Superbowl-ads.com Article Archive

TONIGHT! Exclusive Party to be Held at Jackson Brewery Bistro Bar

Playboy will once again throw the most exclusive party in town during New Orleans’ highly-anticipated Super Bowl weekend and promises to be one of the Big Easy’s most talked-about events.

The legendary evening will be hosted by 20 Playboy Playmates, with music by DJs Devin Lucien and Jesse Marco and special performances by B.o.B and Trombone Shorty.

With help from iconic whisky brand and presenting sponsor Crown Royal, celebrities, athletes and VIPs will be treated to an evening filled with Playboy sophistication and New Orleans-style charm and influence. A unique brass band parade of MINI Roadsters, Playboy Bunnies, models and VIP guests will kick off the festivities as it winds through the French Quarter and ends on the Red Carpet where a masked MINI Paceman will be on display. Once inside, guests will put on a Mardi Gras mask as they sip Crown Royal cocktails, have their palms read inside a MINI Countryman, enjoy delicious hors d’oeuvres seasoned with Tabasco Original Red Sauce from celebrity chef John Besh, snap photos in the MINI photo booth, and enjoy the evening in true New Orleans style.

VIP guests will also have the opportunity to give back to U.S. soldiers by participating in The Crown Royal Heroes Project. Upon entering the party, celebrities, athletes and Playmates will be invited to stuff a camo-themed purple Crown Royal bag with snacks that will be sent to troops overseas after the Big Game.

Last year’s “Carnival Mystique” event in Indianapolis featured a performance by R&B superstar Ne-Yo.

Celebrities, musicians and athletes in attendance at the Playboy party in years past include Kanye West, Jon Hamm, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Usher, Bradley Cooper, Maria Menounos, Aaron Rodgers, Chris Evans, Jessica Szohr, Shaquille O’Neal, LMFAO, Gabrielle Union, Kellan Lutz, Mark Salling and Tony Romo.

Playboy and Sports Illustrated — mainstays of the big event — announced last week they won’t hold their usual Super Bowl Week parties in Tampa this month. No Playmates, bunnies, swimsuit models or Hef’s girlfriends. Maxim will still hold its party, the Tampa Tribune reports, and a Playboy spokeswoman said it will be sending, representatives to the DirecTV Celebrity Beach Bowl.

http://www.sunspot.net/business/bal-ads0127,0,2206001.story?coll=bal-business-headlines

From that lame excuse for a game to those tame commercials, there was little super about this year’s spectacle
By Steve Johnson Chicago Tribune

Welcome to the Microsoft Word/Dell PC article about the RadioShack Pre-game Show, the Charles Schwab Kickoff Show, the Coach Don Shula coin toss, the Reebok Halftime Report, the AT&T Wireless Halftime Show, and — oh, yes — the actual Super Bowl, an apparent football game.

The writing of this piece, it cannot go without saying, is fueled by Starbuck’s Coffee, Fritos brand salted snacks and, a little while later, Tums.

The Super Bowl is, of course, traditionally the most popular American TV event of the year, as well as, just as traditionally, a lopsided sporting contest.

It is also the television spectacle in which the advertisements and the other sideshow attractions (national anthem, halftime show) draw nearly as much attention as the organized brutality taking place in the big tent.

That fact was, this year, unfortunate, because this Super Bowl game really needed worthwhile distractions. But after last year’s post-Sept. 11 veil of solemnity and the dot-commerce excesses of the previous two, the Super Bowl of 2003 offered a portrait of an advertising community — and a television network — playing it safe.

Now let us pause for a moment while we salute the men and women of our armed forces and Celine Dion, who was more visible during Sunday’s ABC telecast than the offense of the Oakland Raiders.

She trilled through “God Bless America” before the game. She pretended to drive Chrysler products around in unpersuasive ads during it. She even, we are pretty sure, had something to do with shutting down Oakland receiver Tim Brown. And she’s from Canada, eh?

But from the Shania Twain-led halftime show to the feeble humor in a series of Bud Light ads, everything about this year’s spectacle felt a little tame, a little timid.

The most memorable aspect of the ads was the news that there’s an Adam Sandler-Jack Nicholson movie coming out. This does not count as the good kind of memorable.

