Superbowl-ads.com Article Archive

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Crashing Car Story Line Spans Two Mediums; Pulls High Online Traffic

By Jean Halliday

DETROIT (AdAge.com) — While most post-Super Bowl attention focused on the halftime debacle and the mediocre quality of most commercials, one place the event did shine for marketers as never before was on the Web.

The most dramatic, symbiotic TV-Internet Super Bowl media strategy was that of Mitsubishi Motors North America. Created by Interpublic Group of Cos.’ Deutsch, Los Angeles, Mitsubishi’s campaign combined the front-end lure of a Super Bowl TV commercial with the back-end depth of a Web site to maximize the message’s breadth and impact.

Using speeding, crashing cars and a simple but effective cliffhanger, the marketer catapulted waves of TV-viewing consumers directly into a rich Web environment, where its product was presented as an enveloping physical experience.

The TV component was a 30-second spot that aired midway through the Feb. 1 game’s second quarter. Announcing itself as an “Accident Avoidance Test,” the commercial features a Mitsubishi Galant GTS and a Toyota Camry XLE racing down a turnpike at high speeds. In front of them, from the open doors of two tractor trailers moving at equally high speeds, technicians unloose equal kinds of junk at both cars: bowling balls, Weber barbecue grills, full trash cans and, finally, two junk cars that hit the highway and upend as both test vehicles carom directly toward them.

The TV spot ends right there with a teaser directing interested viewers to go to “SeeWhatHappens.com.”

High traffic

And during the next 28 hours more than 170,000 unique visitors flocked to the special Web site to follow the final half of the demolition derby-like saga. From Feb. 3-5, the site continued to log an average of about 40,000 unique visitors a day.

A video on SeeWhatHappens.com shows the Galant and Camry swerving wildly as their drivers frantically try to avoid the upending hulks as well as large chunks of debris spewing on impact.

In the end, the Toyota pulls to the side of the road while the Galant continues to zigzag through the 60-mile-an-hour flying debris field.

A tagline tells Web viewers, “It’s not a commercial. It’s the ultimate performance test.” Web viewers were also offered a large button to click to “Explore the Gallant,” taking them into dense sections of vivid graphics illustrating the car’s features.

Multiple ad views

The number of unique visitors to this special site in the first 24 hours after the spot aired equaled a month’s worth of unique visitors to the auto marketer’s mitsubishicars.com site. Even more dramatic was that two-thirds of the visitors viewed the online 50-second video commercial two or more times, said Ian Beavis, senior vice president of marketing at Mitsubishi.

He said Mitsubishi couldn’t afford to run a 50-second spot during the Super Bowl, but “here I got people seeing that spot twice because they wanted to.”

Citing competitive considerations, he declined to give traffic specifics, but ComScore Media Metrix said SeeWhatHappens.com received 170,000 unique visitors throughout the day after the Super Bowl.

Mr. Beavis said the number of Web visitors who requested brochures, checked the dealer locator or read the brand’s new-vehicle warranty in one day equaled the normal monthly figures for the same consumer engagement activities on mitsubishicars.com.

Plans more cliffhanger ads Mr. Beavis said the company’s TV/Web tactic was considered so successful that Mitsubishi plans to continue the “cliffhanger idea” for other commercials as part of a new marketing strategy.

Mr. Beavis said SeeWhatHappens.com also got a spike in traffic after the cliffhanger aired during the TV broadcast last week of the film Gladiator on ABC. Deutsch created a Galant print ad that ran in USA Today the day after the Super Bowl, reminding consumers to check out the Web site.

The power of TV ads to drive consumers to rich Web extensions of the same message was also evident by the whopping jump in traffic experienced on Cialis.com, the site for the Bayer/GlaxoSmithKline erectile-dysfunction drug. According to ComScore, Cialis.com logged a 1,868% increase in Web traffic right after the game — the biggest of any Super Bowl advertiser. That’s despite the wide critical panning by industry pundits of the marketer’s debut TV ad.

Other marketers’ Web traffic

ComScore Media Metrix compared Web traffic on Super Bowl Sunday to the average of the four prior Sundays to account for the percentage change. After Cialis, the next-highest jump was itunes.com at 593%, which benefited from the PepsiCo spot promoting free Internet music downloads. Next was H&R Block, with a 258% rise. Rounding out the top 10 were pepsiworld.com (a 190% jump); dodge.com (139%); cadillac.com (94%); thetruth.com (72%); ford.com (19%); warnerbros.com (8%); and sonypictures.com (6%). Cialis’ rival on the Super Bowl, Eli Lilly and Icos Corp.’s Levitra, didn’t make the top 10.

Even historical Super Bowl ads brought people to the Web on Jan. 31, when more than 200,000 viewers watching the live TV special Super Bowl’s Greatest Commercials on CBS went online to vote for their favorite spots at either cbs.com or aol.com.

