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February 07, 2005
Super Football, Average Commercials
It is always a pleasure when the Super Bowl turns out to be a good, competitive game, which this one was. Just when you thought the Patriots were going to pull away, the Eagles’ goal line defense stiffened, forcing a field goal; and then a long McNabb to Lewis pass closes the gap to three points.
Generally, the game was better than the commercials this year. There weren’t any great ones, but a handful of quite good ones. We viewed the Super Bowl with a group of about a dozen party guests who joined us in also analyzing the commercials.
We rated whatever commercials we watched between refilling our plates and other conversations using four criteria: Overall quality of the advertising spot, creativity, effectiveness in promoting the product (will you just remember the clever commercial or will you remember the product name and attributes), and good taste (not as in “less filling, tastes good,” but where does the spot measure on your scale of appropriate and tasteful inclusion in a family program).
Using these measurements (a scale of 1 to 10 in each of four categories), the spots that best played in Peoria (actually Lawrenceville, Georgia) were the following:
Anheuser-Busch: Thank you to the troops---34
Cadillac: Speeding bullet---33
Heineken with Brad Pitt---32
Pepsi: Hunky man drawing crowd---32
Bud Light: Bird---32
Federal Express: Burt and the Bear---31
Michelob: Rich (in furniture store---29
McDonalds: Lincoln in fries---29
CareerBuilder.com: Monkeys---29
Tabasco: sunburn under bikini---28
Mustang convertible in winter---28
Our focus group yawned at many of the commercials and had a really bad reaction to just one that tried to spoof Janet Jackson: GoDaddy.com’s “wardrobe malfunction” at a Senate hearing. It got the only badly negative ratings on the “taste” scale.
Some reactions: Anaheiser Busch’s tribute to the troops was classy. . .FedEx’s Burt Reynolds and the Bear was really funny…Loved Pepsi’s play on the old Coke commercial with the women following the good looking guy, with one gay fellow joining in. . .McDonalds seeing Abe Lincoln in the French fries was a great parody of the woman seeing Mary in the grilled cheese sandwich and the man selling the fishstick with Jesus’ face on EBay. . . The Cadillac speeding bullet car got a lot of reaction and was one commercial where you could tell what the advertiser was trying to do; in this case help give the car a sportier image. . . The CareerBuilders monkeys worked, but got tiring by the end of the game. . . Really clever idea when Tabasco’s bikinied girl couldn’t stop the skin from burning from the inside . . .Good gag with the hot Subway sandwiches of the two rednecks steaming up the parked car windows.
The best commercials were in the first half, and we could tell why. Our focus group started thinning at halftime. Had to get kids to bed and prepare to return to reality.
Posted by Jim at February 7, 2005 08:10 AM
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go daddy was in bad taste...it was this year's pets.com.
however...it achieved its goal (for the time), brand awareness.
in talking to my buddy that worked at C&L in Minneapolis on the Harley account among other projects...he would say that if you are writing about a company like go daddy today...then the exhibitionism achieved its goal. you now converse about something that in your mind didn't exist on Saturday.
on the flip side, he would also say that the super bowl is one of the worst places to get brand awareness...remembering it months from now will be a challenge, and prove to be a waste of go daddy's money, especially if they don't build on the foundation they just laid.
Posted by: skibrian at February 7, 2005 02:15 PM