Superbowl-ads.com Article Archive

http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=44265

Real-Time Consumer Research Finds Anheuser-Busch’s Army Ad Best

QwikFIND ID: AAQ31E

By Kris Oser

BONITA SPRINGS, Fla. (AdAge.com) — Even though GoDaddy’s Super Bowl ad is what they’re talking about around the water coolers this morning, its ultimate impact may be negative, according to an instant online survey conducted during the game last night.

GoDaddy’s busty star performed for a congressional panel. Watch the spot on the ‘TV Spots of the Week’ Video Page.

GoDaddy, a little-known Internet domain registration company, produced the evening’s single most provocative commercial. Set in a mock congressional committee hearing, the spot starred a young women whose very large breasts were constrained within a very skimpy camisole that suffered a near “wardrobe malfunction.” The story line was a satirical jab at the government’s recent moves to more tightly regulate TV and radio content that falls within the jurisdiction of the Federal Communications Commission.

Mixed reaction Funny as it was, the spot received mixed reaction from online consumer blogs surveyed by Intelliseek of Cincinnati. During the game, the market research company monitored 40 blogs to measure which ads were likely to generate the most buzz or controversy the day after the game.

“As for building buzz,” said Intelliseek’s marketing chief, Pete Blackshaw, “they’ve done a great job, but for a lot of people, it was just a cheap thrill and I’m not sure the ad will sustain itself with buzz.”

Among Intelliseek’s panel of bloggers the GoDaddy spot, created by the Ad Store of New York, was “polarizing,” Mr. Blackshaw said, and some people were surprised it made it on the air.

Forty bloggers polled Intelliseek chose 40 bloggers who regularly post commentary on their own blogs about products and consumer issues. During the Super Bowl they blogged about their thoughts and

Consumers indicated they were deeply moved by the Anheuser-Busch ‘Applause’ spot honoring U.S. military personnel. Watch the spot on the ‘TV Spots of the Week’ Video Page. emotions as they watched the ads. The blog site operators were chosen because they are “engaged consumers” who influence others’ reactions, Mr. Blackshaw said. These reactions are Intelliseek’s top-line findings, he noted. Quantifiable results will be issued later in the day.

The top ads in terms of buzz included the Pepsi-Cola “Guy Watcher” spot featuring Queer Eye for the Straight Guy fashion guru Carson Kressley; Ameriquest’s “Mini-Mart”; and the FedEx ad starring Burt Reynolds and a dancing bear. “[The FedEx spot] poked fun at advertisers and that resonated with consumers,” Mr. Blackshaw said. “Guy Watcher” was created by TBWA/Chiat Day; “Mini-Mart by DDB Direct of Venice, Calif.; and FedEx’s “Top Ten” by BBDO of New York.

The latest commercial in MasterCard’s ongoing “Priceless” campaign was “Icons” from McCann-Erickson, New York. It was an an ode to animated brand icons and a hit with many bloggers. Blogger “Minnesota Man” wrote: “This campaign still works for me. I love seeing Mr. Clean again. He must be 50 years old. Good staying power for the Yul Brenner lookalike.”

Anheuser-Busch’s ‘Applause’ Of the Anheuser-Busch ads, “Applause,” which shows U.S. soldiers in desert battle fatigues walking into the airport and receiving a spontaneous standing ovation from the travelers, “really touched a nerve,” Mr. Blackshaw said. The spot was created by DDB, Chicago.

Among the brewer’s humorous ads, Bud Light’s “Lady,” which showed a macho cockatoo protecting a woman from unwanted advances in a barroom, got mixed reviews, but the spot showing a pilot jumping out of an airplane after a six-pack of Bud Light was a hit.

“The key thing is not what’s controversial,” Mr. Blackshaw said. “You can have breakthrough copy, you just have to make it funny.”

Mixed reaction to iTunes A spot from TBWA/Chiat Day promoting Pepsi’s co-marketing effort with iTunes music downloads, got mixed reactions. One, from Katie’s Super Bowl Blog, observed: “Rather old, almost like last year’s ad with the codes that all turned out going sour because of Net fraud and people hacking caps and codes in the end.”

The commercials that received the most negative reaction included “Green Light,” a spot for the ford Motor Co.’s Mustang by J. Walter Thompson, and CareerBuilder’s series of ads featuring a beleaguered office worker and his simian co-workers. “I don’t think CareerBuilder scored many points with the monkeys,” Mr. Blackshaw remarked. Cramer-Krasselt created the monkey ads.

The biggest failure with consumers appeared to be Grey Worldwide’s work for Cialis. Typical of the criticism was one that appeared on “Blog and Tackle”: “So what if I’m sitting in my living room with my daughter and she turns to me and says, ‘Dad, what’s erectile dysfunction?’ I don’t like being in that position, OK? I’m not a prude. I’m a dad. Hate you guys a lot. And by the way, the ad is wretched.”

Industry reaction While the bloggers had a consumer slant, advertising industry insiders had a slightly different take on the Super Bowl’s ad work. At the Super Bowl party at the iMedia Brand Summit in Bonita Springs, Fla., where this reporter watched the game, the GoDaddy ad was an over-the-top hit. As soon as the raucous revelers at the Hyatt Regency here caught on to the parody, the room went dead silent. Then there was a buzz of appreciation.

The only other ad that resonated across the room of several hundred advertising insiders was the Anheuser-Busch “Applause” spot. Those watching the game applauded along with the people in the brewer’s ad.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050207/tv_nm/television_bowl_advertising_dc_2

Entertainment – Reuters TV

By Michele Gershberg

NEW YORK (Reuters) – In a spoof of the right formula for a Super Bowl ad, FedEx Corp. called this year’s battle of television commercials long before results came in for the actual championship football game.

Reuters Photo

Top advertisers on U.S. television’s most watched, and expensive, event returned to tried and tested gimmicks during Sunday’s broadcast after an indecency scandal during last year’s game put marketers under greater scrutiny.

