BUD’S HORSE ROMPS IN ‘BOWLING’ FOR DOLLARS
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By now everyone knows the Giants won the Super Bowl, but advertisers are still hashing out which of their pricey spots scored with fans.
The day after the game saw a flurry of surveys, polls and research purporting to show which ads were touchdowns and which were fumbles with the record 97.5 million viewers.
Anheuser-Busch’s “Rocky”-themed Budweiser spot, made by DDB Chicago, that showed a Dalmation training a Clydesdale took top honors in at least three surveys.
The Bud ad faced stiff competition, though, from a heart-warming Coca-Cola spot, created by Wieden & Kennedy, that depicted Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade balloons.
A FedEx spot from BBDO featuring GPS-equipped carrier pigeons, as well as E*Trade’s talking baby ads, created by Grey Global, also consistently ranked among the top 10.
For the 10th year in a row, Bud took the top spot in USA Today’s AdMeter, the most closely watched poll among advertisers in the game. Visitors to AdBowl.com and AOL.com also voted the Clydesdale ad the best.
“[The Clydesdales] are as much an American institution as the game itself and people want to like the ad,” said Steve McKee, president of McKee Wallwork Cleveland, co-creator of the AdBowl.
Even so, Anheuser-Busch, the largest buyer of Super Bowl spots, landed just three ads in the AdMeter Top 10, compared with seven last year.
According to research from TiVo, E*Trade’s baby ads upstaged the competition.
An ad panel conducted by Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management awarded A’s to E*Trade, Coca-Cola, FedEx and Tide for spots that sent the right marketing message and connected to consumers.
According to the panel, the lowest-ranked ads came from SalesGenie.com.
An analysis of online buzz conducted by Internet ad firm Collective Media deemed another Bud spot starring funnyman Will Ferrell as the Super Bowl ad “most likely to go viral.”