Indeed, taking it all in, thinking about the hype for all of it, you couldn’t help feeling like one of those halftime-show audience members in front of the on-field stage — the poor people who had to pump their arms constantly, as if five minutes of a very processed-sounding Twain was more exciting than, say, a Beatles reunion.

Only a few of the ads that tried to be funny really were, and many others were just kind of off-key.

But maybe conservative is an advertiser’s natural response to having to spend a reported $2.1 million for 30 seconds and trying to please an impossibly diverse viewing audience, said to be close to half the country at any one moment or another.

But there’s also room, in this scenario, to take some risks and leave a mark. Apple did it in 1984 in a MacIntosh ad that helped make the brand and that is still discussed.

This year, Cadillac broke into the piggy bank for a full, 90-second ad, featuring a guy on a train viewing the history of the carmaker out his window. As a message about Cadillac’s new look, it was serviceable, but the ad, like most of the evening’s heavy-production pieces, didn’t feel like anything worth talking about the next morning, much less the next millennium.

Pepsi and subsidiaries clicked with the Ozzy Osbournes-as-Osmonds Pepsi Twist pop-culture sendup, but a costly spot featuring a zoo simian vaulting into the polar bear cage pool for soda-like refreshment felt disjointed, with wasted “2001: A Space Odyssey” allusions. (And you couldn’t help thinking that
the bears were going to eat the monkey afterward.)

Sony spent a lot on a big spot about the technological future: Older gentleman uses company’s machinery, also spends kids’ inheritance to take rocket trip. It looked nice, it sounded nice. But the message felt selfish, especially with 1960s anthem “Carry On” used as the backdrop.

And Levi’s big “Stampede” ad, featuring jeans-wearing hipsters standing cool amid an obviously computer-generated urban buffalo stampede was nothing compared to last year’s Spike Jonze-directed gem, featuring a delightfully loose-limbed kid for the company’s lightweight jeans.

In the ad community’s only apparent attempt to introduce an ongoing character, Reebok’s “Terry Tate, Office Linebacker” — a musclebound giant who brutally tackles office mopes caught playing computer solitaire, for instance — induced winces of sympathy more than it did laughs at the attempted incongruity.

Give ABC credit for getting the football part right. As interesting as the network’s recent experiment with comic Dennis Miller in the broadcast booth often was, having Al Michaels and John Madden announcing the game this year, as they had on “Monday Night Football” all season long, made it feel like football, at least for a little while.

And the network used its promotional time to push, mostly, actual television series, rather than the reality junk food that it’s been relying on as a short-term ratings fix.

Too bad the football didn’t leave Madden-Michaels much to discuss. They were reduced to — in the third quarter, with the score 34-9 in favor of eventual runaway winner Tampa Bay Buccaneers — putting thoughts in the heads of legendary football coaches not in attendance.

Also on the ball was rival broadcaster NBC, which earns points for taking its best shot at the ABC audience by running a special edition of “Saturday Night Live’s” Weekend Update during halftime.

The Tina Fey and, especially, Jimmy Fallon cutesy-duo act is growing a touch tiresome by now, but it was at least several notches above last year’s NBC gambit of sticking Playboy Bunnies in a “special” halftime edition of reality gross-out series “Fear Factor.”

Memorable line, from Fallon: “Anheuser-Busch is once again the Super Bowl’s single largest sponsor. And in honor of that, I’m hammered.”

From Fey: “If you weren’t watching the Super Bowl, welcome to America!”

To be sure, there was some cleverness on display in this year’s ads. FedEx, playing off the Tom Hanks movie “Cast Away,” delivered a dose of dark irony, even as it suggested to people how reliable the service is.

In the ad, a shaggy FedEx guy, after five years of being marooned with a package, brings it to the addressee only to find out it contained a satellite phone and other rescue/survival items.

Compare that to the much flatter rendition of the same theme in an AT&T cellular spot, featuring the “Gilligan’s Island” gang being able, with a cell phone, to simply call for rescue.

Budweiser’s football-playing Clydesdales waiting for an official to review a replay started Sunday’s Ad Bowl off with a bang. The zebra serving as the referee was a great touch.

But Anheuser-Busch’s position as the most aggressive advertiser was mostly a case of big dollars
ill spent.

The company’s series of Bud Light ads attempted to be funny, in an appeal-to-young-men way, but mostly fell flat. Guy sticks shaggy dog on head and pretends to be Rasta man. Guy has third arm attached so he can always reach his Bud Light. These were not multimillion dollar chuckles.