Watched by more than 144 million viewers in the United States last year, the Super Bowl is the nation’s highest-rated TV program and the most-watched single-day sporting event.

It is the biggest stage for advertisers and their agencies, where they vie for the title of most memorable or entertaining commercial. This year, TV network Fox sold 30-second spots for up to $2.4 million each.

“This Super Bowl is about a return to tradition,” said Mark DiMassimo of DiMassimo Carr Brand Advocates. “They went a little crazy with ads last year and now everyone is going back to the formulas.”

FedEx made a self-conscious ad play, listing the necessary elements of a winning commercial: animals that talk or dance, celebrities big or small and a cute kicker at the end. To illustrate the point, Burt Reynolds chats up a dancing bear in a spot from Omnicom Group’s BBDO agency.

Other ads employed “funny animals,” but without the irony.

Online job site CareerBuilder.com debuted three commercials about a corporation run by monkeys to the frustration of its one very human employee, cellular provider Verizon Wireless parodied its “Can you hear me now?” slogan with a monkey talking into his “banana” phone while Bud Light showed a cockatoo berating a young man’s pickup lines at a bar.

“There were so many animals and so many monkeys, but it wasn’t as grotesque as last year,” said Barbara Lippert, advertising critic for Adweek. “There were at least a couple you could be surprised by and enjoy.”

Advertising experts and viewers singled out a pair of unusual commercials for mortgage company Ameriquest under the tagline “Don’t judge too quickly.” In one ad, a man tells a friend “you’re getting robbed” over a deal as he shops at a convenience store, only to be mistaken by the cashier as a genuine thief who meets a painful end.

But few ventured into the unexpected to stand out from nearly 60 commercials during the contest in which the New England Patriots beat the Philadelphia Eagles 24-21 in Jacksonville, Florida.

Even top celebrities such as Brad Pitt, chased by paparazzi in a Heineken beer ad, failed to generate excitement.

“As an advertising person, I was really hoping for a lot more,” said Ellis Verdi, president of DeVito/Verdi Advertising. “I want to see smart, intrusive advertising that gets to you. It was disappointing.”

BUDWEISER UNSEATED?

The rivalry for surprise came to haunt advertisers last year, when an outcry over Janet Jackson (news)’s exposed breast during a half-time show performance spilled over to a critique of edgy ads throughout the game.

Brewer Anheuser-Busch, the biggest and most popular Super Bowl advertiser for years, toned down the humor after criticism for juvenile gags last year. But it won crowd-pleasing points for a patriotic spot showing ordinary Americans applauding soldiers returning from duty in Iraq (news – web sites).

“Budweiser did best with the patriotic sentimentality,” said DiMassimo. “In theory, I don’t like the idea but it was well done and somehow rang true.”

In a bitter note, Anheuser-Busch’s debut of its new Budweiser Select brew was upstaged by an ad knocking its taste from rival Miller Lite, apparently aired on local broadcasts.

Beverage maker PepsiCo may generate coveted morning-after buzz among consumers with a Diet Pepsi spot showing Carson Kressley from popular makeover show “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” eyeing a well-built male model, and a celebrity wannabe ad with hip-hop mogul Sean “P. Diddy” Combs.

Viewers were relatively silent on a McDonald’s spot telling the story of a couple who find fame after discovering a french fry resembling Abraham Lincoln.

“McDonald’s is probably one of the biggest misses,” said Pete Snyder, CEO of New Media Strategies which monitored Internet blogs and viewer traffic to Super Bowl ad sites. “Often the test is not only what people are saying, but when they’re not talking about it at all.”

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050207/ap_on_en_tv/super_bowl_ads_4

Sun Feb 6,11:22 PM ET

By SETH SUTEL, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK – There were plenty of tried-and-true techniques used in this year’s Super Bowl ads – talking animals, Clydesdale horses, celebrity cameos. But then came Gladys Knight as a rugby player, an airborne ’72 Impala and a “Mama’s Boy” action figure who was somehow plugging anti-perspirant.

If last year’s flatulent horses and crotch-biting dogs tested the limits of good taste, a number of this year’s crop tested the limits of credulity.

Granted, this is where the advertising industry makes big plays and takes big chances. Advertisers expect to get a bang for each one of the 2.4 million bucks that they splash out for a 30-second spot, the most expensive TV ad time by far. But with an audience of nearly 90 million, plenty of companies think it’s worth it.

This year, a number of newcomers took out their first-ever Super Bowl ads, including Volvo, with a clever spot featuring Richard Branson going into space in a rocket. A sticker on the side of the rocket boasts that his other vehicle is a Volvo. This ad even comes with its own promotion, giving viewers a chance to sign up to win a trip into space on commercial space flights Branson is planning.

Other first-timers included GoDaddy.com, a vendor of Web site names, which took a chance with a racy ad poking fun at the uproar over Janet Jackson (news)’s “wardrobe malfunction” of last year; and Ameriquest Mortgage Co., which ran a fun but slightly quizzical spot in which a shopper gets maced, whacked with a bat and then zapped with a cattle prod after the shop owners mistakenly think he’s holding them up.

Ameriquest ran another spot later in the game on the same theme, showing a guy whose sweet gesture of cooking dinner for his girlfriend goes awry when she walks home just as he’s holding her pet cat in one hand, freshly spattered with tomato sauce from an overturned pot, as he clutches a cooking knife in the other.

Lincoln ran a funny ad toward the beginning of the game in which a tough group of bikers is scared away from a roadside diner after seeing a line of Lincoln trucks parked in front. The gang of Hell’s Angels lookalikes is spared embarrassment when one of them sheepishly suggests that the salad bar up the road is better anyway.

Job listings service CareerBuilder, another first-timer, scored funny points with a series of spots showing a hapless office worker surrounded by monkeys, a guy who clearly needs a better job. They howl uncontrollably when he sits on a whoopi cushion they’ve planted on his chair, and ridicule his objections to their idea of naming a new product “The Titanic.”