~ ~ ~ Rich Thomaselli contributed to this report.

http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=39731

CBS/AOL Streaming Commercials Viewed 4.6 Million Times in TV/Internet Tie-in

QwikFIND ID: AAP35H

By Rich Thomaselli

DETROIT (AdAge.com) — More than 200,000 TV viewers turned to their computers to cast a vote in Saturday night’s CBS/America Online Web poll to select Coca-Cola Co.’s “Mean Joe Greene” as the greatest Super Bowl commercial of all time.

The real-time balloting that occurred during a pre-game special was further evidence of the utility and power of the Internet to instantly connect TV broadcasters and their sponsors with the passions and actions of individual viewers.

Live TV

The live TV special, Super Bowl’s Greatest Commercials, counted down the top 10 ads until it reached the final three, and viewers were then asked to go to AOL.com or CBS.com to vote. The program aired on Viacom’s CBS, which also hosted Sunday’s Super Bowl XXVIII, in which the New England Patriots defeated the Carolina Panthers.

4.6 million video views

More than 200,000 viewers logged on in 30 minutes to cast their votes. Throughout the promotion, which began with print ads in USA Today, the online ads were viewed more than 4.6 million times. This was the third such Super Bowl commercial special to run in the last four years, all on CBS, but the first to utilize a live voter component.

“You can thank [News Corp.'s] Fox for that,” coordinating producer Bob Horowitz told AdAge.com. “Along came American Idol and it got us thinking how we could take a page from that. We decided to let the commercials run and let America be the judge.”

The special was popular with viewers, scoring a 6.9 rating and an 11 share in the Nielsen ratings, to win its 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. time slot by beating a movie on ABC, Law & Order on NBC and America’s Most Wanted on Fox.

Steelers star

“Mean Joe Greene,” in which the Pittsburgh Steelers football star famously tosses his jersey to a young fan, was voted the best Super Bowl commercial of all time. The other finalists were a 1993 McDonald’s Corp. ad featuring Michael Jordan and Larry Bird and last year’s Budweiser commercial showing the Clydesdale horses waiting for a zebra to review a football play.

The Coca-Cola spot with Mr. Greene is now 25 years old. Made in 1979 by McCann-Erickson, New York, the commercial aired on the 1980 Super Bowl. It shows a limping Mr. Greene walking down the tunnel of a stadium. A young boy follows and offers the hulking football player, known for being mean-spirited, his Coca-Cola. The player at first declines, but later relents. After downing the Coke in one gulp — Mr. Greene reportedly downed 15 to 20 such bottles during the shoot — he says, “Hey kid. Catch,” and throws the boy his game-worn No. 75 jersey.

The McDonald’s spot, known as “Nothing but Net,” finished third in the voting and was from Leo Burnett USA, Chicago. Mr. Jordan and Mr. Bird are shown in a spirited game of matching each other basket-for-basket for the rights to a Big Mac. As the game progresses, the degree of difficulty becomes humorous. At one point, the two players are the top of an arena and Mr. Bird says, “Over the rafter, off the scoreboard, nothing but net.”

Clydesdales

Last year’s Bud spot was from Hill Holliday Connors Cosmopulous, Boston. Previous spots had shown the famous Clydesdales playing football. This time, the horses are standing around as a zebra looks into a camera that shows instant replay. Two fans are sitting in the stands and one says, “This zebra is a real jackass,” a playful riff on how long it often takes National Football League referees — sometimes known as “zebras” — to look at instant replays.

http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=39673

New Study Details Power of ‘Special Event’ TV

By Richard Linnett

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Messages from marketers who buy time on the Super Bowl receive unusually high levels of audience attention because of the unique dynamics of the annual broadcast, according to a new study by Initiative Media Worldwide.

The Super Bowl is the champ in its ability to retain 99.5% of its viewers during commercials.

The study also found that the genre of larger “special event” broadcast TV programming — including the Super Bowl — regularly delivers higher advertising impact for national marketers than regular programming.

Ads’ worth debated

The Initiative Media findings were released as Advertising Age published the results of an AdAge.com poll showing that 61% of voters don’t think Super Bowl commercials are worth their cost. At the same time, a recent study by another trade publication found that only 7% of consumers say they have switched a product-buying behavior after viewing a Super Bowl spot.

Super Bowl ad prices, which hit a record high of $2.25 million for a 30-second spot this year, serve as a benchmark of the upper reaches of the TV advertising industry. The ads and their prices are the subject of widespread interest and debate among the marketers, advertising executives and media buyers heavily involved in this annual football and advertising extravaganza.

Initiative Media, which is a part of Interpublic Group of Cos. and headquartered in New York, is the world’s fourth-largest advertising media buying company. Initiative said its study had determined that the live, special-event aspects of the Super Bowl give it particularly potent advertising power.

Water-cooler talk

“Special events on television offer networks and marketers the opportunity to reach viewers ‘live,’ ” the report said. “More than the average program, specials evoke a higher profile of media coverage and, subsequently, water-cooler talk.”

Paul Melter, director of strategy implementation at Saatchi & Saatchi in New York, agrees. “The Super Bowl is reaching one-third of the country,” he said. “At approximately 2.5 cents per viewer, not to mention the ripple effect at the office and the media coverage the next day, it offers a rare chance to create a permanent bond with your loyal consumers.”

