February 6, 2012
Super Bowl Ads Come Up Short in Crunch Time
Yesterday’s Super Bowl was one of the most exciting in the history of the event as the outcome wasn’t decided until near the end of game. If only the same could have been said for the commercials (one man’s opinion here) which fell short of producing much in the way of advertising highlights during the broadcast.
Of course, not all the spots could be flagged for being mediocre. According to results from the USA Today Facebook Ad Meter, Frito-Lay’s spot in which a Great Dane uses Doritos to bribe a cat owner to keep quiet about a missing kitty was the most popular commercial during the game. Frito-Lay also had another spot in the top 10 (my personal favorite) with a commercial in which a grandmother uses a baby’s swing like a slingshot to allow the toddler to shoot over to grab a Doritos bag back from a teasing older sibling.
Dogs played a starring role in many spots this year with four of USA Today’s top 10 below involving canines.
USA Today Facebook Ad Meter Rankings – Top 10
Doritos – Dog bribes man
Volkswagen – Dog gets in shape, Star Wars
Skechers – Dog wearing sneakers wins race
Doritos – Baby takes bag away
M&M/Mars – Ms. Brown, chocolate shell candy
Bud Light – Dog rescues beer
Hyundai – Cheetah refuses to race Veloster
Honda – Ferris Bueller
CareerBuilder – Chimps take a business trip
Fiat – Automotive Seduction
On the bottom five of the USA Today list were two spots from General Electric in which employees discussed how much they loved their jobs; a Bud Light Platinum spot (sorry, missed that one); a Cadillac ATS spot and Century 21’s Donald Trump, Deion Sanders, et al commercial.
A panel of advertising industry reviewers brought together by Adweek to critique the Super Bowl lineup was generally more complimentary. Showing that advertising is not quite a science yet, despite all the testing involved, the panel disagreed over commercials, notably Samsung’s new answer to the iPhone. (Does anyone really want a stylus with their smartphone? Just asking …)
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Discussion Questions
Discussion Questions: What did you think of this year’s Super Bowl ads? Which particular spots worked best (or not) and why?
Poll
A pretty mediocre bunch of ads this year. The beer ads were particularly disappointing compared to past years, when audiences looked forward to Bud Light spots in particular. Dogs sell, along with babies and chimps, but some originality is in order. (Best exceptions: The Acura and Chevy truck commercials.) It’s possible that my enjoyment of the game was spoiled because the Packers weren’t playing.
Because Chrysler ran its spot with Clint Eastwood during halftime, this probably didn’t end up with much polling data. But there is no doubt that this was the most striking ad of the evening, and destined to be talked about even if it never airs again. To put a political spin on it, this would make a great reelection commercial for the Obama campaign.
The Super Bowl ads represented too much money chasing desperate greatness. I liked the polar bear chasing his Coca Cola … but I’m still a little puzzled by the halftime show.
I thought the Coke ads were really boring, and not so relevant to today’s world. The Budweiser commercial touting the end of prohibition was just.plain.weird. Ditto for some of the others which were as over-dark as the Coke commercials were over-bright.
I absolutely thought the night’s big winners were the Doritos ad men. Both commercials were epic, with the baby slingshot narrowly beating out the dog.
And now I will go back to sulking over the Patriots receivers’ grand chokes.
The majority of this year’s Super Bowl ads, and even more so the lack of accountability of the corresponding “investment” by many of these marketers, is an incredibly sad reflection on 21st century marketing. With about $250 million spent on the media alone, and at least another $50-100 million on production and ancillary promotion, the spend by brands is staggering given the fleeting value and lack of sales accountability.
The exceptions are primarily in the automotive category, particularly VW, Honda/Acura and Fiat, who helped to refine their brand positioning and actually create demand.
All that said, the record advertising revenues are a direct reflection of the inability of marketers to reach their customers in an efficient manner (ironic, yes!).
I was impressed by some of the “Monday Morning Quarterbacking” on mainstream media this morning, discussing the effectiveness and value of the Super Bowl advertisements. One commentator hit the nail on the head when he said that today, it’s not about that specific 30 seconds, but is about the whole picture including YouTube hits, replays on Monday morning’s news shows, sharing on social networking, etc.
As with every year, there were a few spots that lived up to the hype, and many that didn’t. I thought the Audi and Vampire commercial did the trick. It was memorable, funny, current, culture relevant, and had a clear tie to a specific product quality, in this case very bright headlights.
The Super Bowl provides advertisers a rare opportunity to reach a very wide audience versus the ever narrowing target market. In past years, Super Bowl advertisements were better entertainment than the game, but not this year. With few exceptions, the product was not up to the challenge. A $3.5 million spot that targets the smaller market is a waste. Most of this years’ commercials simply did not resonate with me or anyone else in the room.