Several of this year’s ads were definitely puzzlers. Gladys Knight appears as a rugby player in a pitch for the credit card issuer MBNA Corp.; both MC Hammer and a ’72 Impala come flying over a backyard fence in a spot for Lay’s potato chips; and Unilever unveiled a complete head-scratcher for its Degree anti-perspirant featuring an action figure called “Mama’s Boy,” a grown man who still gets pushed around in a shopping cart by his mom.

While some of this year’s ads may have been somewhat off, they were a far cry from the spots last year that offered crude jokes, including an accidental bikini wax for Cedric the Entertainer, and a guy who squeals in delight when a blast of cold air blows up his kilt, Marilyn Monroe-style.

In a sign of this year’s heightened sensitivities, Lincoln pulled a spot for its new truck at the last minute after victims of priest abuse complained that it made light of their experience. In its place, Lincoln’s parent company Ford Motor Co. used the air time to rerun a separate ad for its new Mustang convertible.

With even greater attention being paid to the ads each passing year, some marketing professors even turn the Super Bowl ad extravaganza into a case study. One such professor, Tim Calkins of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management in Chicago, assembled a group of about 35 students on Sunday to view and rate the ads for their effectiveness.

Calkins said his students were especially impressed with a spot for Anheuser-Busch Cos.’ Bud Light in which a scared parachuter is left alone in a plane after the pilot jumps out, having grabbed a six-pack of Bud Light from the parachuting instructor. “It got attention, it was well branded … and people really liked it. It communicated a desire for Bud Light,” Calkins said.

Other ads made clever references to pop culture. Pepsi, a perennial Super Bowl advertiser, even referred to one of its own classic ads by showing Cindy Crawford (news) ogling a plain-dressed but hunky guy walking along and sipping on a can of Diet Pepsi as the theme from “Saturday Night Fever” plays in the background. Crawford herself was the star of a 1992 Pepsi ad where two young boys ogled her as she pulled into a dusty gas station and quaffed a Pepsi in slow motion.

But this being 2005, after Crawford and numerous other women are stopped in their tracks by the hunkalicious Diet Pepsi drinker, there’s one more pair of eyes caught by the passing stud: those of “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” host Carson Kressley.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050204/tv_nm/food_beer_advertising_dc_3

By Mark Weinraub

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Television network Fox has decided against broadcasting three Miller Lite commercials it had approved for airing during the Super Bowl pregame show on Sunday, the network said on Friday.

The three commercials poke fun at rival Anheuser-Busch Cos Inc.’s new Budweiser Select beer, which is being heavily promoted during the football game itself. The Miller spots were approved by Fox’s standards and practices committee but later vetoed by its sales department, a source familiar with the situation said.

Fox said it would not run commercials portraying Anheuser-Busch, which bought the most Super Bowl advertising time this year, in a negative light, said Jon Nesvig, president of advertising sales at Fox.

“The decision was made to reject these specific ads based on the degree of spending Anheuser-Busch has achieved in support of Fox and the Super Bowl,” Nesvig said in a statement.

Anheuser-Busch, which is the largest in-game advertiser, is the only brewer scheduled to air commercials across the United States during the actual Super Bowl game, which is the biggest stage for advertisers. Fox sold 30-second spots for up to $2.4 million this year.

Although Miller’s commercials will not be part of the national broadcast on Sunday, the brewer said it has bought commercial time with some local affiliate stations during the game. The decision to use local affiliates came after its ads were pulled from the pregame show. “It appears to us that Anheuser-Busch is trying to bully us out of the pregame on Super Bowl Sunday,” Miller spokesman Pete Marino said. “But we remain confident that our message about new Bud will be well heard and well understood.”

A Fox spokesman declined to comment on if the network consulted with Anheuser-Busch about the decision.

A representatives from Anheuser-Busch was not immediately available to comment.

Anheuser-Busch and Miller, which is a unit of SABMiller Plc, have been vying for U.S. market share, a battle that has spilled onto the airwaves through commercials. Both brewers have poked fun at the other’s products in their advertising.

In January, ABC and its sister cable network ESPN rejected three Anheuser-Busch commercials spoofing Miller advertising campaigns. That move came after the major TV networks pulled three Miller Lite commercials, saying they were too disparaging of Bud Light.

In 2004, Miller filed a lawsuit against its bigger rival, claiming the company was making “false and misleading statements” in its advertising.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7B01C8DCC5%2D6747%2D46DA%2D9B8D%2DEFD591567993%7D&dist=rss&siteid=mktw

By Frank Barnako, MarketWatch

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — While you watch the Super Bowl, dozens of online-savvy consumers and Web loggers will be watching the Net to see how the game’s TV commercials are playing in Peoria.

Intelliseek Inc. of Cincinnati and New Media Strategies of Arlington, Va., have lined up dozens of people to surf Web sites, blogs and message boards to get a fast read on the effectiveness and popularity of marketers’ commercials. With TV costing as much as $2.4 million for a 30-second spot, companies want to know whether their money was spent wisely.

As people post comments about the ads on the Web, the marketing companies’ monitors will report what’s being said.

“Conversations all over the Internet, from message boards to blogs and beyond, now allow us to get a true pulse in real time,” said NMS Chief Executive Pete Snyder in a statement. His firm is doing a similar monitoring process of the entertainment industry and the Oscars contest.

“Studio execs and entertainment insiders watch very closely what people are saying online,” he added.

Besides the companies whose products are being pitched, advertising agencies are also interested in the results. Marketing officers hope they’ve chosen the right creative teams and campaign strategies.

It’s important that agencies, even more so than brands, are getting the right kind of buzz,” said Snyder, in a comment reported by Media Post.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20050204-9999-1b4super.html

By Shannon McMahon UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

A 1997 Dirt Devil commercial showcased Fred Astaire. The company’s sales then fell.

Just as Ford pulls a Super Bowl TV ad before it ever airs, a sampling of other commercials for the big game reveals some unusually tame tactics.

Cowboys herding cats. Fred Astaire dancing with vacuums. Office workers getting tackled by a hefty linebacker.