The Initiative Media study found that the “live” element in specials such as the Super Bowl keep viewers glued to their sets, even during commercial breaks. On average specials hold on to 95% of their viewing audiences during breaks, the report said. The Super Bowl does that the best; in 2003 it retained 99.5% of its viewers during commercials, while the NFC Championship game on Fox held onto 99.5%. Among other specials, CBS’ broadcast of the Kennedy Center Honors retained 97.6% of its audience; the Miss America pageant on ABC held 97.3%; and Country Music Association awards show on CBS 96.8%.

The Academy Awards on ABC usually ranks in the top five, but because of last year’s war with Iraq, which caused viewers to switch to continuous news coverage during commercial breaks, the event ranked 8th at 95.6%.

Less clutter

According to the study, the Super Bowl scores extremely high because not only are commercials considered part of the show, but there are fewer of them. On average, 19% of total program minutes in specials are commercials, while only 16.5% of the Super Bowl broadcast was made up ads.

Stacey Lynn Koerner, Initiative’s executive vice president and director of global research integration, said analyzing the success of the Super Bowl and other specials may help advertisers and networks develop better ways to hold on to disappearing TV audiences.

“When the networks create shows of shorter duration, that can benefit retention,” Ms. Koerner said, referring to reality shows and limited series. “Audiences know that regular series often repeat. There’s not a lot of fear that if they miss an episode, they’ll never see it again.”

‘Lack of commercial turnout’

Not surprisingly, David Poltrack, the executive vice president for research and planning at CBS, which is airing the Super Bowl and selling the advertising time, agrees with Initiative’s finding that there is a “lack of commercial tune-out” by viewers during the Super Bowl and other special-event broadcasts.

Mr. Poltrack said this retention is due as much to the programming as to the uniqueness and originality of the advertising aired during these shows. “It is enhanced even more by the fact that a lot of the commercials in these specials are more thematically compatible with the content. For instance, the Miss America pageant tends to have a lot of cosmetic commercials. And they have live lead-ins from the shows to the commercials. There is a certain level of integration between the program and the advertising.”

Mr. Poltrack also said that regular programming can learn lessons from specials and indicated that CBS is working on ways to “better integrate the commercial messages with programs, either through billboarding or sponsorship.”

http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=39590

Cites Network Policy Barring Issue Ads

By Ira Teinowitz

WASHINGTON (AdAge.com) — Viacom’s CBS today rejected a request from liberal group MoveOn to air a 30-second anti-President Bush ad during the Super Bowl, saying the spot violated the Network policy.

A CBS spokesman said the decision against broadcasting the spot had nothing to do with either the Super Bowl or the ad’s specific issue but was because the network has had a long-term policy not to air issue ads anywhere on the network.

A MoveOn spokesperson said the group hopes to appeal the decision within CBS.

Produced as a personal project by Charlie Fisher, creative director of the Copenhagen, Denmark, office of Publicis Groupe ad agency Leo Burnett, the spot is critical of the Bush administration’s fiscal policies.

Anti-Bush contest

MoveOn is airing a 60-second version the commercial, which was selected through a contest calling for anti-Bush ads, in advance of President Bush’s State of the Union address Jan. 20. The group has purchased $300,000 worth of air time on Time Warner’s CNN that starts Jan. 17 and runs through Jan. 21.

http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=39555

CBS Spokesman Doubts Spot Will Pass Standards Review

By Ira Teinowitz

WASHINGTON (AdAge.com) — Liberal activist group MoveOn.org last night announced it has chosen an anti-President Bush ad to air ahead of next week’s “State of the Union” address and said today it is negotiating with CBS to gain airtime on the Super Bowl.

A spokesman for CBS said the Viacom-owned network has received the request from MoveOn to run the ad in the Super Bowl, but added that the ad has to go through standards and practices before CBS will say if it can run an advocacy ad during the game. The spokesman said he didn’t think it was likely that the spot would pass standards and practices.

Filmmaker works for ad agency

The winning ad, called “Child’s Pay,” was developed by Denver resident Charlie Fisher, who works for an unnamed U.S. ad agency on assignment in Denmark. The ad was developed after MoveOn created a competition aimed at finding a filmmaker who can articulate everything that’s wrong with the Bush administration in a 30-second spot. 

Mr. Fisher’s spot shows young children working in a variety of manufacturing or service industry jobs — hauling garbage, repairing tires, clerking a checkout counter — and ends with the line “Guess who’s going to pay off President Bush’s $1 trillion deficit?”

A MoveOn spokesman said the ad, which was chosen from a number of entries, will have an initial national run starting with a $300,000 CNN buy that breaks Jan. 17 and runs through Jan. 21; a 60-second ad will incorporate not only the winning spot ad but a description of the contest and mention of some of the other entries. President Bush’s State of the Union speech is Jan. 20. 

Hitler ad 

The contest, was announced in October and received more than 1,500 submissions, some of which were posted on MoveOn’s Web site (www.bushin30seconds.org). The contest garnered a certain amount of notoriety after the Republican National Committee expressed outrage that three submissions pictured on the group’s Web site compared President Bush to Adolph Hitler. 

