everyone who watched at least six minutes, puts Sunday’s game second only to the 1996 Super Bowl between the Dallas Cowboys and Pittsburgh Steelers, which was seen by 138.5 million on NBC.

Last year’s game was watched by 131.7 million on Fox.

The Super Bowl is often the most-watched TV program each year, and nine of the 15 highest-rated shows in history are NFL championship games.

In 2002, the New England Patriots’ 20-17 upset of the St. Louis Rams on a final-play field goal had a 40.4 national rating on Fox. That tied 2001 for the fourth-lowest rating for a Super Bowl since 1972. Sunday’s game ranks 27th of the 32 Super Bowls since then; of course, cable and the Internet have lowered broadcast ratings in general.

On the other hand, because more people own TVs, lower ratings can still translate to higher viewership.

The 2000 rating was 43.2 for ABC’s telecast of St. Louis’ 23-16 victory over Tennessee.

Viewership was consistently high throughout Sunday’s broadcast, starting with 38.8 from 6:30-7 p.m. and rising to 41.5 by the end of the second quarter. Even halftime was popular, with a 40.1 rating from 8-8:30 p.m.

The audience — which advertisers paid ABC an average of just over $2 million per 30-second commercial to reach — dipped from 9-9:30 p.m., during which time Tampa Bay enjoyed its biggest lead, 34-3.

It was in that segment that officials reviewed a ruling that negated a possible touchdown by the Raiders with a little more than two minutes left in the third quarter.

As ABC’s broadcasters discussed whether the touchdown should have counted, play-by-play announcer Al Michaels said with a laugh to analyst John Madden: “Anything to hold an audience at this point.”

With about six minutes remaining in the game, Oakland wideout Jerry Rice’s touchdown cut his team’s deficit to 34-21, prompting Michaels to say, hope in his voice: “Well, for what it’s worth, at least the Raiders are CLEARLY back in the game.”

Indeed, Oakland’s mini-rally probably helped bring viewers back to the game. The rating rose a bit from 9:30-10 p.m., and hit its peak for the final 18 minutes, from 10-10:18 p.m., with 42.4 percent of the country tuning in.

“There was a significant interest in the game: the matchups, the coaching story with Jon Gruden,” said Neal Pilson, former president of CBS Sports and now a consultant. “And the game kind of rescued itself late in the third quarter, when Oakland scored a couple of touchdowns. We were headed for a real blowout.”

The record rating for a Super Bowl is the 49.1 that CBS got for San Francisco’s 26-21 victory over Cincinnati in 1982.

The good ratings for this year’s Super Bowl will benefit next year’s broadcaster, CBS, which will sell its ad time based largely on how many viewers were reached this time.

“The biggest benefactor is CBS,” Pilson said. “ABC doesn’t get a single nickel more or less.”

http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/sports/0103/24commercials.html

Super Sunday of advertisements coming up

By MARY ANNE OSTROM

Knight Ridder Newspapers

You think it’s only football coming Sunday? When rival quarterbacks Rich Gannon and Brad Johnson aren’t pitching the ball in the Super Bowl, some of America’s best known athletes and entertainers will fill the TV screen in the annual advertising bonanza that’s expected to include some of the most expensive 30-second marketing pitches ever.

In spite of an uncertain economy, consumer product companies, movie studios, automakers, and a couple of dot-com survivors are among some two dozen advertisers reportedly spending between $1.9 million and $2.1 million for a 30-second spot in the year’s most watched televised event. Nearly all of the 61 spots have been sold, a sign that the advertising market is awakening from its extended slumber.

Super Bowl XXXVII, being played in San Diego, will be broadcast on ABC.

And here’s what you’ll likely see: Willie Nelson, of singing and tax trouble fame, selling H&R Block taxpayer services. Basketball legend Michael Jordan doing double duty in separate ads for Hanes underwear and sports drink Gatorade. Maybe (but maybe not) a peek from Universal Pictures at the computer-generated star of its upcoming summer flick “The Hulk”. Destiny Child’s Beyonce Knowles singing a pop tune in a Spike Lee-directed ad for PepsiCola — though, to build buzz, Pepsi isn’t confirming. For sure, songstress Celine Dion belting a pitch to the suburban crowd for DaimlerChrysler’s new Pacifica wagon.

And what’s a Super Bowl without beer ads? Giant suds maker Anheuser-Busch has bought a full five minutes of ad time. Or a contest to win a pair of jeans with a 2.5 carat diamond button and 112 rubies? San Francisco-based Levi Strauss is giving away a pair of new Type1 pants, valued at $150,000 including cash in the pockets, to mark its gold-rush era founding 150 years ago.