These were some of the best, and funniest, commercials of the Super Bowl in recent years. But analysts say they failed their most critical test.

Most viewers can’t remember who made them.

“You get caught up in the joke and forget about the brand,” marketing expert Tom Dougherty said.

And with the price of a Super Bowl sound bite inching up ?? it’s now $2.4 million for 30 seconds ?? some marketing strategists are growing skeptical of television’s most expensive advertising venue.

“The common sentiment is, they’re not worth the money,” said Lee Smith, president of the marketing firm InsightExpress. “But the Super Bowl is one of the few chances companies have to reach as many people across any medium.”

With 90 million viewers at any given moment ?? double the audience for the second-ranked Oscars ?? the Super Bowl is super enticing. Advertisers argue that bowl ads pay dividends with media attention, water-cooler chatter and armchair debates during the game.

But critics counter that while the cost of a spot has more than doubled since 1995, the audience size has remained stagnant.

There is no direct correlation between ads and sales, said Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at Northwestern University. Calkins and others questioned the effectiveness of ads:

Does seeing an ad for a job Web site make you want to post your r?sum? sometime that year? Debatable. Does watching a funny Budweiser donkey or seeing the Osbournes drink Pepsi make you want to brand-jump? Probably not.

“Those Budweiser frogs are a big hit, but tell me how that makes you want to drink Budweiser,” said Dougherty, a managing partner at Stealing Share Inc. The St. Louis brewing company, he said, “has the tiger by the tail. They’re expected by users to be in a Super Bowl.”

While many bowl fans anticipate the ads, their allure is in decline. A study by Eisner Communications said 7 percent of viewers plan to watch the Super Bowl strictly for the commercials. That’s a 2 percent drop from last year.

Even when viewers do tune in, ads often go awry, Calkins said.

“Schick ran an ad in the Super Bowl last year, but data says people recall it as being a Gillette commercial,” Calkins said. “Then there were the cowboys herding cats a few years ago. It was a very funny ad. You look at it as a piece of film. But who was it for? And what was the point? We don’t know.”

It was for EDS, an information technology consulting firm.

Calkins decried the Reebok ad that ran in 2004 and featured linebacker Terry Tate wreaking havoc in an office.

“I never really saw a pair of sneakers in that ad,” he said. “A lot of ads are likable, but you don’t know who they’re for.”

Dougherty argued that some ads are downright frivolous.

“Advertising today is like the hairstyles in the French court,” he said. “They’ve gotten so overdone that they serve no practical purpose.”

Dougherty pointed to ads for Apple, Dirt Devil and Charmin to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of the ad blitz.

Apple’s 1984 ad, showing a young woman heaving a hammer at a symbol of Big Brother, is lauded as one of the most influential and groundbreaking commercials in Madison Avenue’s history.

“Apple today has 4 to 5 percent of the market share,” Dougherty said. “Did that ad sell computers? No.”

Dirt Devil showcased Fred Astaire twirling around vacuums in the 1997 Super Bowl. In the second quarter of the company’s fiscal year, sales fell.

In 2004, Procter & Gamble moved into the Super Bowl with an ad for Charmin toilet paper. It was the only product among Proctor’s top brands to decline in volume through the first quarter.

This year’s lineup may be even less memorable, analysts say, without the gaseous horses and crotch-biting dogs of 2004.

Because of last year’s indecency scandal, ads will be more sedate, according to the Fox network, which is broadcasting the bowl.

GoDaddy.com, a newcomer to the Super Bowl pack, is pushing the envelope with an ad that shows a young woman losing her blouse at a hearing on broadcast censorship. The Internet Web site provider is kicking off a $19 million national marketing campaign.

But Fox recently rejected another Super Bowl ad from Airborne because it showed Mickey Rooney’s 84-year-old backside for two to three seconds. Ford decided Wednesday to pull an ad that featured a priest pining for a truck, after hearing complaints from clergy sex abuse victims.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7B6668C84A%2D45A0%2D4E95%2DA912%2DFFE055FA76C9%7D&dist=rss&siteid=mktw

By William Spain, MarketWatch

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) — Behind all the hype about the high cost and the battle for creative dominance lies the big question about the big game: Is spending zillions of dollars to produce and air ads during the Super Bowl a savvy investment, or a punt of no return?

Or is it both?

Figuring out the precise payback from any TV ad, or series of ads, is next to impossible, and that is no different for the ones that run during the Super Bowl Sunday. Immediate sales increases after a Super Bowl ad that can be directly traced back are rare, one of the factors that keeps so many normally free-spending names on the sidelines.

What marketers do know, though, is that their ads will actually be watched, avidly. They have become such an integral part of the event’s broadcast that, unlike during the most popular prime-time shows, very few viewers flip channels or hit the bathroom during commercial breaks.

“It is the biggest media event in the country and the only one that people tune in to watch the commercials,” said Ken Kaess, chief executive of Omnicom Group’s (OMC: news, chart, profile) DDB Worldwide, which has more clients in Sunday’s broadcast than any other ad agency — a list that includes PepsiCo (PEP: news, chart, profile) , Anheuser-Busch (BUD: news, chart, profile) , McDonald’s (MCD: news, chart, profile) and Tabasco.

In addition to that rapt attention, there is usually plenty of pre- and post-game buzz, Kaess added: “If your ad is successful, it’s incredible how much PR value you can get out of it.” Watch interview with DDB’s chief executive.

And that helps Super Bowl spots seem to defeat ad-killing technology like TiVo (TIVO: news, chart, profile) , he said. Last year, four of the top five most popular TiVo downloads were commercials; the other was the notorious Janet Jackson breast incident that got Viacom (VIA: news, chart, profile) in trouble, according to Kaess.

Paying $80,000 a second

Last year’s game was watched by an average of 89.8 million viewers, the highest since 1998, according to Nielsen Media Research. A 30-second spot cost an average of $2.3 million, and there were 49 minutes and 25 seconds of commercial time aired.