Early this month the group apologized for allowing the Hitler ads to slip through, but accused the RNC of being “deliberately and maliciously misleading” in suggesting that the ads were anything other than contest submissions. 

MoveOn, which includes a politcal action committee and a voter fund (which handled the contest), said a panel of celebrities and political consultants judged the submissions. Panelists included political strategists Donna Brazile and James Carville.

‘Fear and loathing’

Reacting to the winning ad, Republican National Committee press secretary Christine Iverson said, “They should have called the contest ‘Twenty seconds of fear and loathing of George Bush.’ It proves what we have said all along: The Democratic presidential candidates have a message of protest and pessimism but bring no positive ideas to the debate.”

http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=39541

Out-of-Bowl Placements Thumb Nose at NFL

By Rich Thomaselli

DETROIT (AdAge.com) — Rebuffed in its efforts to run ads in last year’s Super Bowl, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority this year is making an end run around the National Football League’s ad restrictions by airing two out-of-bowl spots centered on the big game.

The three-week, $1.5 million Super Bowl campaign features two 30-second spots, both using the tagline “If only it was this exciting at the game in Houston,” where Super Bowl XXVIII will be played Feb. 1. The ads encourage those not traveling to the big game to party instead in Las Vegas.

Promoting gambling

The two spots debuting today are a bit of a tweak of the National Football League, which last year denied a request from the tourism authority and its Vegas-based agency, R&R Partners, to advertise on the Super Bowl. The league said the ads would be promoting gambling and it restricts all advertising that does so.

One ad will run the next three weeks on national broadcast and cable networks portraying Las Vegas as the place to be for big events, such as the Super Bowl. The other ad will be a one-day only spot on Super Bowl Sunday, and will air on a competing national network and not Viacom’s CBS, which is televising the game.

Agency’s contract renewed

R&R Partners, which just received a second five-year extension of its contract with the tourism authority that begins in July, plans to develop similar campaigns in the future around other big events, such as the Oscars, college basketball championship tournament, National Basketball Association Finals and baseball’s World Series, among others.

Also later this month, the next phase of the tourism authority’s controversial $58 million “Vegas Stories” campaign debuts with six new spots. The ads, which began in January 2003, use the tagline “What Happens Here, Stays Here.” The spots created a huge buzz — in part because of the publicity of the NFL’s refusal to run the ads on last year’s Super Bowl, and also because of their controversial nature that renews the image of Las Vegas as a sexy, adult playground.

Turned-on limo passenger

One spot, for instance, showed a woman in the backseat of a limousine, dressed provocatively, telling the driver how much she enjoys the smell of the leather seats. When the driver arrives at the airport, the woman is now dressed in business attire and talking on her cell phone, although she seductively sidles up to the driver and breathes in deeply as if to take one last sniff of the car.

The latest batch of spots were shot in Las Vegas in late October. Though the content is unknown, they will continue the “Vegas Stories” theme and one is even said to feature a senior citizen couple enjoying the city.

http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=39518

$2.25 Million for a 30-Second Commercial

By Richard Linnett

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — The average price of a 30-second spot on the Super Bowl has jumped 7% to a record-breaking $2.25 million, solidifying the game’s role as the centerpiece of the marketing year, even as grumbling grows about the effectiveness and cost-efficiency of network TV.

CBS has sold 54 in-game spots for the Feb. 1 game to marketers such as Anheuser-Busch Cos., Frito-Lay, Pepsi-Cola Co. and Procter & Gamble Co. Eight slots remain, according to media buyers. Those last spots, as usual, are available for significantly less than the spots already sold, although the network is shuffling inventory in a bid to keep the value high. The fourth quarter is now selling for as low as $1.8 million, media buyers reported.

Prices negotiable

“CBS is trying to entice advertisers,” said one top media buyer who has not bought the game yet, but is being heavily courted. “Prices are negotiable, but they’re not diving yet. They’re freeing up other quarters to attract buyers.”

The game sell-off had been moving at a fine clip until several weeks ago when it stalled at 85% of inventory sold out. Now media buyers are saying the game is slowly inching toward a hair’s breadth of 90% sold as a result of some aggressive moves by the network.

Inventory is still available in all quarters of the game, including the first, after some large advertisers either dropped out or cut 60-second spots down to 30 seconds, media buying executives told AdAge.com. Two media buyers said it’s likely CBS is shifting its promotions for its own shows to later in the game in order to cut loose the premium inventory in the first and second quarters.

Soft market

“The market softened up a bit,” said a top media executive who bought into the game, “so there’s not a lot of money floating around out there, so that’s probably why they are trying to sell aggressively. They don’t want it sitting there too long.”

Executives at CBS had no comment.

Media agency executives, however, praise CBS for the selling job it has done so far, as parent Viacom worked out attractive packages around the Super Bowl, throwing in spot deals in other shows and networks and in outdoor.