Only three dot-coms showed up to the party this year. Winner was the Yahoo-HotJobs spot artfully displaying people in various stages of occupational boredom.

On the celebrity front, Visa made nice use of Chinese basketball giant Yao Ming’s first name, having him visit a New York City shop and try to cash a check. “Yo,” responds the bored cashier, pointing to the “no checks” sign.

“Yao,” says Ming, pointing to himself. Etc.

But H&R Block’s Willie Nelson ad went nowhere special. The legendary ower of back taxes was made to perform in a shaving-cream commercial to pay those taxes.

All things considered, animals outshone celebrities as product pitch-creatures. The aforementioned buffalo and monkeys didn’t quite work, true. And nobody needed to see the dead bird in the ad for sandwich chain Quizno’s.

But Trident did offer an amusing spin on its old “four out of five dentists surveyed recommend sugarless gum” line. The fifth dentist, it turns out, shouted “no” because a squirrel was crawling too far up his pant leg at the moment.

At least that guy got to experience a little jolt of excitement.

They sure beat watching the game

Though it’s not saying much, the Super Bowl entertainment and commercials outperformed the players during this year’s play- it-safe extravaganza. Commercial air time was dominated by the usual breeds — beer companies, car companies, corporate companies — and there wasn’t much to laugh at. But we saw the first 90-second spot, practically a documentary.

THE ANTHEM

1. Dixie Chicks clear, clean rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” cleanses the musical palate after Celine Dion delivers a typicaly overwrought “God Bless America.”

THE ADS

Best in show

2. The Budweiser Clydesdales, last seen playing football in snow, are waiting around foran official, an actual zebra, to make a call via instant replay. Anheuser-Busch uses humor to tell fans it sympathizes with their frustration

3. Haggard, gaunt FedEx guy, marooned for five years with a package, finally delivers it to addressee. It contains GPS, satellite phone, seeds, etc.

Best of Breed

4. It’s a touch mechanical in the production, but Pepsi Twist spot featuring Osbournes morphing into Osmonds delivers a chuckle and a message about product’s surprising nature.

5. Culture clash fuels Visa’s clever “Yo”-”Yao” slot, with rangy Chinese hoopster Ming trying to cash check in NYC store.

Mutts

6. H&R Block has bright idea to use IRS-haunted WIllie Nelson as pitchman, but can only come up with feeble notion of having him pitch mediocre shaving cream to pay his back taxes.

7. Sandwich chain Quizno’s tries to cleverly push idea that their chef thinks only about good ingredients, but does so by sticking a neglected house pet, a now-dead bird, in their food ad. Uh, you want chips with that?

8. Chrysler has what looks like hot new car in Crossfire. So why is it using middle-of-the-roadster Celine Dion, singing a song that sounds like one of Cher’s disco rejects, to pitch it?

9. Bud Light tries, desperately, several times, but is only truly funny once – in having successively feeble guys motivated to carry refrigerator full of product in Strongman competition. Spot with man wearing dog on his head flopped.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/nationworld/orl-subizads13011302jan13.story?coll=orl%2Dbusiness%2Dheadlines

From the Los Angeles Times

By Greg Johnson

Business reporter

Advertisers that primarily limited their messages to somber or patriotic themes immediately after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks are having some fun again.

Sight gags, word games and other clever twists that turn the human condition on its head are resurfacing in television advertising, but advertisers are handling comedy with care rather than risk offending edgy consumers. Not surprisingly, companies that used humor before Sept. 11 have taken the lead with the funny-bone approach.

The funny stuff will be apparent during commercial breaks in Fox’s Feb. 3 Super Bowl broadcast — in which marketers are paying close to $2 million for 30-second spots — and the Winter Olympic Games, scheduled to start in early February.

Don’t expect a return to the zaniness of two years ago, when cash-rich dot-coms commandeered commercial breaks and acted like ill-mannered children in a candy store. Super Bowl spots and commercials being filmed for NBC’s Winter Olympics coverage don’t exist in a vacuum. Advertising is colored by what’s going on in society, and advertisers know there are limits on what they can do for a laugh.

“People still have a sense of humor, but there’s a carefulness now because it isn’t the time to offend anyone,” said Cheryl Berman, chairwoman and chief creative officer of advertising agency Leo Burnett.