What you won’t see: The National Football League nixed an ad from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority because league rules ban ads that could encourage betting on sports.

Despite annual handwringing by advertisers over the astronomical cost and some high-profile departures from the lineup of past years, the Super Bowl remains, well, the Super Bowl of advertising.

“There is no such thing as a ‘must buy’ for advertisers. They are still minding their pennies,” said Ian Beavis, chief executive of San Francisco-based ad agency Foote, Cone and Belding. “But people with big budgets looking to build brand and buzz are here.” Only instead of dot-coms, which dominated advertising in 2000, movie studios and consumer product companies are back in “a return to a kind of new normal” for the Super Bowl, Beavis said.

A record 17 Internet companies guzzled 40 percent of the game’s commercial time in 2000. On Sunday, just two online businesses are buying 30 seconds each.

While last year’s slate of ads were heavy on patriotism and post-Sept. 11 reflection, humor and whimsy are making a comeback this year, even as the threat of a Middle East war looms.

H&R’s new 30-second Super Bowl spot shows Nelson learning he owes millions in unexpected taxes and acceptst a job pitching Mr. Smoothie shaving cream to pay the bill. H&R’s tongue-in-cheek message: The singer should have consulted one of its tax preparers.

In real life, Nelson paid $16.7 million to satisfy the IRS after a botched investment scheme.

In a nod to tough economic times, ads for rival job-hunting sites HotJobs (owned by Yahoo) and Monster — now in their fifth head-to-head Super Bowl match-up — are touting services for blue-collar workers since no one is currently hiring the white-collar variety. As if Silicon Valley can’t produce enough dispair, HotJobs had to go to the Czech republic to find a drill-bits factory with enough downcast ambience for the ad, which encourages workers to dream of a better job.

Why do advertisers pay such premium prices, on top of production costs that easily reach $1 million? Because the Super Bowl, for many, is as much about ads as the game on the field. And for one day of the year, TiVo users give their ad-skipping recording devices a rest.

While, on average, regular programs lose between five and 15 percent of the audience during commercial breaks, the Super Bowl is a rare exception, a new survey by ad buying firm Initiative Media finds. Last year’s Super Bowl boasted nearly equivalent ratings between the program and commercial minutes, a feat unmatched by any other big-event show.

Still, over the years, big-name advertisers, including Coca-Cola and Nike, have sunk their advertising dollars elsewhere. Others, including McDonald’s and Charles Schwab, opt for cheaper time sold in pre- or-post game shows

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/24/business/media/24ADCO.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5006&en=aa8b3b1744fdd767&ex=1044075600&partner=ALTAVISTA

By STUART ELLIOTT

As Madison Avenue gears up for Super Bowl Sunday – the biggest day of the year for both advertising and football – marketers and agencies are adopting a strategy torn from a gridiron playbook: get big or go home.

Many of the executives taking the expensive risk of advertising during the ABC broadcast of Super Bowl XXXVII on Sunday are deciding, in effect, if they’ve got it, they may as well flaunt it.

Advertisers are buying more commercial time during the game than usual or initially intended. Just four advertisers – Anheuser-Busch, General Motors, PepsiCo and Sony – will by themselves account for 40 percent of the spots being sold by ABC.

Marketers including Reebok International are also running spots that go on for longer than the traditional 30 seconds, while others like AT&T Wireless and the Hanes division of the Sara Lee Corporation are buying commercials during the pregame, halftime or postgame shows. Some companies, like Levi Strauss & Company and PepsiCo, are also sponsoring online promotions tied to their Super Bowl commercials. And more advertisers than ever are orchestrating elaborate publicity campaigns centered on Super Bowl spots.

Advertisers are flooding the zone – even though 30-second spots during the game are estimated to cost an average of $2.1 million – in hopes their commercials will break through to the projected audience of 130 million or more Americans expected to watch at least part of the game.

That audience is particularly prized for its size, probably the largest for any TV show this year. And the viewers actually want to watch the ads during the annual midwinter festival of athleticism and commercialism. A survey from Eisner Communications in Baltimore found that a record 14 percent of respondents said they would watch the game primarily for the commercials, compared with 2 percent who said so in the first survey in 1995.

“One of the biggest challenges today is to be seen, to be heard, to be noticed,” said Becky Saeger, executive vice president for brand marketing at Visa USA in San Francisco, a Super Bowl mainstay that will run two spots during the game by the New York office of BBDO Worldwide, part of the Omnicom Group. “Your dream is that a consumer wants to watch, to listen to you.”