Acting like Mel

“They are really being smart about driving their revenue,” said the top media executive. “They are in essence, acting like [President-Chief Operating Officer Mel Karmazin], being real aggressive about how they push stuff, but they are not doing it in a piggish way.”

CBS also created packages in shows before and after the game, as well as in-game sponsorships. General Motors Corp.’s Cadillac, the official auto of the game, will run a 60-second spot during the game and will also appear during the broadcast of Phil Sims’ All Iron Show, an afternoon preview to the game. It will also have three 30-second ads launching the SRX sport utility vehicle in the postgame show, for which it is the title sponsor. Finally, the game’s most valuable player gets to pick out his own new Cadillac during an on-air presentation.

“CBS did a gangbuster business selling the game early,” said Peter Gardiner, media director at Interpublic Group of Cos.’ Deutsch, which has at least two spots in the game, one for Monster Worldwide. “They’ve been in a pretty good position and they are pretty good at maintaining their pricing.”

Defying trends

While broadcast TV continues to suffer serious erosion among viewers, especially 18- to 49-year-old men, the Super Bowl continues to defy trends. Last year, according to Nielsen Media Research, the game was picked up in more than 43 million households and watched by more than 88 million Americans. This year, media buyers project the game will draw 90 million viewers. The $2.25 million average for the 62 spots means marketers will spend about $139.5 million (excluding half-time and pre-game) — or about $1.61 for each viewer.

“The Super Bowl is bigger than television,” said Ray Warren, managing director of Omnicom Group’s OMD, typically the largest buyer of time and which bought almost 20% of the game. “The game is a national holiday. It’s the only place to put 100 million people in front of a commercial.”

~ ~ ~ Jean Halliday and Bradley Johnson contributed to this report.

http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=39365

Will Also Run Three Spots From Wieden During Game

By Tobi Elkin

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Time Warner’s America Online today said it will be the presenting sponsor of the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show and will run three commercials during the game.

The three 30-second in-game spots, from independent Wieden & Kennedy, Portland, Ore., will showcase a new product, which AOL declined to specify. AOL also plans to run two pre-game spots, produced by Omnicom Group’s BBDO Worldwide, New York, that will be part of the “Life Needs” campaign for AOL 9.0.

AOL’s in-game buys are in the first, second and fourth quarters. AOL bought the first-quarter spot during the upfront earlier this year; the rest were negotiated later.

The Super Bowl will air Feb. 1 on Viacom’s CBS.

Commercial showcase

AOL said that following the game, it will run its annual Super Bowl Commercial Showcase, where members can vote on their favorite Super Bowl ads. Last year, the Super Bowl Commercial Showcase generated 5.6 million streams in two days. The Super Bowl deal extends AOL’s relationship with the National Football League, which offers AOL audio and video content through NFL@AOL. That service features video highlights including game-by-game previews to AOL for Broadband subscribers.

In addition to the halftime show, which will be produced by Viacom’s MTV, AOL will also sponsor the NFL Experience, a weeklong interactive theme park for fans leading up to the big game in Houston. The value of the AOL’s NFL media and marketing package is estimated at between $7 million to $10 million, according to people close to the situation.

AOL has pushed back plans to mount a brand campaign; executives had tentatively planned to launch brand image work during the Super Bowl. The company will instead continue to hammer new features and products related to AOL 9.0 and broadband service.

http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=39230

‘Joy of Pepsi’ Gives Way to ‘Pepsi. It’s the Cola’

By Hillary Chura

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — PepsiCo’s Pepsi-Cola Co. on Sunday breaks a new campaign introducing the latest slogan for its flagship soft-drink brand.

Earlier this month, Pepsi said it was dropping its “Joy of Pepsi” tagline for “Pepsi. It’s the Cola.” The new advertising, which will carry the new theme, wants to get consumers to associate Pepsi-Cola with food and mealtimes, which is why the marketer is rolling out the campaign to coincide with the holidays, starting with Thanksgiving.

“Social occasions and food occasions work together. Pepsi enhances that. We think these spots really [explain] that,” said Ted Sann, chairman and chief creative officer at Pepsi’s longtime advertising agency, Omnicom Group’s BBDO Worldwide, New York.

Three TV, 2 radio ads Initially, there will be three TV commercials and two ads for radio. TV ads will run Sunday on National Football League telecasts as well as on prime-time programming. They also will run on the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade broadcast and ABC’s three-week miniseries Trista and Ryan’s Wedding.

There will be numerous outdoor executions, accompanied by an increase in outdoor spending, a departure for the soft-drink giant.

“We’ve not done [big] outdoor, but this brings the strategy to life in a powerful way,” said Katie Lacey, vice president for colas and media at Pepsi Cola North America. She would not comment on the size of the increase but said no funds would be diverted from other media.

Rare end-of-year effort Typically, Pepsi is not a big fourth-quarter spender. The brand’s most recent end-of-the-year work came in 1998. Usually the country’s No. 2 soft drink brand bows campaigns after the first of the year.

Pepsi-Cola received $138 million in measured media last year, with just $28 million coming in the fourth quarter, according to TNS Media Intelligence/CMR.