Southwest Airlines, the first airline to return to the airwaves after Sept. 11, in October was also one of the first to begin running funny advertising, including an ad in which a guest heads out of town after being caught rummaging through her host’s medicine cabinet.

The decision wasn’t without risk because all airlines again pulled their commercials Nov. 13, after an American Airlines flight crashed shortly after departing from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City.

So far, Southwest has run ads created before Sept. 11. Two new spots in production will air this month.

“I wouldn’t say they’re designed to be fall-on-the-floor-laughing hilarious,” said Eric Webber, spokesman for GSD&M, an Austin, Texas-based advertising agency. “But they are lighter. We are slowly moving back in that [humorous] direction.”

Nextel Communications Inc. easily could have decided to promote the life-saving potential of its cellular telephones that double as short-range radios. But new commercials that began to air Sunday instead show NYPD Blue star Dennis Franz spoofing celebrities who pitch products for a living. Subsequent commercials will feature blues singer B.B. King and golfer John Daly.

Nextel determined in late October that tasteful humor again had a place in advertising, according to Edward Boches, chief creative officer for Wenham, Mass.-based Mullen, which creates Nextel’s advertising. Some spots, however, no longer passed muster. Nextel pulled a commercial that shows an unlucky guy who tumbled down an elevator shaft because his cell phone provider failed to relay a message about planned elevator repairs.

“Everyone is really sensitive to not inadvertently pushing the wrong button,” Boches said. “There’s a bunch of things you won’t do humor about, including airlines, conspiracies, foreigners, high-rise buildings and lots of other obvious things.”

Humor also has been a staple for Sprint PCS. In October, the company enlisted Daryl Dragon and Toni Tennille, better known as the Captain & Tennille, for a silly spot that began running in November. The ’70s pop stars are seen belting out one of their hit songs during a football practice after a competitor’s cellular telephone service fumbles the coach’s call for “a replacement for O’Neill.”

“What commercials you did see immediately after September 11 were patriotic, moving and emotional,” Tennille said. “I found myself crying when I turned on the television and saw one of those spots or heard a piece of music. I finally got to the point where I couldn’t keep crying, and I think a lot of people felt like I did, that it was time for a little break.”

Though advertisers are again incorporating humor, they’re studying scripts to determine what’s appropriate, not unlike anxious comedians studying their material before going onstage.

Bank of America was filming new spots in New Zealand when the terrorist attacks occurred. Unlike past spots, the proposed commercials incorporated humor, so the company had to make a quick decision on whether to continue shooting.

“We couldn’t get out of New Zealand even if we wanted to, so we went ahead with the shoot,” said Frank Sottosanti, a branding and communications executive with Bank of America.

Bank of America also shot a serious commercial just in case consumer research determined that funny stuff wasn’t appropriate. The spots that showcase the bank’s Winter Olympics sponsorship are the foundation of a $60 million campaign.

So the company made a “gut check” in October and opted to go ahead with the funny spots, Sottosanti said. Initially, the spots showed bumbling bank employees falling out of bobsleds and failing to stop hockey players from scoring. But after studying post-Sept. 11 market research, the company changed the endings; now, the bankers gamely return to the field of play for more action.

Bank of America’s last-minute tweaking underscores what Leo Burnett’s Berman describes as “kinder, more sensitive, gentler” advertising climate prompted by constantly changing consumer attitudes.

Leo Burnett has been monitoring 10,000 Americans to track their attitudes toward advertising. And, simply put, Americans don’t appreciate such sophomoric spots as the Outpost.com advertising two years ago that joked about children being attacked by wolves and gerbils being shot from cannons.

There’s no better venue for funny commercials than the Super Bowl broadcast. Each year, it draws more viewers than any other television program. Americans invite advertisers into their living rooms and demand to be entertained, and ratings for the early commercial breaks often soar higher than the game itself.

There’s clearly room for reflection during the broadcast. Nike “hit exactly the right emotional button” during a Super Bowl spot that aired during the Gulf War, said Kevin L. Keller, a marketing professor at Dartmouth College. The commercial blended footage of a lone runner with black-and-white shots of famous faces who have pitched Nike products.

In contrast, Coca-Cola Co. came across as the unwanted party crasher that same year with a preachy commercial that suggested the wartime sports broadcast wasn’t the right venue for jokes. The soft-drink company’s former marketing chief acknowledges that the sober advertisement was a mistake.