When Budweiser was owned by the Busch family, they spent not only money but also time developing really creative commercials. What happened to that creativity in the last several years? It says something when the winning commercial was developed by people entering a contest and not by professional agencies.
Animals always score well as do babies but there still needs to be a shock factor to make a commercial memorable. The Hyundai commercial where the cheetah chose to chase the man was my personal favorite and brings to mind the old story about two guys running from a lion or tiger and the fastest guy only has to outrun the other man, not the animal to survive.
For our group that has been together for years watching the Super Bowl, one of the pleasures we enjoy has always been the ads. This year was disappointing. None really grabbed us and stood out. Budweiser ads in particular were far below what we have become used to expecting.
What surprised me was that some of the Super Bowl ads that were “leaked” in advance were not even shown during the game itself. Hmmmm, very interesting. But overall, the ads this year were very disappointing, and I doubt that the advertisers will see much a return on their lofty investments. The advertisers need to step up their game for next year because otherwise the expectations of the public will decline and folks will start leaving the TV to go stock up on more refreshments instead of watching.
It seems to me that every year we say essentially the same thing, “These Super Bowl ads were the worst ever, and a waste of advertisers’ money.” It could be, or it could be that the advertisers know what they are doing and have reasons for paying ad rates that increase every year. With 4 of the Top 10 rated ads coming from consumer brands that do very well in mass retail (Doritos – 2x, M&M’s, and Bud Light) my guess is that these CPG companies and their agencies have done a lot of research on the cost/benefit of running ads, and have found that there is at least an indirect ROI. Also, I think the demographics of commentators on a retail or advertising site may skew a tad older than the target audience for most Super Bowl commercials.
Call me jaded, but when the ads are released a week before the game, and are discussed ad nauseum in the Twitterverse, they have near-zero impact on game day. Brands that made this mistake gave viewers an opportunity to visit the kitchen. Kudos to Fiat for keeping theirs a secret.
So many of the ads were mean spirited, distasteful, even cruel. The Dorito-dog eating and burying his feline family member doesn’t exactly make me hungry for snacks. When the little brother runs to every bath room in the house then pees in the pool, I’m not a motivated buyer for whatever the ad was pitching.
Call me old fashioned, but the only ad that really stirred me was Clint Eastwood’s Detroit Revival ad. The Hyundai “I’ll Try Harder” moved the needle just a bit. And for pure fun, I loved the French Bull Dog with the Sketchers. The rest were immoral, forgettable, or downright bummers. The only thing that makes me thankful is that there were no Super Pac political ads.
The highest rated television program in the medium’s history and some are questioning the $3.5M average spot expense? Seriously? You build brand image or extend that leadership position by investing in historic events like this. It’s not just the cost of the spot as we’ve seen, but the extensions beyond. Frito, Fiat, VW, Budweiser (Bud Light Platinum in particular) and others will leverage the 30 seconds of historic placement in order to derive highly accountable return on investment. How far in advance do you think Budweiser field sales teams have used the introduction of the new “premium” brew in the Super Bowl to get room in the cold case at bars, restaurants, and grocery channels? I too was struggling to get pumped up within each commercial break — there were definitely winners and losers, or said another way, less than inspiring spots.
This year’s selection of ads were seen as mediocre by many critics (professional and otherwise) in part because the game was so good. The worse the competition between the two teams, the better that ads look.
I liked the Acura ad with Jerry Seinfeld (hard to believe it’s been almost 15 years since the last episode) and the Doritos’s ads. Didn’t like Trump, GoDaddy, any of the Bud ads or the vampires.
I wasn’t so much puzzled by Madonna’s performance during halftime as Gene was, but was certainly annoyed by it. She is too old to hit the one element that had a connection to football — the cheerleading theme in the middle of the performance. The rest of it belonged on the Grammy awards.
Super Bowl ads are such a crap shoot. The 1984s or Eminems are so few and far between. So few ads relevantly differentiate the product. But an ad that features murder, coverup and bribery is the favorite. How many board rooms would possibly green-light that? Are we better that Doritos did? Or as we like to say, “retail and advertising ain’t for sissies.”
Wow. It this was the showcase for keeping agencies relevant, they fell very short in my opinion. They just did not seem to be as creative as in the past. There were very few, if any, that made you say, “that was a great spot.” Perhaps I was just too focused on the game and worrying about whether the Giants could come back once again. My point here is that the commercials needed to do their job for the advertiser, first and foremost, but when the commercials are truly creative and break through all the clutter, that is a win for the advertiser and a win for the industry in general. The ad agency business really needed a good shot in the arm and I don’t think this particular crop of commercials delivered the medicine it needed.
