Tag Archives: Vizio

Another year, another Super Bowl. Dreams of greatness, realized for some and dashed for others. (Greatness on the football field? NO—we’re talking greatness in terms of connecting with consumers, and making something happen marketing-wise!)

This year we saw girls, girls, girls. The Cheetos “Snooty Girl,” the Doritos “undressed girl”—undressed to the sounds of opera!—the girl getting sarcastic flowers from Teleflora, plus among others, the incredible Danica Patrick in one of the always-provocative GoDaddy spots. We also saw the (over)use of animals, always a major theme in Super Bowl advertising. While we didn’t see as many chimps as in previous years, there was an unprecedented number of Clydesdale horses crossing our screens, and we even saw Martha Stewart posing with a black stallion (in an NBC spot). Beyond the Girls and Horses, there were avatars, bugs, E*Trade babies, lizards, the Angel of Death and Bob Dylan. When even Alec Baldwin shows up, there’s truly something for everyone.

So how did all of this add up? From a marketing perspective, who were the winners? Losers?

To answer that question, we need to consider a more fundamental question: what makes a good Super Bowl ad? Or for that matter, what makes a Super Bowl ad tank? Four conditions that set the stage for success or failure are:

1. Exposure – when did it appear? What quarter? Were people in the room and able to look at the ad? Or were they zapping to Puppy Bowl, or fighting with the Cardinals fans in the room, or otherwise not available?

2. Attention – did the ad command and hold attention? Did it break through, and maintain its hold on the viewer, all the way to the end?

3. Comprehension – did viewers understand the story or gist of the ad, and take away the key point the marketer was hoping to convey? The point could be anything, from “we’re the best product” to “we’re all-American” to “we’re cool” to “you need to go to our website right now!” But the ad should make the consumer think, feel, say or do something as intended by the marketer. If the ad didn’t make something happen in the consumer, it’s dead-on-arrival.

4. Connection – did the ad connect the consumer with other social media, other consumers, other marketing tactics? In other words, was the ad just one thread connecting the consumer with other marketing activities, whether it be going to Facebook, going to the marketer’s website, entering a sweepstakes, redeeming a voucher for a free gift, or just talking to other consumers about the ad (online and/or in person)? (By some accounts only roughly a third of this year’s ads were designed to integrate with social media. A lost opportunity for those other 2/3’s!)

OK, what do you think? Check out my handy-dandy survey, where you can rate all the ads shown during the 2009 Super Bowl on the four key success criteria.

Deb’s Notes

Here are some things I noticed while viewing this year’s Super Bowl advertising.

1. Exposure and one-second ads—what’s that all about?

Miller enjoyed huge buzz ahead of the Super Bowl regarding their “revolutionary” one-second spots. In fact, a huge number of people missed (i.e., were not exposed to) the spots during the game. (Think about it…particularly if you’re in a bar or at a big party, it’s easy to miss much bigger things going on during the Super Bowl than a one-second TV spot). Nonetheless, Miller gained exposure in the places that really mattered…online, and in the press before and after the big game. A winner!

2. The mood of the country and major disconnects.

GoDaddy is well-known for its use of sexual imagery in Super Bowl communications. For the third year they stirred the pot…using basically the exact same creative strategy as in previous years (with the notable exception of inviting Danica Patrick to participate). Nothing really new in their approach, and yet they generated MUCH more negative reaction this year as compared to previous years. In this somber time, it seems many fewer have tolerance for the GoDaddy skin game.

H&R Block’s use of the Angel of Death was too over the top. When people are losing jobs and having nightmares about financial ruin, it’s much safer to talk about taxes as a pain in the you-know-where, rather than evoke death and disaster.

Doritos. When unemployment is one of the top three worries facing Americans, does it make sense to show a twit throwing a crystal ball at his boss’s crotch? Sure, people may be unhappy in their current situation, but uncertainty or worry is more resonant than anger at this point. This was also one of the biggest disconnects with women…it was very much a “guy” kind of spot, many women thought it was plain stupid. Sure, the ad won the USAToday overnight poll…but how much of that is due to rooting for the (non-agency) underdog?

3. Lost opportunity: Hyundai’s big move, wasn’t. But there’s still hope.

With the “Big 3” automakers ceding the Super Bowl stage to others this year, a real opportunity opened up for an imaginative competitor to steal some thunder. Hyundai had three different spots, staking a major claim. Yet all three were very different in creative strategy, look and feel. In addition to a lack of integration, the “Angry Bosses” ad was strident and likely seemed racist, at least to a significant number of viewers. Yet, as Jonah Bloom noted, if their objective was simply to raise brand name awareness and inform about their Assurance program, the spend on the Super Bowl may prove worthwhile.

Meanwhile: is it possible to create a brand image AND move metal in a car ad? Cadillac has been doing it for years. Immediately after the 2009 Super Bowl game ended, they ran their 2008 CTS spot…a real winner that featured Kate Walsh.

4. Girls like horses (and other things that boys aren’t as crazy about).

We saw some major gender differences in how men and women reacted to this year’s ads. Two advertisers already mentioned, GoDaddy and Doritos, were particularly panned by women. Meanwhile, women definitely liked the Anheuser-Busch Clydesdales more than did men, and also seemed to react to the Teleflora ad much less negatively than did men. This raises an interesting question: when you’re going for the biggest mass audience possible, how much should you care about gender differences? Is it ok to score much higher with one group than another?

5. When you come to the big dance, be ready.

Vizio wins the award this year for most epic FAIL in Super Bowl advertising. Spend $3mil to tell people “go to our website!”…and then when they do, they discover that the website is down.

Almost as bad as when General Motors scored big with their placement of the G6 on the Oprah Winfrey Show (the famous car giveaway stunt), only to suffer an epic FAIL when interested shoppers who had seen the G6 on Oprah went to dealers to take a look. There were no G6s on the lots…they hadn’t shipped yet.

6. Clydesdales: from noble brand-builders to clowns.

Last year’s Anheuser-Busch ad, featuring Hank the Clydesdale in an homage to the film Rocky, was widely recognized as the top ad shown during the 2008 Super Bowl. Historically, the Clydesdales have been used sparingly and very effectively, generating deep emotion, appealing to our higher sense of Americana, pride and heritage while reinforcing the Budweiser brand. Unfortunately, the marketer used the 2009 Super Bowl to turn these equine brand icons into a latter day version of Budweiser Frogs…clowns meant to provide laughs and lots of opportunity for imitation. Not only were the spots a letdown, they pushed a key brand identity element dangerously close to losing its primary meaning. A big miss!

In summary, key takeaways from Super Bowl 2009: (a) gender matters, (b) it’s important to treat the brand icon with the respect it has earned, and most important, (c) getting it right on all four Super Bowl success criteria is a challenge!