"Pepsi goosed its way to a fifth consecutive Super Bowl
ad victory," according to USA TODAY's Bruce Horovitz. The
winning Pepsi ad, featuring a sky-diver who befriends a
goose, was favored by the USA TODAY Ad Meter's 185
volunteers who used special hand-held meters to chart their
reactions to the game's 52 national spots. Pepsi's dancing
bears ad was voted the top spot of Super Bowl XXXI. Pepsi's
flying geese and Budweiser's wisecracking lizards drew the
"biggest laughs and the best scores," according to USA
TODAY's Enrico & Wells. A-B had a "stellar performance,"
finishing with three of the top five spots. See (#25) for
AD METER's best and worst (USA TODAY, 1/26).
WINNERS: In Boston, Chris Reidy reports that one
impression from the Boston Globe's nine-member ad panel was
that "this year, finally, the game was more exciting than
the ads." "Four Stars" ads were FedEx's dead airtime spot;
McIlhenny Tabasco and AT&T's young girl who has a crush on a
boy (BOSTON GLOBE, 1/26). AP's Skip Wollenberg writes that
FedEx had "the most daring ad" (AP, 1/26). In DC, Tom
Shales writes that FedEx's spot "couldn't help but grab a
viewer's attention. ... Talk about bang for the buck. The
commercial must have cost zilch to produce and yet stood out
strikingly" (WASHINGTON POST, 1/26). In Ft. Lauderdale,
David O'Brien writes that A-B's talking lizards "won the
game-within-the-game. ... Perhaps the only spot as
entertaining as the Bud ads was a creative Lipton Brisk
commercial." Other "effective ads" included Qualcomm cell
phones, Doritos 3D chips and FedEx (SUN-SENTINEL, 1/26). In
Detroit, Steve Crowe's top three spots were Lipton Brisk,
FedEx and A-B's lizards (FREE PRESS, 1/26). VARIETY's Ray
Richmond singles out Pepsi's goose, FedEx, Doritos, and the
"Armageddon" trailer among his top spots (VARIETY, 1/26).
On "Today," USA Today's Enrico said FedEx took a "very big
creative risk, but it made an impact. ... [I]t'll probably
win a lot of ad awards, but I think it went over the heads
of a lot of our consumer participants" (NBC, 1/26).
LOSERS: USA TODAY's Ad Meter showed that the presence
of six movie trailers and ads for technology companies
"appeared to bring down" overall viewers' scores. USA
TODAY's Melanie Wells reports that eight technology
companies "earned some of the lowest scores," including
Intel which finished second-to-last. USA TODAY's Horovitz
writes that ads for Coca-Cola and Intel "all but lost in the
scramble for attention" (USA TODAY, 1/26). On NBC's
"Today," Enrico said Coca-Cola "was a very big loser" (NBC,
1/26). In Orlando, Hal Boedeker asks, "[D]idn't the
commercials seem a little off this year?" Boedeker writes
that "the ballyhooed ads have developed some annoying
trends. The worst is desecrating national institutions,"
including this year's Pizza Hut/Elvis spot. Boedeker adds
that spots for Qualcomm and Pentium II "were extravagant and
flat" (ORLANDO SENTINEL, 1/26). In Boston, Intel earned one
star from the GLOBE's nine-member panel, while ads for
Doritos and Hormel Chili each earned one and 1/2 stars
(BOSTON GLOBE, 1/26). In Detroit, Steve Crowe's three
"worst" ads: Intel, Pizza Hut and Nike (FREE PRESS, 1/26).
ADD-ONS: Advertisers paid "a whopping" $75.4M for last
night's game. In total, NBC sold 29 minutes of air time to
more than 30 advertisers (Michael Starr, N.Y. POST, 1/26).
A-B VP/Brand Management Bob Lachky said the company paid
"far below" the average $1.3M per 30-second spot because "of
the volume of advertising" A-B does with NBC. Lachky: "We
know we're getting our money's worth on the Super Bowl" (ST.
LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, 1/25). Sprint Corp. sat out this
year's ad fest, saying "they learned something from last
year's game-day efforts: It makes little sense to spend more
than $1 million on a 30-second [TV] spot during the game."
Sprint Dir of Marketing Mike Goff: "There are more than 150
events that take place around the Super Bowl in San Diego
alone. We've chosen to do a few things and do them well"
(K.C. STAR, 1/24). In L.A., Greg Johnson reported that in
addition to sponsoring the NFL Experience, Sprint
distributed 70,000 Super Bowl seat cushions, hung 900 street
banners and "stamped its image on 10,000 key cards at
upscale hotels." Sprint hoped "to flash its name more than
a million times during the weekend" (L.A. TIMES, 1/25).