This time around, the price has tweaked higher to $2.4 million — about $80,000 a second. And with teams from two of the top five TV markets facing off for the first time in 25 years, there is no reason to believe viewer numbers will go anywhere but up.

Advertisers can find other ways to get in front of that many eyeballs, albeit not all at once. What they can’t get anywhere else, though, is the guarantee that they will watch.

After the 2004 Super Bowl, an ad retention study by Initiative found an average retention rate of 97.6 percent. Depending on positioning within the game and within the commercial “pod,” some rates were as high as 100 percent. H&R Block (HRB: news, chart, profile) , Microsoft (MSFT: news, chart, profile) , Anheuser-Busch and Altria (MO: news, chart, profile) hit that triple digit, while the worst performer — a federal antidrug ad — still managed an impressive 96.9 percent.

“It is an incredible opportunity to make an impact, to move the needle, just pick your cliche,” said Tim Spengler, director of national broadcast for the Interpublic (IPG: news, chart, profile) media buying firm. “It is a platform like no other in media, because you are looking at an event that that has the whole country galvanized to a single TV show, which never happens any other time.”

Spengler, who buys for Home Depot (HD: news, chart, profile) and Time Warner’s (TWX: news, chart, profile) AOL, among other brands, added that even if sales don’t immediately bounce after the game, there are other ways of telling if it was a win.

“There are a number of metrics other than correlation of short-term sales. It might be a success from a trade perspective; you might have better heft in getting your products [distributed],” he said. “There are so many variables in a given marketing mix. There is always going to be art in this business.”

None of the Super Bowl advertisers contacted by MarketWatch would specify what makes for an acceptable return on the investment. That is possibly because even with all the fuss, they still just can’t tell.

Anheuser-Busch in particular — typically the biggest spender, with better than five minutes of ad time bought in each of the last three Super Bowls — declined any comment at all.

“The ad industry has not figured out how to connect the dots,” said Steve Fredericks, chief executive of ad tracker TNS Media Intelligence. “So far, all we have been able to glean at best are correlations. The data just aren’t available to measure how many people watched a commercial.”

Show me more than the money

Another issue is that Super Bowl ads are judged by their entertainment and aesthetic values rather than by return, according to Mark Stevens who runs the consultancy MSCO and is the author of the book “Your Marketing Sucks.”

“The Super Bowl is a great place to advertise if you can afford it and if you can deliver on what you are doing,” he said, asserting that many of the game’s advertisers cannot.

“That is an exercise in stupidity. … You don’t know what the best ads are because those commercials haven’t sold anything yet,” he added. “This just highlights an issue that is applicable every single day of the year in every place that you advertise.”

Indeed, getting too creative — trying to break through the clutter — can backfire. Late Wednesday, Ford’s (F: news, chart, profile) Lincoln-Mercury division abruptly yanked an ad that was designed to launch a new luxury truck.

The spot, created by WPP Group’s (WPPGY: news, chart, profile) Young & Rubicam, featured a priest getting keys to a Lincoln Mark LT on a collection plate and later spelling out “lust” as the topic of his next sermon; it will be replaced with a spot featuring a convertible Ford Mustang. (Watch Ford Mustang ad. Also see Ford trucks commercial.)

Ford executives, who discussed the withdrawn ad at length on Tuesday, declined to return phone calls after the decision not to use it.

Sometimes an advertiser is not expecting much out of a Super Bowl ad, but only trying to make sure a counterpart doesn’t get anything either. That is especially true in cutthroat competitive categories.

“If you don’t put in an appearance, your credibility as a brand suffers,” said Tom Pirko, head of beverage consultancy Bevmark. “You have to be there because if you are not, one of your competitors will swallow up all the oxygen. Whatever the return is, you just buck up and pay it.”

William Spain is a reporter for MarketWatch in Chicago.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050203/ap_on_bi_ge/super_bowl_memorable_ads_1

By CONNOR ENNIS, AP Sports Writer

NEW YORK – There are basically two fates for advertising executives on Super Bowl Sunday: Make a memorable commercial and find yourself in the enviable position of being the talk of the water cooler on Monday. Or, make a bad one, and realize that you’d rather face office linebacker Terry Tate than your bosses when you walk into work the next day.

With plenty of Super Bowl busts on the field, the viewing public often gets its entertainment from the ads. And with the largest television audience in the world watching, the commercials that work tend to be remembered far longer than those that debut during sitcom reruns.

“The public is aware that this is now a showcase of not only just a football game, but a showcase for new commercials,” said Andrew Pappalardo, a broadcast negotiator at Mediaedge:cia.

With that in mind here’s a list — far from definitive and in no particular order — of five of the most memorable Super Bowl commercials:

_ MJ vs. Bird. The 1993 McDonald’s ad where Michael Jordan and Larry Bird try to best each other in a one-on-one shooting exhibition (no dunking allowed) for the grand prize of, you guessed it, a Big Mac. The shots get more and more challenging, and the commercial ends with both standing atop the Sears Tower and Jordan promising to go off the expressway and over the river while hitting “nothing but net.” Who wins? Who knows? Given the greatness of these two competitors, they may still be going. The only misstep is Jordan’s hideous multicolored outfit, which was almost enough to make viewers turn away from an otherwise brilliant commercial.

_ The Bud Bowl. Budweiser is a consistent supplier of clever Super Bowl advertising. The frogs were hilarious and the Clydesdale horses that kick the extra point but usually like going for 2 were outstanding. But it’s the 1988 Bud Bowl that remains the company’s defining ad — it ran for several years and often featured more suspense than the actual game.

_ Independence Day. The trailer for the movie in 1996. In the pre-9/11 world, the vision of an alien spaceship disintegrating the White House was spectacular. It also guaranteed that every young male watching — heck, every male watching — immediately marked the movie’s July 4th opening on their calendars.