The avid audience helped convince the beer goliath Anheuser-Busch, which was already set to be the single largest advertiser in the game with five minutes of commercials, to add another 30 seconds to its mammoth buy.

As a result of moves like that one, the total number of advertisers taking the 61 30-second spots during the game is somewhat less than usual.

“How many times are you going to get this many people sitting in front of their televisions watching and talking about the ads?” asked Ed Erhardt, president for customer marketing and sales in New York for ABC Sports and its sibling, ESPN, both parts of the Walt Disney Company.

“So if you’re going to invest in the Super Bowl, if you’re going to have the platform, use it,” he added.

Another way sponsors are seeking to enlarge their presence on Sunday is to have their agencies create spots that run 45, 60 or even 90 seconds. In addition to Reebok, advertisers like DaimlerChrysler, FedEx, and G.M. are offering supersize commercials.

“This is a big moment for us,” said Micky Pant, chief marketing officer at Reebok in Canton, Mass., which is returning to the Super Bowl after an absence of IX, er, nine years. “So we decided to go for broke.”

“It’s a lot of money for that minute,” Mr. Pant said, “but our brand is looking better and enjoying significant growth, and our product line has improved dramatically. So if you put money behind advertising, it’s worth it.”

The Reebok spot – a collaboration between the Arnell Group in New York, owned by Omnicom, and Hypnotic, an entertainment production company in Los Angeles and New York owned by Enigma Media – introduces a character named Terrible Terry Tate, an office worker who behaves like a linebacker.

Reebok has such high hopes for the character that the spot was the subject of teaser commercials that ran this month, which is another way to try making a Super Sunday presence loom larger in consumer minds.

“On Monday, you’ll either have a celebrity,” Mr. Pant said of Tate, “or our collective heads.”

To help insinuate their commercial messages further into the public consciousness, companies have stepped up their public relations efforts surrounding the spots. These campaigns are being aimed at customers, employees or franchisees, through corporate meetings, newsletters, Web sites and e-mail messages, as well as at the public through coverage on TV shows like “Entertainment Tonight.”

“It’s all about confidence in your creative and confidence in your message,” said Ted Sann, chairman and chief creative officer at BBDO New York, which is creating commercials for FedEx and Pepsi-Cola as well as Visa. “When you have that confidence, the Super Bowl is a great place to be. Otherwise, there are a lot of reasons for not being there.”

Chief among those reasons – apart from the cost, of course, which is up from last year’s estimated average of $1.9 million for a 30-second commercial – is a fear that a subpar spot will inflict far more damage than skipping the game altogether.

“Oh, God, every time you’re in, you hold your breath,” said Mike Campbell, chief creative officer for the New York office of J. Walter Thompson, part of the WPP Group. “You don’t want to go in with anything you think is less than a touchdown.”

That is why, in planning the rollout this month of humorous commercials for the Trident gum brand sold by Pfizer, Thompson New York juggled the order of how it would introduce the initial two spots. One, featuring a deranged squirrel, was to have appeared in early January and the other, focused on a pesky fly, was to have started later this month. But when the squirrel spot “scored the highest in Trident history” in consumer testing, Mr. Campbell said, the agency decided “to hold what we thought was our biggest bang for the Bowl” and the fly commercial came out first.

The Trident commercial, with humor, animals and a surprise ending, is typical of the content of Super Bowl spots. Other familiar elements like celebrities and music will also be prevalent in the spots to be shown, emblematic of a back-to-basics approach after three Super Bowls of dot-com boom, dot-com bust and post-9/11 patriotism. (There will be only three dot-coms in the game – myfico.com, part of Fair, Isaac & Company; the Monster division of TMP Worldwide and the HotJobs unit of Yahoo – compared with 17 in 2000.)

Among other examples of tried-and-true content are a BBDO New York spot for the Pepsi Twist brand sold by Pepsi-Cola, which will present Ozzy Osbourne, Florence Henderson and Donny and Marie Osmond; the Hanes spot, by the Martin Agency in Richmond, Va., part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, featuring Michael Jordan and Jackie Chan; a commercial for H&R Block by Campbell Mithun in Minneapolis, also part of Interpublic, with Willie Nelson as the star; and spoofs of “Gilligan’s Island” and “Antiques Roadshow” in spots for AT&T Wireless by Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide in New York, part of WPP.

The current escapist mood of the country, as indicated by strong sales of movie tickets at box offices each weekend and high ratings for offbeat reality shows on television, would suggest that a zany, madcap approach to Super Bowl spots is smart. The advertisers and ABC are, of course, hoping there will be no breaking news like war with Iraq to render inappropriate the light, upbeat tone of most spots. They do have contingency plans in place, which they declined to discuss, in case the Super Bowl is overtaken by events.