This was everything you want a Super Bowl to be from a game standpoint. Exciting, close, with no real controversial calls. Unfortunately, the ads which I always look forward to were underwhelming. Big expensive miss from Madison Ave.
Sketchers, suspension of disbelief impossible.
Doritos, don’t try this with your brother.
M&M’s…What???
Bud Light, dog not cute, new owners not funny.
Hyundai, pfffft, they wish.
Honda, Ferris Bueller is old and dowdy; is Honda also?
Fiat, is this an outtake of The Big Bang Theory?
Eastwood, hope Chrysler’s second half is not like New England’s.
Betty White, always funny, what was she selling?
Pepsi, Alice without the script.
Maybe the fact that there is so much disagreement about the ads this year is that they appealed to specific parts of the audience and not the whole audience. That being said, if the ads are supposed to appeal to specific parts of the audience, the Super Bowl is not the best venue for those ads.
The thing that struck me as most interesting this year was the number of ads which seemed to promote more than one brand, for example, the Silverado ad with the Twinkies tie-in, or the VW — Star Wars connection. These seemed like strange bedfellows. With these particular partnerships, it occurred to me that the cost of a Super Bowl ad is so expensive, brands sought non-competitive partners to defray expenses and extend the length of the ad itself (perhaps to improve memorability). Not a bad approach, if that is what happened. This may open the door to more strategic advertising partners in next year’s game.
I’m with you on the comment about the smart phone; in fact our crowd wasn’t sure at the end of the commercial if it was a smart phone or a tablet.
How doth one define “best?” Did Clint Eastwood incent me to desire a Chrysler? Not really. Did Jay Leno and Jerry Seinfeld compel me to — wait, I forget what they were selling.
Advertising’s job is to sell. Sophomoric entertainment, dumb story lines and what GE employees think about their jobs that haven’t yet been moved to Asia miss the point. The only thing that matters is whether consumers are moved to buy more product.
As a whole I’m not sure this year’s efforts were really any better or worse than previous years. It’s interesting to to see the mix of advertisers evolve over time (beer is down, retail is up for example).
It’s still a huge audience, and a very large echo chamber (as evidenced by the two articles here about the ads), so clearly marketers can still use it as a vehicle to reach an audience. But in the big picture one-to-many outbound marketing continues to see it’s efficacy diminished.
I’m a lot more interested in how these brands adapt content marketing and best practices in inbound marketing to reach today’s consumer.
Doritos had solicited user generated content last year and it was the first thing I thought about when I saw the dog/missing cat ad this year. In fact, each of the Doritos commercials had a distinct edge to them, making me vote for the brand overall rather than just one commercial.
On the other end of the spectrum, I thought the Coca Cola ads, while cute with the polar bears, were almost too vague to make a point beyond a general feel good message.
This year’s ads were mediocre at best. Only a few had a true value proposition, or a call to action, and the rest were simply forgettable entertainment. How many more people are going to purchase a bag of Doritos because of the Dog commercial they saw one time during the Super Bowl? The 4 P’s of marketing (Product, Price, Promotion-many times and Place) all help to create a call to action for products. Oh yeah, Samsung’s ad was for their tablet, not a phone, which was designed to compete with the iPad….
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A pretty mediocre bunch of ads this year. The beer ads were particularly disappointing compared to past years, when audiences looked forward to Bud Light spots in particular. Dogs sell, along with babies and chimps, but some originality is in order. (Best exceptions: The Acura and Chevy truck commercials.) It’s possible that my enjoyment of the game was spoiled because the Packers weren’t playing.
Because Chrysler ran its spot with Clint Eastwood during halftime, this probably didn’t end up with much polling data. But there is no doubt that this was the most striking ad of the evening, and destined to be talked about even if it never airs again. To put a political spin on it, this would make a great reelection commercial for the Obama campaign.
The Super Bowl ads represented too much money chasing desperate greatness. I liked the polar bear chasing his Coca Cola … but I’m still a little puzzled by the halftime show.
I thought the Coke ads were really boring, and not so relevant to today’s world. The Budweiser commercial touting the end of prohibition was just.plain.weird. Ditto for some of the others which were as over-dark as the Coke commercials were over-bright.
I absolutely thought the night’s big winners were the Doritos ad men. Both commercials were epic, with the baby slingshot narrowly beating out the dog.
And now I will go back to sulking over the Patriots receivers’ grand chokes.