In the spot “Summer Job,” a young woman in a hot dog costume becomes dejected handing out fliers for a restaurant but brightens up when she sees a young man dressed up as a Pepsi can. In “Vacuum,” comedian Dave Chappelle tempts an automatic vacuum with a Pepsi. A third ad portrays tailgating gladiators, throwing 2-liter bottles of Pepsi and hot dogs through the air.

Two radio spots link Pepsi to lunch, while outdoor and print executions show Pepsi and different foods in friendly proximity.

Celebrity status Dave Burwick, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Pepsi-Cola North America, said Mr. Chappell is the only celebrity to appear in the ads — unlike Pepsi’s usual star-studded campaigns — though others could follow.

“We are not necessarily walking away from celebrities,” he said. “We’re walking toward” a strategy that links Pepsi with food. He said the company could employ the singer Beyonce Knowles, whom it signed last year, for future ads. The drink could be backed by upward of 12 “Pepsi. It’s the cola” spots.

Mr. Burwick said it’s too early to tell if Pepsi’s link to food would carry over to sibling Frito-Lay, as PepsiCo has done in the past with “Power of One” initiatives.

Separately, he said Pepsi-Cola and Sierra Mist likely would be the company’s beverage brands to appear in Super Bowl advertising.

http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=36935

Many Seek a Better Bang for Their Advertising Buck Elsewhere

By Rich Thomaselli

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — When technology company EDS felt it had to establish its brand, it went straight to the biggest advertising play on TV: the Super Bowl. In 2000 and 2001, EDS advertised during the game with humorous and memorable commercials, “Cat Herding” and “Running with the Squirrels,” from Publicis Groupe’s Fallon Worldwide, Minneapolis.

Its mission accomplished, EDS then opted out. No ads last year, and none slated for Super Bowl XXXVII airing Jan. 26 on Walt Disney Co.’s ABC.

‘Shock value’

“We needed the shock value of appearing in the Super Bowl at the time we did it, and it worked well for us for two years,” said Tom Mattia, vice president of global communications for EDS. But he said EDS’s target audience of executives at the top global 1,000 companies is “a pretty defined market. It’s not a whole lot of people and now we’re looking at venues to get specifically to them. I’m not precluding the fact that we’ll go back to the Super Bowl someday, but not right now.”

EDS is far from the only advertiser to abandon the Super Bowl. Just look at the list of the 10 greatest Super Bowl commercials of all time, as determined in last year’s USA Today poll and presented in a special on Viacom’s CBS.

Of the nine marketers on that list, seven — Nike, Coca-Cola Co., Apple, Xerox Corp., E-Trade, Frito-Lay’s Doritos and McDonald’s Corp. — either won’t be advertising in-game during the upcoming Super Bowl or haven’t advertised for years. Other marketers in previous Super Bowls that won’t be seen in this year’s 61 Super Bowl slots include MasterLock, Honda Motor Co., Microsoft Corp. and IBM Corp., among others. Most say taking a pass hasn’t hurt them.

One day vs. 364

“It’s a wonderful, one-day event and it truly is the Super Bowl of advertising,” said a vice president of marketing for a company who previously advertised during the game. “But, yeah, while you may not get the one-day pop, you can still get your message across on the other 364 days of the year.”

Bill Katz, president-CEO of Omnicom Group’s BBDO Worldwide, New York, agreed. “Nobody is missed if they don’t advertise on the Super Bowl,” Mr. Katz said. “That’s a marketing colloquialism. No consumer is sitting there saying, ‘Hey, where’s Coke? Where’s McDonald’s?’”

Oddly enough, BBDO is the agency whose clients have bought the most time on the Super Bowl in recent years.

For a variety of reasons, the Super Bowl isn’t so super for every marketer.

Steep ad cost

One is financial. As recently as the 1994 big game, the average cost of a 30-second spot went for less than $1 million. In 1996, it was $1.1 million; seven years later, it’s double that. Connie Dotson, chief communications and knowledge officer for E-Trade, said that after sponsoring the halftime show the last two years, E-Trade did a cost vs. return analysis — and decided to punt.

“It just didn’t work for us,” said Ms. Dotson, who would not elaborate on the numbers, but said the return on investment had worked well in past years and E-Trade may consider going back to the game in the future.

Not always a good fit

Another hurdle is philosophical. In many cases, a Super Bowl buy just isn’t a good fit. Despite an average of 130 million viewers and a high female viewership, for example, you won’t find ads for Procter & Gamble Co.’s Oil of Olay on the game. Advertisers looking for big-event venues for women’s products such as cosmetics are more apt to choose showcases like the Academy Awards.

Some simply choose to pick their spots. Coca-Cola Co., for example, had the “Mean” Joe Greene commercial during the 1980 Super Bowl, where the former Pittsburgh Steelers star drains a Coke given him by a child, and tosses the kid his jersey in return. That spot was voted the greatest Super Bowl commercial of all time. But Coca-Cola has run an in-game spot just twice since 1991, and one of those was for its Surge brand. In doing so, it left the field to Pepsi-Cola Co., which has become the dominant marketer in the game, along with Anheuser-Busch.

