March 03, 2010 3:25 PM

Pantsless hullabaloo in Super Bowl leads to Dockers getting three spots in NCAA tourney.

By Brian Steinberg, AdAge.com

Talk about getting caught with your pants down. After running back-to-back ads in the Super Bowl utilizing the same creative theme — people walking about without any trousers — CBS has agreed to give one of the marketers involved additional ad time to make up for the gaffe, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Dockers’ Super Bowl ad featured men traipsing about without britches, while signaling to male viewers they ought to grow up and “wear the pants.” Oddly, the ad was preceded by a commercial from online job site CareerBuilder that sported office workers taking the concept of casual Fridays to a strange extreme — walking around the workplace in their underwear. Of possible concern: The placement of the two commercials could blur distinctions in consumers’ minds.

“The fact the theme of not wearing pants is similar in both, and the fact that they ran back-to-back, would make it more confusing for consumers to remember who to attribute each piece of creative to,” said Stacey Shepatin, director of national broadcast for Interpublic Group of Cos.’ Hill Holliday.

Dockers expressed concern, according to a person familiar with the situation, so CBS has allocated the Levi, Strauss & Co. apparel brand three 30-second spots during the NCAA men’s basketball championships. CBS declined to comment, but in a statement, the network said, “The feedback we received from the client was that they were pleased with the ad’s performance.” A spokeswoman for CareerBuilder did not return phone calls seeking comment

Executives at Dockers “were somewhat disappointed that we ran immediately after the CareerBuilder spot, given the visuals were similar, though we definitely felt the spots were very different,” said Jennifer Sey, vice president of global marketing, for Dockers.

Ms. Sey declined to comment on whether CBS offered new ad inventory in exchange for the Super Bowl placement. While the company is happy with results from the Super Bowl advertising, she said, “the agreements we made with our network advertising partner are confidential, but we are constantly in discussion with the network about strategies. Those discussions are ongoing.”

A hullabaloo over doffed pantaloons in a Super Bowl spot seems out of place, but the emergence of one sheds light on some of the arcane practices surrounding the running of TV commercials. TV networks deliberately screen commercials for outsize claims, unproven allegations against competitors, decency standards and other criteria. But they rarely make certain the theme and creative elements in one are completely different from others that may air in the same commercial break.

Instead, TV networks usually take care not to place ads from rivals in the same ad break. Ads hyping Coke and Pepsi products never run near each other, for example, nor do ads for cereals from Kellogg and General Mills. Networks take particular pains to avoid placing ads from rival car makers in proximity to each other, though sometimes the addition of commercials from local stations, often rife with spots from regional dealerships, makes the task extremely difficult to accomplish.

Trying to weed out ads with similar creative ideas might be an insurmountable task. Would viewers get confused by consecutive ads featuring any number of usual-suspect ad elements such as animated characters, dissatisfied housewives or ditzy frat boys? Are there enough commercials in existence today that don’t use these elements that could be used to buffer those that do?

“I don’t know of any specific policy that talks about [creative themes] being separated,” said Hill Holliday’s Ms. Shepatain. “Most of it is by category separation. My guess is that, in this situation, [CBS] looked at a job-market category versus an apparel category and said, ‘It shouldn’t be a problem.’”

For its part, Dockers said the Super Bowl ad was a success, based on measures it has for increases in numbers of “fans” the brand has on Facebook and followers on Twitter; number of searches via Google around the time the ad aired on TV; and traffic to its website, among other factors, said Ms. Sey. “These, to us, are signals that our consumers were engaged,” she said. “We’re really pleased with sales we are starting to see in the dot-com space.”

If Dockers did receive additional ad inventory in exchange for its Super Bowl placement, the move is not in keeping with typical TV-network procedure. Networks will give additional ad time, also known as “make-goods,” to clients when the shows they ran ads in fell short of predetermined ratings guarantees. CBS’s broadcast of Super Bowl shattered viewership records, drawing 106.5 million people, according to Nielsen, beating the network’s 1983 airing of the season finale of M*A*S*H.