The majority of this year’s Super Bowl ads, and even more so the lack of accountability of the corresponding “investment” by many of these marketers, is an incredibly sad reflection on 21st century marketing. With about $250 million spent on the media alone, and at least another $50-100 million on production and ancillary promotion, the spend by brands is staggering given the fleeting value and lack of sales accountability.
The exceptions are primarily in the automotive category, particularly VW, Honda/Acura and Fiat, who helped to refine their brand positioning and actually create demand.
All that said, the record advertising revenues are a direct reflection of the inability of marketers to reach their customers in an efficient manner (ironic, yes!).
I was impressed by some of the “Monday Morning Quarterbacking” on mainstream media this morning, discussing the effectiveness and value of the Super Bowl advertisements. One commentator hit the nail on the head when he said that today, it’s not about that specific 30 seconds, but is about the whole picture including YouTube hits, replays on Monday morning’s news shows, sharing on social networking, etc.
As with every year, there were a few spots that lived up to the hype, and many that didn’t. I thought the Audi and Vampire commercial did the trick. It was memorable, funny, current, culture relevant, and had a clear tie to a specific product quality, in this case very bright headlights.
The Super Bowl provides advertisers a rare opportunity to reach a very wide audience versus the ever narrowing target market. In past years, Super Bowl advertisements were better entertainment than the game, but not this year. With few exceptions, the product was not up to the challenge. A $3.5 million spot that targets the smaller market is a waste. Most of this years’ commercials simply did not resonate with me or anyone else in the room.
When Budweiser was owned by the Busch family, they spent not only money but also time developing really creative commercials. What happened to that creativity in the last several years? It says something when the winning commercial was developed by people entering a contest and not by professional agencies.
Animals always score well as do babies but there still needs to be a shock factor to make a commercial memorable. The Hyundai commercial where the cheetah chose to chase the man was my personal favorite and brings to mind the old story about two guys running from a lion or tiger and the fastest guy only has to outrun the other man, not the animal to survive.
For our group that has been together for years watching the Super Bowl, one of the pleasures we enjoy has always been the ads. This year was disappointing. None really grabbed us and stood out. Budweiser ads in particular were far below what we have become used to expecting.
What surprised me was that some of the Super Bowl ads that were “leaked” in advance were not even shown during the game itself. Hmmmm, very interesting. But overall, the ads this year were very disappointing, and I doubt that the advertisers will see much a return on their lofty investments. The advertisers need to step up their game for next year because otherwise the expectations of the public will decline and folks will start leaving the TV to go stock up on more refreshments instead of watching.
It seems to me that every year we say essentially the same thing, “These Super Bowl ads were the worst ever, and a waste of advertisers’ money.” It could be, or it could be that the advertisers know what they are doing and have reasons for paying ad rates that increase every year. With 4 of the Top 10 rated ads coming from consumer brands that do very well in mass retail (Doritos – 2x, M&M’s, and Bud Light) my guess is that these CPG companies and their agencies have done a lot of research on the cost/benefit of running ads, and have found that there is at least an indirect ROI. Also, I think the demographics of commentators on a retail or advertising site may skew a tad older than the target audience for most Super Bowl commercials.
Call me jaded, but when the ads are released a week before the game, and are discussed ad nauseum in the Twitterverse, they have near-zero impact on game day. Brands that made this mistake gave viewers an opportunity to visit the kitchen. Kudos to Fiat for keeping theirs a secret.
So many of the ads were mean spirited, distasteful, even cruel. The Dorito-dog eating and burying his feline family member doesn’t exactly make me hungry for snacks. When the little brother runs to every bath room in the house then pees in the pool, I’m not a motivated buyer for whatever the ad was pitching.
Call me old fashioned, but the only ad that really stirred me was Clint Eastwood’s Detroit Revival ad. The Hyundai “I’ll Try Harder” moved the needle just a bit. And for pure fun, I loved the French Bull Dog with the Sketchers. The rest were immoral, forgettable, or downright bummers. The only thing that makes me thankful is that there were no Super Pac political ads.
The highest rated television program in the medium’s history and some are questioning the $3.5M average spot expense? Seriously? You build brand image or extend that leadership position by investing in historic events like this. It’s not just the cost of the spot as we’ve seen, but the extensions beyond. Frito, Fiat, VW, Budweiser (Bud Light Platinum in particular) and others will leverage the 30 seconds of historic placement in order to derive highly accountable return on investment. How far in advance do you think Budweiser field sales teams have used the introduction of the new “premium” brew in the Super Bowl to get room in the cold case at bars, restaurants, and grocery channels? I too was struggling to get pumped up within each commercial break — there were definitely winners and losers, or said another way, less than inspiring spots.