Some just aren’t creative

Mr. Katz said he would add a fourth reason why some advertisers stay away. “Out and out creativity,” he said. “Some advertisers have it and some of them don’t. And some agencies are geared to make those kinds of commercials, and some aren’t. The Super Bowl has become a spot where consumers will watch the commercials with more scrutiny than any other place.”

In most cases, though, advertisers avoid the Super Bowl because of a reallocation of dollars or because they are looking elsewhere to get the biggest bang for their bucks. EDS took the money it would have spent on the 2002 Super Bowl and bought a barrage of 58 spots over the 17-day coverage of last February’s Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

This year, it signed a deal through 2005 to become the official technology-services sponsor for the Tournament of Roses, which includes college football’s Rose Bowl game and the New Year’s Day Tournament of Roses Parade. EDS is also now the title sponsor through 2006 of the PGA Tour’s Byron Nelson Classic, a prestigious golf tournament in May.

“We did what we wanted to do with the Super Bowl. That is, we wanted to shake the market a bit and have people say, ‘Who is EDS?’ ” Mr. Mattia said. “Now we want to have an ongoing, sustainable campaign.”

~ ~ ~ Mercedes M. Cardona contributed to this report.

http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=36876

Only Six TV Spots Left to Sell; Average Price Is $2.1 Million

By Wayne Friedman

LOS ANGELES (AdAge.com) — With two weeks to go, Walt Disney Co.’s ABC is in good shape selling Super Bowl XXXVII, according to media agency executives, with its average price for a 30-second commercial at $2.1 million, up 10% over a year ago. Only six spots are left to sell.

The remaining commercials are in the fourth quarter, which is typical this close to game day. ABC has sold 55 spots so far.

Fourth-quarter risk

Buying fourth-quarter commercials can be tricky. If the score is lopsided late in the game, viewers then tend to tune out, which is why most advertisers try to score first-half placement.

“If you buy a fourth-quarter spot, you’ll still get a great game,” said Ed Erhardt, president of ESPN/ABC Sports Customer Marketing and Sales, pointing to a number of recent NFL and college bowl games where ratings were higher in the second half.

The network’s $2.1 million average price for this year’s game equals the highest average price ever for a Super Bowl, which came in 2000 when ABC last had the Super Bowl. In that game, 22 dot-com advertisers spent lavishly, with two long-gone companies dishing out $3 million each for 30-second spots, the highest individual sales for spots of that length ever.

Always a ratings champ

In spite of the high cost, media executives still praise the value of the game, which is always the highest-rated TV event of the year. For the last two years — on News Corp.’s Fox in 2002 and Viacom’s CBS in 2001 — the games posted the same Nielsen Media Research 40 rating/61 share.

“I’m surprised the game has lost very little,” said Larry Novernstern, senior vice president and director of national broadcast for Interpublic Group of Cos.’ Deutsch, New York. “With all the [ratings] erosion in network, there has been far less erosion with the Super Bowl. It’s still a tremendous value.”

This average price is 10% higher than the $1.9 million tag last year on Fox, according to Advertising Age estimates. ABC benefited from an overall strong TV market, which has seen scatter prices rise 12% to 15% higher than upfront pricing.

Narrow price range

Ad agency executives and Mr. Erhardt concur that the price range for the Super Bowl this year was “narrower.” No advertiser paid $3 million per spot, and none negotiated a $1.5 million bill.

“They must be trying to hold their pricing,” said Mel Berning, president-U.S. broadcast at Bcom3 Group’s Mediavest Worldwide, New York, “because the units are still there” to sell. As a result, ABC is “not able to range their numbers dramatically.”

Mr. Erhardt said 60% of the Super Bowl deals were packaged with other ABC or ESPN sports programming.

http://www.pennlive.com/business/expresstimes/index.ssf?/base/business-0/1041761157218230.xml

Prices putting off potential recruits.

By ANTHONY SALAMONE

Unlike the game itself, there was no clear-cut winner among Madison Avenue’s offerings that aired during Sunday’s Super Bowl, if the polls are any indication.

In fact, advertisers’ efforts seemed to be so ho-hum that even the students in Andrew Bergstein’s marketing classes at Penn State University were unwilling to discuss them.

“It was like pulling teeth to get students to talk about their favorite Super Bowl ads, which was radically different from previous years,” said Bergstein, an instructor at the university’s Smeal College of Business.

But with the economy still shaky, many companies believe it’s too risky to parcel out a big portion of their ad budgets on one event.

Another reason making newcomers think twice is price. The cost for a 30-second spot on the ABC telecast is going as high as $2.2 million, compared with a top price of about $1.9 million in the 2002 Super Bowl. Some companies can’t — or won’t — justify paying the nearly 16 percent price increase.

Increasingly, however, others simply fear that with Super Bowl advertising becoming such a high-profile event, not having a surefire creative hit can backfire in the arena of public and press opinion. Fewer companies are willing to risk the chance that their ad will bomb before millions of eyeballs.