“You have to be nothing if not flexible these days,” said Ms. Saeger at Visa, which is to present the basketball star Yao Ming in one of its spots.

That flexibility is underscored by the decisions of several marketers that have been recent Super Bowl advertisers to skip the game this time.

“We look at it on a case-by-case basis,” said Celeste Alleyne, a spokeswoman for Nike in Beaverton, Ore., which has run many memorable Super Bowl spots. Rather than wait for Sunday, she added, the company decided to introduce during the playoffs a talked-about spot titled “Streaker” for its Nike Shox NZ line. The spot, by Wieden & Kennedy in Portland, Ore., shows a fan clad only in a scarf and shoes running wild on a soccer field.

“We’ll do it when it makes sense for us, when it lines up with our strategic priorities,” said Larry Flanagan, chief marketing officer for another frequent Super Bowl sponsor, MasterCard International in Purchase, N.Y. Though the game “didn’t fit in with our priorities right now,” he added, MasterCard will advertise during coverage of other TV big events like the Academy Awards, also on ABC.

So if the Oakland Raiders battling the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in San Diego does not excite you enough, mark your calendar for March 23 when MasterCard and other marketers will sponsor another West Coast skirmish, between Miramax and the rest of Hollywood.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=filmNews&storyID=2101997

By Craig Offman

NEW YORK (Variety) – With nearly half the country expected to huddle in front of their television sets for Super Bowl XXXVII on Sunday, Hollywood isn’t hesitating to take advantage of the viewership and give potential ticket buyers a first look at this year’s major tentpoles.

In a major coup that will help kick off not only the game but the campaign for “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines,” Arnold Schwarzenegger will introduce the matchup between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Oakland Raiders with a taped segment, followed by a premiere of the trailer for the Jonathan Mostow-directed actioner, which Warner Bros. will distribute this July.

Schwarzenegger will also be at the game and have a strong on-air presence during the broadcast.

Other highly anticipated bows also planned include:

= A new 60-second teaser for Warners’ sequels “The Matrix: Reloaded” and “The Matrix: Revolutions,” revealing new shots of the pictures’ major action sequences. After the Super Bowl, Warners will stop promoting the sequels together and instead focus on pushing each picture individually. Warners also used the 1999 Super Bowl to push the first “Matrix.”

= Universal’s first unveiling of “The Hulk” with a 30-second spot that showcases the film’s angry green meanie rampaging through the streets of San Francisco. Other than revealing only part of what the movie’s computer-generated Hulk will look like in a teaser poster, Universal has kept any image of the Hulk tightly under wraps. The trailer will be the first time audiences, and especially critical fans, will see the Hulk in action.

The studio will also use the broadcast to promote its upcoming Jim Carrey laffer “Bruce Almighty.” No ad for the male-driven “The Fast and the Furious 2″ will be shown, however.

= A new 30-second trailer for Fox’s comic book adaptation “Daredevil,” which leaps into theaters only weeks later in February. Due to the picture’s already high awareness factor, the spot could be swapped at the last minute for a new trailer for “X-Men 2.”

= A spot for Disney’s spy thriller “The Recruit,” starring Al Pacino and Colin Farrell, which bows five days later. The studio is counting on the broadcast to be the perfect venue to reach out to the picture’s strongly male demo

n And a new 30-second promo for Columbia Pictures’ sequel “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.”

The studio has also purchased two other 30-second spots to push potentially “Bad Boys II” and the Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson laffer “Anger Management.” By late Thursday, the studio still hadn’t officially made its final decision on the two other spots, giving consideration to its actioner “SWAT” and “Tears of the Sun.”

THREE STUDIOS ON BENCH

New Line Cinema, Paramount Pictures and MGM will not be shelling out the big bucks this year, opting to sit on the sidelines, instead.

At an average $2.1 million for a 30-second commercial, ABC’s broadcast of the game is commanding 15%-20% more than in the subdued, post-9/11 atmosphere of 2002. It also tops the records set in 2000. The network sold 61 spots.

But with Hollywood betting big $100 million or higher budgets on its summer fare, grabbing the attention of what’s expected to be 130 million people at one time is well worth the money. The Super Bowl has become a spot where consumers will watch the commercials with more scrutiny than any other place, advertising executives say.

MORE CREATIVITY

“Nerves have healed slightly and sentiments are returning to a degree of normalcy,” said BBDO Worldwide, New York president-CEO Bill Katz, whose ad firm has secured the most spots this year. “Creativity will be pushed to the forefront,” he predicted. “There’ll be less second-guessing.”