The cost of a 30-second ad in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament typically runs several hundreds of thousands of dollars to more than $1 million, depending on the proximity of the advertising to the championship games. Meanwhile, CBS sought between $2.5 million and $3 million for a 30-second ad in this year’s Super Bowl broadcast.

via crainsnewyork.com

Most Super Bowl Ads Don’t Go Viral

Two Weeks After the Game, the Ads Drop Off the List, Replaced By Real Viral Campaigns

by Michael Learmonth
Published: February 25, 2010

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — This week’s chart is a testament to the power of TV. Now that the Super Bowl is a fading memory, so are many of the Super Bowl ads, meaning TV was the key driver of their popularity, rather than a groundswell of demand on the web.

This week, only four ads from last week’s Bowl-dominated chart remain: Doritos, Snickers, E-Trade and Google, while a fifth Super Bowl ad, from Bud Light, joins the list for the first time. Doritos came in at No. 1 with an impressive 5 million views, even though that’s a 73% drop from last week. Gone are many of the ads that generated heat around the game, such as Audi’s “Green Police,” Tim Tebow’s Focus on the Family ad and Motorola’s Megan Fox ad.

But while ads from the big game fade, some of the more durable viral campaigns are returning to the list, a testament to their lasting power. It’s the difference between a surge in audience powered by marketing and exposure from a big event, and a sustained viral campaign, powered by social media and marketing.

Just look at who’s returned to the list: Evian’s rollerskating babies are back, of course, for their 31st week in the top 10. Also back are Microsoft’s “Project Natal” with 35 total weeks in the top 10, and DC Shoes’ “Gymkhana,” which has hung on for 34 weeks.

Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” also made the list for the first time. It will be interesting to see if that ad has staying power, or if the humor starts to go stale.

	Last Week	Brand	Campaign	Agency	Current Week Views*	% Change in Views**	Watch the Spot
1	1	Doritos	Crash the Super Bowl 2010	Goodby, Silverstein & Partners	4,871,317	-73%
2	New	Old Spice	The Man Your Man Could Smell Like	Wieden & Kennedy	1,660,063	New
3	2	E-Trade	E-Trade Super Bowl 2010	Grey	1,378,361	-60%
4	Back on Chart	Evian	Live Young	BETC Euro RSCG	1,232,441	Back on Chart
5	New	Puma	HardChorus	Droga 5	762,436	New
6	3	Snickers	Pick Up Game	BBDO	737,857	-78%
7	7	Google	Parisian Love	In-house	649,998	-78%
8	New	Bud Light	Bud Light Super Bowl 2010	Cannonball; DDB; Palm + Havas; Momentum	547,043	New
9	Back on Chart	DC Shoes	Gymkhana Two	Mad Media	425,267	Back on Chart
10	Back on Chart	Microsoft	Xbox Project Natal	World Famous	411,585	Back on Chart
Source: Visible Measures *The Visible Measures Top 10 Viral Video Ad Campaigns Chart focuses on brand-driven viral video ads that appear on online-video-sharing destinations. Each campaign is measured on a True Reach basis, which includes viewership of both brand-syndicated video clips and viewer-driven social video placements. The data are compiled using the Visible Measures Viral Reach Database, a constantly growing repository of analytic data on more than 100 million internet videos across more than 150 video-sharing destinations. Note: This analysis does not include Visible Measures’ paid-placement (i.e., overlays, pre-/mid-/post-roll) performance data or video views on private sites. This chart does not include movie trailers, video-game campaigns, TV show or media network promotions, or public service announcements. View-count results are incremental by week. **Indicates percent change in views compared with the same period the week before. To notify Visible Measures of an upcoming video ad campaign, or for an end-to-end assessment of your campaign’s overall performance, please contact Visible Measures directly.