February 5, 2007

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Overall, there are many advertising experts that said the Super Bowl last night was a big disappointment to many observers. It would seem that many companies have wasted the $2.6 million that CBS was said to be charging for 30 seconds of ad time.

Steve McKee, CEO of McKee Wallwork Cleveland Advertising, an agency that runs Super Bowl ads, said "if anything, this certainly wasn't a banner year for Super Bowl ads! Nothing really good actually stood out."

Many critics said that on average, Budweiser brewer Anhueser-Busch, which aired a total of nine spots, the most for any single advertiser, fared the best. Anhueser-Busch reportedly had six of the ten best commercials, with its Rock Paper Scissors ad for Bud Light coming in first.

Seven of the top ten Super Bowl ads were from Anhueser-Busch as of late Sunday night.

The company's spots, which included an auctioneer conducting a wedding ceremony, a couple arguing about whether to pick up a hitchhiker with a Bud Light and an ax and comedian Carlos Mencia instructing a class of students learning English to say "No speak English" when asked for a Bud Light, also won raves from several ad professionals.

"As a whole, Budweiser has done a pretty good ad campaign," said Tim Calkins, a professor of marketing at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

Besides the Bud ads, experts said that video rental chain Blockbuster, which showed a rabbit and guinea pig trying to use a real mouse to get online, also had a successful commercial.

On average, the Blockbuster ad was leading the voting on Spotbowl as of late Sunday night and was the second-most popular commercial according to Adbowl.

Doritos, which is owned by Pepsi's Frito-Lay snack division, had two hits with user-generated commercials. Doritos asked average consumers to submit spots for the Super Bowl and after five finalists were selected, people voted online for their favorite.

The winning ad, featuring an accident-prone couple, was shown shortly after the game began while another finalist aired later on during the game. The first Doritos ad finished in eight in the Adbowl voting and was thirteenth on Spotbowl.com.

"When compared to all the other advertisers, Doritos was clearly a big winner. Both ads scored extremely well, especially since they were done by amateurs," said Walter Guarino, a professor of advertising at Seton Hall University.

General Motors' Chevy also aired a user-generated commercial, based on an idea from a college student from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. The spot showed a group of men tearing off their shirts and rushing to wash a Chevy that was driving through midtown Manhattan with several women inside.

However, several other advertisers who have been known for creative commercials in the past didn't deliver at this year's Super Bowl.

Spyro Kourtis, president of the Hacker Group, an ad agency based in Bellveue, Wash., said that CareerBuilder's ads were very disappointing. The online recruitment site had featured chimps as examples of bad co-workers in ads during the past few years but abandoned that campaign this year in favor of a jungle-themed group of spots.

PepsiCo, which aired three ads for its Sierra Mist brand of drink, also didn't fare well, according to critics. Neither did FedEx, which had one of the most popular commercials in 2006 showing a caveman getting in trouble for not using FedEx to ship a package.

In 2007 FedEx had one commercial that took place in the moon and another one in an office where people had names that fit their personalities or behaviors.

Commercials from several first-time Super Bowl advertisers were also panned by experts, including spots for online sales lead generator SalesGenie.com, GPS navigation system Garmin and King Pharmaceuticals, which ran an ad for an American Heart Association Web site.

On average, observers said that most of the celebrity ads were flopped. Several experts panned a Revlon ad featuring musician Sheryl Crow. Michael Pavone, president of Pavone, a brand consulting firm in Harrisburg, Pa. that runs the SpotBowl Web site, called it "dreadful" and added that it seemed to go on for an hour and a half.

Seton Hall's Guarino said Nationwide Insurance and Emerald Nuts also didn't do a great job with their celebrity pitchmen. He said that it seemed like many older viewers hated the Nationwide ad, which featured Kevin Federline, aka K-Fed, who is best-known for his marriage to and pending divorce from pop star Britney Spears.

Meanwhile, Emerald used actor and singer Robert Goulet in its spot, which Guarino said was a celebrity who didn't really resonate with younger viewers.

So at the end of the day, it seems that Super Bowl advertising, much like the game itself, had trouble living up to the advance billing.

"There's so much hype now that it's hard to top what you did last year," said the Hacker Group's Kourtis.

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Source: CNN Money