This year’s selection of ads were seen as mediocre by many critics (professional and otherwise) in part because the game was so good. The worse the competition between the two teams, the better that ads look.
I liked the Acura ad with Jerry Seinfeld (hard to believe it’s been almost 15 years since the last episode) and the Doritos’s ads. Didn’t like Trump, GoDaddy, any of the Bud ads or the vampires.
I wasn’t so much puzzled by Madonna’s performance during halftime as Gene was, but was certainly annoyed by it. She is too old to hit the one element that had a connection to football — the cheerleading theme in the middle of the performance. The rest of it belonged on the Grammy awards.
Super Bowl ads are such a crap shoot. The 1984s or Eminems are so few and far between. So few ads relevantly differentiate the product. But an ad that features murder, coverup and bribery is the favorite. How many board rooms would possibly green-light that? Are we better that Doritos did? Or as we like to say, “retail and advertising ain’t for sissies.”
Wow. It this was the showcase for keeping agencies relevant, they fell very short in my opinion. They just did not seem to be as creative as in the past. There were very few, if any, that made you say, “that was a great spot.” Perhaps I was just too focused on the game and worrying about whether the Giants could come back once again. My point here is that the commercials needed to do their job for the advertiser, first and foremost, but when the commercials are truly creative and break through all the clutter, that is a win for the advertiser and a win for the industry in general. The ad agency business really needed a good shot in the arm and I don’t think this particular crop of commercials delivered the medicine it needed.
This was everything you want a Super Bowl to be from a game standpoint. Exciting, close, with no real controversial calls. Unfortunately, the ads which I always look forward to were underwhelming. Big expensive miss from Madison Ave.
Sketchers, suspension of disbelief impossible.
Doritos, don’t try this with your brother.
M&M’s…What???
Bud Light, dog not cute, new owners not funny.
Hyundai, pfffft, they wish.
Honda, Ferris Bueller is old and dowdy; is Honda also?
Fiat, is this an outtake of The Big Bang Theory?
Eastwood, hope Chrysler’s second half is not like New England’s.
Betty White, always funny, what was she selling?
Pepsi, Alice without the script.
Maybe the fact that there is so much disagreement about the ads this year is that they appealed to specific parts of the audience and not the whole audience. That being said, if the ads are supposed to appeal to specific parts of the audience, the Super Bowl is not the best venue for those ads.
The thing that struck me as most interesting this year was the number of ads which seemed to promote more than one brand, for example, the Silverado ad with the Twinkies tie-in, or the VW — Star Wars connection. These seemed like strange bedfellows. With these particular partnerships, it occurred to me that the cost of a Super Bowl ad is so expensive, brands sought non-competitive partners to defray expenses and extend the length of the ad itself (perhaps to improve memorability). Not a bad approach, if that is what happened. This may open the door to more strategic advertising partners in next year’s game.
I’m with you on the comment about the smart phone; in fact our crowd wasn’t sure at the end of the commercial if it was a smart phone or a tablet.
How doth one define “best?” Did Clint Eastwood incent me to desire a Chrysler? Not really. Did Jay Leno and Jerry Seinfeld compel me to — wait, I forget what they were selling.
Advertising’s job is to sell. Sophomoric entertainment, dumb story lines and what GE employees think about their jobs that haven’t yet been moved to Asia miss the point. The only thing that matters is whether consumers are moved to buy more product.
As a whole I’m not sure this year’s efforts were really any better or worse than previous years. It’s interesting to to see the mix of advertisers evolve over time (beer is down, retail is up for example).
It’s still a huge audience, and a very large echo chamber (as evidenced by the two articles here about the ads), so clearly marketers can still use it as a vehicle to reach an audience. But in the big picture one-to-many outbound marketing continues to see it’s efficacy diminished.
I’m a lot more interested in how these brands adapt content marketing and best practices in inbound marketing to reach today’s consumer.
Doritos had solicited user generated content last year and it was the first thing I thought about when I saw the dog/missing cat ad this year. In fact, each of the Doritos commercials had a distinct edge to them, making me vote for the brand overall rather than just one commercial.
On the other end of the spectrum, I thought the Coca Cola ads, while cute with the polar bears, were almost too vague to make a point beyond a general feel good message.
This year’s ads were mediocre at best. Only a few had a true value proposition, or a call to action, and the rest were simply forgettable entertainment. How many more people are going to purchase a bag of Doritos because of the Dog commercial they saw one time during the Super Bowl? The 4 P’s of marketing (Product, Price, Promotion-many times and Place) all help to create a call to action for products. Oh yeah, Samsung’s ad was for their tablet, not a phone, which was designed to compete with the iPad….