“The Super Bowl has emerged as a highly scrutinized, highly critical advertising event,” said Bill Katz, president and chief executive of New York-based advertising agency BBDO. That agency arguably understands the Super Bowl formula the best, with clients like Pepsi and Visa that advertise every year.

“It’s a huge double-edged sword,” Katz said. “The upside is so big, but the downside is risky. You have 6,000 or 7,000 journalists writing about it. The results can be devastating if the advertising is bad.”

The bottom line, according to media buyers, is that few companies will try advertising during the big game for the first time.

Instead, much of the estimated $200 million of available airtime is being bought by big advertisers that have been there before.

Robert Kutcha understands this perhaps better than the average TV viewer.

In this era of belt-tightening and Enron-style infractions, “companies are being more conservative and taking a closer look at how the hard earned dollars are spent,” said Kutcha, a marketing professor at Lehigh University. His course requirement includes having students watch and gauge the Super Bowl commercials.

About the only area company that has advertised in the Super Bowl has been Masterfoods USA, which makes the M& M candy brands in Hackettstown.

Spokeswoman Bertille Glass could not say Friday whether the company would be airing a commercial during the upcoming Super Bowl.

However, the company ran one spot during last year’s game that Adage.com gave its highest rating — four stars.

In the scene, Adage.com says a weary traveler checks into a chichi hotel, with all its amenities, including the chocolate on his pillow at bedtime. The chocolate turns out to be a neurotic, talking M& M.

The message: when you think chocolates, don’t forget the M& M’s.

Two area companies that distribute consumer products nationally, Bethlehem-based Just Born Inc. and Binney & Smith Inc. of Forks Township, have no plans to advertise.

“We target kids and moms, and the Super Bowl isn’t really our focus,” said spokeswoman Lissette Santana.

It’s sound strategy: Kutcha said when it comes to high-priced ads, corporate executives have to ask themselves two basic questions.

“First, does this make sense for us (to advertise during the Super Bowl)?” Kutcha said. “Secondly, if it doesn’t or even if it does, could the money be spent better in another fashion?

Companies that decide to hawk products do so with at least one motive in mind: their audience is typically held captive by the game for one reason or another.

Kutcha cited as an example one Volvo truck marketing official who spent years convincing higher-ups that the Super Bowl was the place to be — ad wise.

“They reasoned, ‘Where is our customer? Right in front of the TV set,’” Kutcha said.

By last week, ABC had sold more than 85 percent of its advertising inventory for the game, including the entire first half.

The halftime spectacle, formerly owned by dot-com survivor E-Trade, will be sponsored by AT& T Wireless, which relaunched its wireless service platform during last year’s game with the quirky “M Life” campaign.

“We’re seeing interest from advertisers in traditional categories like movies, cars and retail,” said Ed Erhardt, president for customer marketing and sales at ABC Sports in New York. “If there’s anything shocking, it’s not being talked about right now.”

Among familiar advertisers again on display is Anheuser-Busch, which, at nearly five minutes of airtime, will dominate the game. Others include job-search company Monster.com and perennial high-profile advertisers Visa and Pepsi-Cola. Pepsi will be advertising for the 18th straight year. Anthony Salamone can be reached at 610-258-7171, Ext. 3603, or by e-mail at tsalamone@express-times.com.

http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=36230

Multimillion-Dollar Ad Push Planned for Super Bowl

By Hillary Chura

BOSTON (AdAge.com) — Sierra Mist lemon-lime soft drink from PepsiCo’s Pepsi-Cola North America will get multimillion-dollar support starting in January, bottlers said, as the brand, launched in October 2000, goes national.

Ads, planned for Super Bowl XXXVI, will continue the “Shockingly Refreshing” tag.

Omnicom Group’s BBDO Worldwide, New York, is the agency on the account.

A Pepsi spokesman said the brand will get “significant support” but that nothing had been finalized.

http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=36229

Network Says ‘Less Than 15′ Spots Left

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — An executive at Walt Disney Co.’s ABC said it has “less than 15″ network spots left to sell in next year’s Super Bowl and considers its sales pace ahead of schedule.

Media buyers say ABC is pricing spots above 2002 levels at $2.3 million for prime first and second quarter positions.

General Motors Corp.’s Cadillac recently bought at least one unit in the event, executives said.

http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=33916

Spending Could Rise to $100 Million

By Jean Halliday

DETROIT (AdAge.com) — General Motors Corp.’s Cadillac brand gets its biggest ad push since its 1999 “Power of &” blitz with 12 new spots this year in its “Break Through” campaign, which arrives Feb. 3.

In one spot, the voice-over, by actor Gary Sinise, says, “The legendary bloodline is about to boil.”

Print ads arrive in February weeklies, followed by outdoor and radio efforts to support the campaign.

Bcom3 Group’s D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, Troy, Mich., handles the account for Cadillac.

D’Arcy Chief Creative Officer Gary Topolewski dubbed the work “very clean and to the point … without a whole lot of ad agency words.”

A Cadillac insider said spending could rise to $100 million this year.