_ Cindy Crawford’s 1992 Pepsi ad. Sexy and innocent at the same time, this ad unveiled the new Pepsi logo and design. Two young boys watch slack-jawed as the supermodel pulls up to a vending machine at a dusty gas station in a sports car. Dressed in a white T-shirt and jean shorts, she buys a Pepsi and drinks it, in slow motion. “It’s beautiful,” one of the boys says, referring, obviously, to the new soda can.

_ 1984. Apple’s one-time announcement that year for the arrival of the Macintosh (news – web sites) computer. Still the most talked-about Super Bowl ad, this Ridley Scott-directed commercial envisioned an Orwellian world, drab and dreary with a tyrannical Big Brother figure lecturing to the masses from a large movie screen. That is until a blonde woman dressed as a track and field athlete sprints into the hall, ahead of several guards, and throws a hammer through the screen. The screen explodes and the masses are bathed in light. Then comes the ending line: “On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you will see why 1984 won’t be like ’1984.’” The ad was only shown once and it’s still talked about today.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050202/us_nm/media_advertising_superbowl_dc_12

By Michele Gershberg

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Advertisers at this year’s Super Bowl hark back to the familiar in new commercials for TV’s biggest event, dusting off celebrities from decades ago and putting childhood icons into the spotlight.

Cartoon super heroes like Spider-Man and Captain America rush to the rescue in payment card company Visa’s spot, while the Muppets dig in to Pizza Hut fare. Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny join forces to tout Emerald of California snack nuts at the National Football League championship football game on Sunday, when the Philadelphia Eagles play the New England Patriots.

Some marketers are relying on safe and reassuring symbols from the past, to counter an indecency scandal from the 2004 Super Bowl and to recognize the event’s popularity beyond men who love beer, according to advertising executives.

Actor Burt Reynolds and singers Gladys Knight and MC Hammer are some of the celebrities past their heyday, or in the midst of a comeback, expected to appear in ads on the Fox network at $2.4 million per 30-second spot.

“What last year really illustrated was that people always assume it’s a male audience of a certain age, but you do have moms watching and kids … and if they don’t like what they see, they will be heard,” said David Droga, worldwide creative director at Publicis Worldwide .

For advertisers and their agencies, the Super Bowl is the biggest stage for their best work where they vie for the title of most memorable or entertaining commercial.

The rivalry for surprise left a bitter taste last year when an outcry over Janet Jackson (news)’s exposed breast during a half-time show performance spilled over to a critique of edgy ads throughout the game.

“After the scrutiny that everything was put under last year, no company or CEO wants to be held up as an example,” said Droga. “They will overcompensate and find other ways to entertain.”

Using established stars and icons helps companies get their message across, as viewers already know and identify with them. Perennial Super Bowl advertiser PepsiCo is expected to use a mix of new and older celebrities, though the beverage maker has kept its plans under wraps.

Characters like Spider-Man also speak to the childhoods of older audiences but are still fresh for younger viewers.

“You like to see people like that come back,” said Tom Cordner, worldwide creative director at WPP agency JWT, in charge of ads for automaker Ford . “You may know something about their lives — maybe they ran into some misfortune at one point — and you root for them.”

WHERE RACY REFERS TO SPEED

Brewer Anheuser-Busch, the single largest Super Bowl advertiser, was criticized last year for ad gags including a flatulent horse and a crotch-biting dog. This time the maker of Budweiser and Bud Light beers promises to go heavy on the humor, light on the offense, in about 10 Super Bowl ads.

“You’ve got to be careful because if you do cross the line … you get slapped down so hard by critics and people who do take offense, it really isn’t worth taking that risk,” said Bob Lachky, director of global brand advertising at Anheuser-Busch.

Anheuser’s most titillating spot didn’t make the cut this year, but is driving traffic to its Web site. The ad shows a stagehand opening a Bud Light with Janet Jackson’s black leather bustier before she dons it to perform, a spoof of the “wardrobe malfunction” which bared her breast in public.

The brewer may put other edgy ad work on its Web site to target its core audience and avoid controversy, Lachky said.

Internet domain manager GoDaddy.com also parodies the indecency fracas in its ad. A buxom dancer describes her routine for a commercial before broadcast censors.

The “raciest” ad in this year’s game may be a spot for Cadillac’s V-Series car, which casts the vehicle accelerating from zero to 60 miles per hour as akin to a speeding bullet.

And lust is not entirely absent. Lincoln Mercury returns to the Super Bowl after more than a decade, showing a clergyman coveting a churchgoer’s Mark LT truck in the parking lot.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/superbowladscouldraiseafeweyebrows

By Michael McCarthy, USA TODAY

So much for the much-talked-about “G-rated” Super Bowl. Cialis, maker of an erectile dysfunction (ED) drug, and Unilever’s new Degree for Men deodorant will be showing up with provocative ads for Fox’s airing of Super Bowl XXXIX on Feb. 6.

After the Janet Jackson halftime breast-baring fiasco – and resulting “decency” uproar that enveloped some of the commercials – Fox and the National Football League have been expected to clamp down on anything that could upset 145 million U.S. viewers.

Cialis, the No. 2 ED drug behind Pfizer’s Viagra, has decided to return to the game for a second year, with a 60-second commercial to air in the third quarter, says Leonard Blum, vice president of marketing for Icos, which jointly markets the drug with Eli Lilly.

Cialis’ ad last year attracted some objections – and unintended chuckles – for a warning about possible side effects: “Men who experience an erection for more than four hours should seek immediate medical attention.”

Blum says: “Now that the product has been used by over 4 million men worldwide, there are occasional reports. It’s a very unusual event, but it does require medical attention.”

Food and Drug Administration (news – web sites) ad rules require that possible side effects be stated if Cialis spells out what the drug is for and that it works for 36 hours.

So, yes, the four-hour warning will be back in the new Super Bowl spot by Grey Worldwide. The ad will show mature couples playfully grooving to the 1963 Ronettes song Be My Baby.

After Cialis bought into the game last year, it was joined by another recently launched ED drug, Levitra, which so far is leaving the field this year to Cialis.