Naturally, the game will also feature the usual all-American slate of ads for beer, cars, clothes, dot-coms, credit cards and electronics, with some celebs also stepping up as pitchmen for products.

Ozzy Osbourne will tubthump for Pepsi, Celine Dion will belt out the tunes for DaimlerChrysler, Jackie Chan and Michael Jordan team up for Hanes T-shirts, and in a wry twist, Willie Nelson will flack for tax outfit H&R Block. Meanwhile, NBA star Yao Ming becomes the subject of hip-hop puns in a Visa ad created by BBDO.

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The Game

A year ago, advertisers had both the Super Bowl and Winter Olympics as major sports venues to hawk their wares. Now, with Super Bowl XXXVII as the only game in town, the usual superstars are lining up for what arguably will be the biggest single-event marketing day of 2003.

But while many of the traditional brands will fill the screens of ABC on Jan. 26 for the game at San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium, there will be a number of changes. For one, E*Trade won’t return as sponsor of the halftime show, a role it has embraced since 2000. It has also not yet made a decision as to whether it will air new ads, via agency Goodby, Silverstein, San Francisco.

H&R Block is returning to the big game for the second year in a row after last year’s “Taxman” spot, directed by the Coen Brothers, resulted in record sales for the firm.

This year, H&R will draft a yet-unnamed celebrity for a Super Bowl effort and will run one ad in the first quarter and will sponsor part of the pregame. The celeb will be used in a one-off effort and will not become an H&R spokesperson. During the pregame show, H&R’s logo will also be seen in an onscreen graphic for 30 minutes. Campbell-Mithun, Minneapolis, handles.

The Super Bowl ads will tout Double Check Challenge, a new service in which H&R looks over a tax form prepared by another firm, said David Byers, svp/CMO for the Kansas City, Mo., firm. The effort comes as H&R tries to expand its identity beyond tax preparation to become more of a generic financial services entity.

“Most financial services firms don’t go after mainstream America because there’s not enough money to be made,” said Byers. “We want to introduce financial services to mainstream America.”

Charles Schwab, another financial services firm with a similar, albeit more upscale target, is also planning a return, sources said. GSD&M, Austin, Texas, handles. Schwab reps declined comment.

Hotjobs.com is “seriously considering the pros and cons” of advertising this year, said Marc Karasu, dir-advertising for Hotjobs.com, New York. “It’s proven historically that it’s a valuable asset.” Hot-jobs was acquired by Yahoo! this year.

Monster.com will make its fifth straight appearance by airing a 30-second continuation of its existing “Never Settle” campaign, via Arnold, Boston. Unlike prior campaigns, the job site’s 2003 effort will target employers as well as job seekers. “We’re focusing on the common ground by illustrating the job itself in a specific category you might not expect to see from Monster,” said Peter Blacklow, svp-marketing for Monster.com, Maynard, Mass. He mentioned healthcare specifically as a possibility.

Blacklow added the spot will be humorous in nature and that the brand mascot Trumpasaurus will return. Monster.com is also strongly considering signing with the NCAA. “It’s a good fit for us because of the audience we’re going after . . . recent college grads, alumni networks,” he said.

Anheuser-Busch, the Super Bowl’s exclusive malt beverage advertiser for the 15th consecutive year, will reprise the Bud Bowl on retail displays that will cross promote with Procter & Gamble’s Pringles and Torengos snacks. Football-themed POP also will hail ABC Sports “Championship Television” and feature sideline reporter Mellisa Stark. A-B has locked up the equivalent of 10 30-second spots, or five minutes of air time for Bud, Bud Light, a responsible drinking message and possibly Michelob. NFL sponsor Coors Brewing rolls the “Last Team Standing” retail program for Coors Light but has no plans at this time to grab regional spots during the Super Bowl, per a company rep.

PepsiCo’s lemon-lime entry, Sierra Mist, which is launching nationally next month, will likely air more than one ad, via BBDO, New York, using its “Shockingly refreshing” tagline. Cadillac will sponsor the postgame show as the official vehicle of the big game. It will likely have two spots including a 60-second effort that will show off its entire line, including the XLR roadster. Advertisers also include Masterfoods (replacing Hershey) and Campbell Soup.

Southwest Airlines says it isn’t buying any Super Bowl time but it is mulling some kind of promotion-details still being developed-around the game.

-with Mike Beirne, Kenneth Hein and Todd Wasserman

E-mail: hcassidy@brandweek.com

— Hilary Cassidy Published: December 02, 2002