There will be plenty of patriotism evident during the Super Bowl broadcast from New Orleans. After Sept. 11, the National Football League replaced the Super Bowl XXXVI logo’s Bourbon Street bent with a new design that incorporates the stars and bars.

Some advertisers undoubtedly will wrap themselves in the flag too. But although companies usually keep their Super Bowl ad scripts under wraps, observers say most advertisers suiting up for the big game will try to make viewers laugh.

Levi Strauss & Co., for example, already has invited consumers to visit its Web site and select which of three funny alternatives deserves to be shown during the Super Bowl broadcast.

Advertisers aren’t alone in betting that Americans will be ready for a break Feb. 3. NBC hopes to steal Fox’s halftime thunder by staging its own halftime show on its network. The special edition of Fear Factor featuring Playboy centerfold models will begin the exact moment Fox unveils its halftime show headlined by rock band U2.

The Super Bowl isn’t the only sports-marketing challenge facing advertising agency creative types. Olympic Games broadcasts typically are heavy on flag-waving and commercials that bring a tear to viewers’ eyes.

The upcoming broadcast won’t be any different. NBC spots promoting the network’s coverage feature a newly recorded version of Neil Diamond’s “America.”

But Leo Burnett’s Berman cautions that it’s usually easier to hit the funny bone than gently tug at heartstrings.

“You can’t do that kind of work right now if it doesn’t have a smile, if it doesn’t lift you at the end,” Berman said. “Laughter and tears are very close together, and that’s where people’s heads are right now.”

Greg Johnson is a business reporter for the Los Angeles Times, a Tribune Publishing newspaper.

http://nt.excite.com:80/news/bw/990131/ny-research-intl

Research International Panel Says “Who Needs BudBowl?”

NEW YORK (BUSINESS WIRE) – It wasn’t Rod Smith’s long touchdown pass from John Elway or Tim Dwight’s exciting kick returns that were on the mind of attendees of Research International’s First Official Super Bowl Party in Reverse at Mickey Mantle’s Sunday in New York City. It was the ad-by-ad analysis of the commercials to determine which scored the most points with men. On this night that captures the attention of millions of men, Research International “turned down” the volume on the game and “turned up” the sound on the commercials as a panel of marketing aficionados evaluated the winners and losers based on RI’s new study of the male demographic, The Wild Spirit of Man? Connecting with Men in the Millennium. The panel selected those commercials most effective in appealing to men. The top four commercials as voted by Research International Super Bowl Party In Reverse attendees were:

Budweiser Lobster (1st Quarter and Overall Winner)

Budweiser “Paper or Plastic” (2nd Quarter)

Bud Light “Mouse” (3rd Quarter)

National Football League (4th Quarter)

“Let’s face it, Super Sunday us just a big day for the advertisers as it is for the guys on the field,” said Gayle Moberg, executive vice president and managing director, Research International USA. “Humor has always been a staple on this day, but it really scored a touchdown this year with viewers — both men and women. In addition, the ads reflect one of the findings of our study — men at the millennium are different from their predecessors. They maintain the traditional masculine qualities of protector and provider, but they have also heightened aspects of their lives such as sensitivity, caring and being true to themselves. Maybe that’s why there’s a less of a gap between sexes this year when it comes to Super Bowl advertising favorites.”

The all-star panel line-up included Dick Lynch, former New York Giant (1959-66) and the current voice of the Giants on WNEW-FM (Moderator); Mercedes Cardona, reporter, Advertising Age; Warren Farrell, Ph.D., author of The Myth of Male Power and Why Men Are The Way They Are; Irwin Kornblau, vice president and director of marketing, PlayboyMagazine. Guest included marketers and brand managers from major companies including: Pepsi Co., Merck, AT&T and Empire Blue Cross.

The event celebrated the unveiling of “The Wild Spirit of Man?”, the most comprehensive look at the male demographic to date. The new study shows what motivates male consumers, what are the hot buttons for building brand loyalty and whether the approach to reaching men and driving their purchases has changed in recent years.

ABOUT RESEARCH INTERNATIONAL/USA

Established in 1973, Research International is a full-service research company with more than 1,500 multinational clients from a variety of product and service categories. With more than 3,000 permanent employees, RI draws on its global network of 86 full-service offices in 56 countries to provide strategic international solutions to clients.