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January 29, 2003 If
the Super Bowl Is on Mars, by Katie Delahaye Paine First of all, let me state right up front that if I hadn’t been asked by a Minnesota talk radio program to rate the Super Bowl ads, I probably wouldn’t have watched TV at all. No way could a football game ever preempt Sunday nights on New Hampshire Public Radio. This American Life, The Folk Show and The Thistle and Shamrock win out over large guys and a pigskin any day. But as long as I had to sit through it, and be intelligent about it in the morning, I figured the least I could do was to apply my scientific analysis skills to the exercise. (If, unlike me, you weren’t forced to watch the game but want to check out the ads, go to www.Super Bowl-ads.com.)
Remember that the Super Bowl is the ultimate in mass market audiences, with 130 million viewers. I know it seems counter-intuitive, but according to NPR, at least half of those are women, many of whom don’t watch any other football game. A remarkable number just watch for the ads and the “event.” So, as a member of the largest part of the target audience, I figure I ought to be capable of rating them for overall effectiveness. Being highly experienced in media analysis, the first thing I did, of course, was to develop a proper, scientific rating system based on the ultimate objective of advertisements to myself: How does an ad make me feel? Would I want to buy anything from this company, or have a relationship of any sort with the advertiser? But it paled in comparison with the “girlfriend and her mother” ad, which inspired me not only to not buy the product, but rather to call all my female friends to join me in a nationwide boycott of Budweiser products. (Note to friends, don’t even think of bringing Bud, Bud light, Michelob or any other Budweiser product into my house.) The lesson to advertisers here is that if they are only going to target puerile men, they are wasting at least $1.1 million—half the cost—of the ad. The only women I know who understood the Budweiser ads are football fans who have been watching all season (and even they thought the one about the mother-in-law was simply unfunny).
Levi’s, the Budweiser Zebra ad, Reebok, Gatorade, Honda, Coors and Pepsi all fell into this category. Monster.com also makes this list because I really couldn’t figure out why a truck blowing up a building would make you want to go to a Web site to look for a job, never mind the image problems it created by equating “blue collar” with trucks out of control. I have no idea what kind of a connection I was supposed to make between the
Reebok brand and a guy tackling people by the water cooler. (Are they perhaps in favor of violence in the workplace?) On a couple of them, I simply assumed they must be targeted to an audience that might understand better than I. But in that case, $4 million a minute seems a bit excessive just to make the point that you are so hip that anyone over 18 doesn’t need to understand your commercials. Most of the trailers for upcoming movies and television shows went into this category. My guess is that many of them wouldn’t be there if there weren’t joint ownership between the television station and the movie studio, but regardless, after awhile they all blended together. Same thing for the car ads. Nissan, Mercury, Chevy Trucks and Honda all failed to make a lasting impression. Cadillac was borderline. Their ads were certainly nothing that would make you sit up and take notice, but they were at least frequent enough as to be memorable. Salton, Subway and Quizno’s also fell into this category.
Pepsi’s Sierra-Mist ads, and the Hanes “label” ad were great examples. Compelling ads, but I had to go look up the sponsor; they were clearly lacking some branding. The Trident ad was funny and memorable, just not stellar. MasterCard ads do a brilliant job at building on their brand, but I didn’t think their debit card ad was as effective as some of their others. W.B. Mason did a great job with tying their brand to Perry Mason, but unless they couple the ad with some other significant marketing effort, the one shot ad will not be remembered. Another Honorable Mention goes to The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy ad for its subway ad. It was so chilling and compelling, and I can only keep my fingers crossed that it had as much impact on everyone else as it did on me. On the other hand, its marijuana ad was so silly as to cancel out the effect of the other one.
Honorable Mention goes to Visa for its ads that made fun of celebrities and others who needed cash was brilliant, and also did an effective job of getting its messages across. In third place is H&R Block’s ad with Willie Nelson. A terrific use of humor and celebrity, plus a strong tie in to brand and message. Second place goes to Sony. My heart wants to award Sony the first prize for the most measurable ad; viewers were asked to go to the Web site to download the song—a nice way to tie customer behavior with the ad. The ad itself was terrific, great music and a way cool message, but we've been seeing it on TV for a while now.
And tied for first place is FedEx and mLife. FedEx effectively used humor and an effective Cast Away tie-in to really get its message across with its FedEx driver emerging from a desert island to deliver a package. It clearly communicated the company’s positioning in a highly memorable way and did a nice job of keeping the brand in front of the viewer. mLife last year previewed its product line in a series of incomprehensible ads. So this year it wins both first place and “most improved.” Its Gilligan’s Island and “Antique Bandwagon” ads were funny, easy to remember, and an excellent use of brand. Here are a couple of other metrics you might want to consider:
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At
the bottom of the scale was the Yuck category: Ads that made me never
ever want to buy anything from the company again. Budweiser won this
category hands down. Their clown ad was not just dumb, but frankly revolting.
(And I don’t care if it was rated fourth on the day-after
CNN/Sports Illustrated online poll.)
Only
slightly higher up the food chain was the “Huh?” category,
otherwise known as “You’re confusing creative with effective.”
These ads were more confusing than memorable, and clearly driven by
agency “creatives” rather than anyone with business sense.
These ads may have been intended to be humorous, but by mixing their
messages are likely to have damaged the brands.
One
step up from “What were they thinking!?” is the “So
What?” category. Into this category were the ads that weren’t
memorable or effective, but at least they weren’t offensive.
I
figured you really couldn’t have more than five or six really
great ads, so the rest fell into a category that could best be called
“also-rans.” They were memorable, and probably effective,
but they just didn’t earn the Super Bowl ring.
And
the winner of the Super Bowl Trophy is... Well actually, we’ll
start with the runners up:
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