The ads last year caused many red-faced parents to have to answer kids who wanted to know what ED is, notes Pam Scholder Ellen, associate professor of marketing at Georgia State University.

The Super Bowl is “not the time or the place” for ED or condom advertising, she says.

But the game’s huge, predominantly male audience makes it tough to resist as a place to tout Cialis to many of the 30 million U.S. men suffering from ED – and to their wives and girlfriends, counters David Carter, principal of the Sports Business Group in Los Angeles. As for the four-hour warning, “That was the best marketing slogan of 2004,” he says.

Unilever, meanwhile, will take aim at 25- to 35-year-old guys with a funky new commercial from Lowe Worldwide featuring action figures.

Part spoof of old GI Joe commercials, part Maxim magazine satire, the 30-second Super Bowl spot shows a “Mama’s Boy” doll being pushed around by his Mama doll. “He never sweats because he doesn’t risk leaving his Mama,” says the spokesman for “Dull Co.” toys. The spot promises future ads featuring his sad-sack doll buddies: “The Wuss” and “The SuckUp.”

The Super Bowl ad buy begins a months-long marketing effort to launch Degree for Men. It includes a Web site devoted to “In-Action” hero dolls that goes online Feb. 5, says to Christopher Luxon, brand development director.

“This is not your generic deodorant advertising where you usually grab a sports star and say, ‘Insert your product here,’ ” Luxon says. “Unilever has been embracing risk.”

His colleague, Allison Harmon, senior manager of integrated marketing, is not worried about their ad running afoul of an indecency backlash. “Janet Jackson wasn’t an ad,” she says.

Fox has three to four spots to sell out of 59 in-game spots and has been getting a record average of $2.4 million per 30-second commercial.

This will be the first time Fox broadcasts the Super Bowl entirely in high-definition.

The network has set a deadline of Monday for marketers to submit HD ads for broadcast and expects at least a dozen commercials to appear in the format.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=entertainmentNews&storyID=7414083

By Michele Gershberg

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Call it the ripple effect, or the nipple effect, but Super Bowl advertisers have eased off the hoopla ahead of the National Football League championship game this year following an indecency scandal last year.

Less than two weeks before the big U.S. game on Feb. 6, few advertisers have trumpeted their plans for U.S. television’s most watched commercial venue — and, at $2.4 million per 30-second spot, the most expensive.

Many were sobered by a viewer outcry after the 2004 Super Bowl, when singer Janet Jackson bared a breast while performing in the halftime show. The incident prompted an indecency crackdown by federal regulators.

“There may be some caution in the air now based on what happened at halftime last year,” Bob Scarpelli, U.S. chief creative officer at the DDB ad agency, told Reuters. “Marketers are being cautious in terms of what they’re going to run and also how it is talked about in the press.”

The backlash engulfed the more off-color commercials during last year’s game, including a flatulent horse in an ad for brewer Anheuser-Busch and a breezy peek up a bagpipe player’s kilt for Sierra Mist soda.

As a result, some advertisers may actually prefer to wait this time and let the commercials do the talking.

“Larger advertisers have been burned in the past by over-hyping what turned out to be rather bad or at least unpopular ads,” said brand expert Mark DiMassimo.

Marketing executives say they are aiming for smiles, not outrage. Several childhood icons will even tout products this year, including Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny in ads for Emerald of California snack nuts.

Novartis AG’s CIBA Vision will debut a Super Bowl spot aimed at women consumers for its newest contact lens. The ad has lens-wearers exchanging flirtatious, but not racy, glances.

“It is very appealing to both men and women, delivered tastefully — and I will underscore that,” said Karen Gough, CIBA Vision’s president of the Americas. “I think it’s safe to say the Super Bowl this year will be a much more appropriate venue for advertisers.”

Marketers may have also hesitated to talk up ads in the weeks after a Dec. 26 tsunami in south Asia that killed more than 200,000 people, eliciting a global outpouring of sympathy and pledges of aid. Advertisers responded with similar caution after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. Continued …

In addition, notably absent this year are marketing battles played up by the media in the weeks before the 2004 Super Bowl. These included the launch of rival erectile dysfunction drugs to Pfizer’s Viagra, an internal ad contest at Procter & Gamble and a campaign against illegal music downloading.

DDB AGENCY TOPS WITH SPOTS

But Scarpelli and other ad executives say the appetite for entertainment and surprise remains strong. Super Bowl hype could yet build in the final stretch before the game.

“There’s going to be more of a carefulness not to be insensitive, but I think people really need entertainment and laughter during very tough times,” said David Lubars, chief creative officer at BBDO North America. The agency is preparing in-game spots for clients like Visa and FedEx Corp .

“I think it will be funny,” he said. “Last year there was an unintentional trend. But that doesn’t mean they (advertisers) aren’t going to try and do something provocative or stand out, because it is the biggest stage.”

Omnicom Group’s DDB is working on as many as 10 commercials aimed at the Super Bowl, to be broadcast from Jacksonville, Florida, by the Fox television network.

That would make DDB — bolstered by perennial Super Bowl marketers like Anheuser-Busch and new forays by McDonald’s, AmeriQuest and Tabasco — the agency with the largest number of Super Bowl spots, a place often claimed by sister agency BBDO.

One Super Bowl preview comes from General Motors Corp.’s Cadillac division, which already launched 5-second commercial teasers ahead of the big game. The ads playfully feature the accelerating power of its V-Series cars, which can speed from zero to 60 miles per hour in under five seconds.

“There’s a little bit of a smile in them, what we call our intelligent wit,” said Cadillac marketing director Jay Spenchian.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20040211-1546-indecentprogramming.html

By Jonathan D. Salant

ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON – Janet Jackson’s exposed breast was talk of Capitol Hill on Wednesday, with lawmakers and regulators saying it’s the latest example of all that’s wrong with TV and should serve as the impetus for government to get tough with broadcasters.

At a pair of hearings, lawmakers excoriated Mel Karmazin, president of Viacom Inc. His company owns CBS, which broadcast the raunchy Super Bowl halftime show that included Jackson.

Members of the House Telecommunications Committee spent more than two hours grilling Karmazin, who again apologized for the show that ended with singer Justin Timberlake tearing off part of Jackson’s top and exposing her right breast to 90 million TV viewers.

“You knew what you were doing,” said Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., her voice cracking. “You wanted us to be all abuzz. It lines your pockets.”

Karmazin insisted that CBS and MTV did not know about plans to rip off Jackson’s top, nor the crotch-grabbing dance steps that were also included in the halftime show. He said none of those actions took place during rehearsals.

“Everyone at Viacom and everyone at CBS and everyone at MTV was shocked and appalled and embarrassed at what had happened,” Karmazin said.

To prevent a repeat, he said CBS will air live programming on a five-minute delay, which was done for the Grammy awards this week. He said the network-owned stations would also buy equipment so that locally televised live programs would also be time-delayed. And he said the network was reviewing its standards for commercials in response to criticism over a movie trailer for a horror film and Super Bowl ads showing a flatulent horse and a crotch-biting dog.

The halftime show, produced by CBS’ corporate cousin MTV, drew more than 200,000 complaints to the Federal Communications Commission.

National Football League Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, also testifying before the House panel, said he expressed concerns about the halftime show in December and even considered dismissing MTV as producer. But he decided to move forward following a meeting with CBS President Les Moonves, and because of MTV’s track record in producing the 2001 halftime show.

“Clearly, there was a wide gap over what was appropriate,” Tagliabue said. “We should have recognized it earlier. We gave the keys to the car to someone else to drive without assuring they knew how to drive the car safely, and they crashed.”

All five FCC commissioners appeared before the two panels and urged Congress to give them a more powerful tool to use against broadcasters.

Legislation in both houses would increase the maximum fine for indecency from $27,500 to $275,000. The FCC already has said it will begin fining broadcasters for each incident rather than each program.

“Cost-of-doing-business fines will never stop Big Media’s slide to the bottom,” Commissioner Michael Copps said. “All of the fines we have imposed against Viacom could be paid for by adding one commercial to the Super Bowl, and the company would probably end up with a profit.”

Viacom is no stranger to the fight over indecency. Its Infinity Broadcasting subsidiary paid $1.7 million in 1995 to settle several cases against disc jockey Howard Stern, and the FCC last year proposed fining the company $357,000 for a radio segment on the “Opie and Anthony Show” in which a couple was said to be having sex in New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Viacom is contesting the fine for its broadcast of the Opie and Anthony show. Karmazin said the show was tasteless and gross, but not indecent.

He called on the FCC to issue rules defining what is an indecent program.

“What’s happened is the standard has changed,” Karmazin said. “It is not exactly clear what is meant by indecency.

FCC Chairman Michael Powell said the commission has been able to enforce indecency standards for decades, and doesn’t need to go through a time-consuming process to write a rule.

“It’s a red herring,” Powell said. “There is no ambiguity with the indecency standard. It’s existed for 30 years.”

http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=39755

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.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/17090.htm

By DAN MANGAN, ADAM BUCKMAN and BILL HOFFMANN

It was a Super Bowl to remember for what was seen – and what shouldn’t have been.

The telecast featured a billion dollars worth of new ads for 32 products, ranging from pickup trucks and Pepsi to computers and potato chips.

On the field, the Patriots held off the Panthers to win the title 32-29, while Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake unsuccessfully tried to steal the limelight with a steamy ending to the halftime show.

But, as always, it was the new ads that had fans talking.

Some of the commercials were hip and clever – like Pepsi’s that focused on illegal downloading of songs from the Internet.

“It was the best idea on the Super Bowl,” said Jonathan Bond, co-chairman of advertising company Kirshenbaum, Bond + Partners, who was part of a panel enlisted by The Post to rate the commercials.

“Pepsi has been trying to be young for 40 years. This was new, rebellious and a novel way to outperform Coke,” he said.

Other ads were clunkers, our experts said, like Ford’s speeding cars and trucks dragging unlikely loads.

“They must have exhumed Henry Ford to get a sense of what were the most dated, trite, banal car advertisements I’ve ever seen,” said Richard Kirshenbaum, co-chairman of Kirshenbaum, Bond+Partners, and another member of our panel.

Another commercial put the spotlight on the late Jimi Hendrix. Did anybody know that, as a young boy, the rock legend weighed taking up the accordion instead of the guitar, but chose the latter, just as he chose Pepsi over Coke?

That weird whirling sound you heard last night was probably the sound of the “Purple Haze” wildman spinning in his grave.

One ad that generated some laughs was a Bud Light spot that featured a couple cuddling in a horse-drawn sleigh before the man stepped away to grab some beer, leaving his date to get treated to the sight and smell of a flatulent horse.

And who knew that Expedia, the online travel agency, was getting into some serious S&M? It sure looked like it as some poor schlub trying to plan a getaway has a nightmare in which he’s held down by evil circus clowns who then painted circles around his nipples.

Are there any other words to use but “sad, sad, sad” for Willie Nelson, who for the second year in a row, is making fun of the tax troubles that nearly destroyed him by shilling for tax-preparing service H&R Block?

And you’ve gotta wonder about the creative minds behind the IBM ad.

OK, there is an instant poignancy about dragging out ailing Muhammad Ali to shill. But doesn’t the company that practically invented computers have anything new to say?

Making fun of old people? Frito-Lay got away with it with an elderly guy who tripped his wife to keep her from getting to the potato chips – and then he couldn’t eat them because she had his false teeth.

Last night, the Jackson-Timberlake incident was also creating buzz.

The National Football League and CBS issued statements critical of the stunt that left Jackson with a bare breast after Timberlake tore a patch off her outfit.

The singers later apologized and blamed a “costume malfunction.”

Joe Browne, executive president of the NFL, was unimpressed and said, “It’s unlikely that MTV will produce another Super Bowl halftime.”

CBS spokeswoman Leslie Anne Wade said the network “deeply regrets the incident.”