Super Bowl Commercials XLII

The ads during this year's game had a different feel from last year, but the expectations—and cost—were plenty high

by David Kiley

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The New York Giants and New England Patriots have been fielding media questions and tuning up their bodies for two weeks leading up to Super Bowl XLII. The same can be said of competitive creative directors and video editors who have prepared for their biggest game of the year: The Super Bowl ads that cost their clients $2.7 million for every 30 seconds.

As recently as Tuesday and Wednesday before the big game, ad agencies were tweaking the sound quality and pacing of their ads. "It would be bad to put all this effort in and then not get the story or message across," says Joel Ewanick, Hyundai Motor America's marketing chief. He says the automaker's agency, Goodby Silverstein & Partners, views their ads on small, inexpensive TVs to verify production quality rather than relying on the expensive gear at ad agencies. Hyundai advertised the coming of their Genesis luxury car later this year. Last year, Deutsch LA created a clever, poignant spot about a robot on a General Motors (GM) assembly line, but after the game it received pressure from special interest groups to re-cut the ad over a sequence that showed the robot jumping off a bridge (BusinessWeek.com, 2/5/07). "It's such a big audience…it can be like what happens in a political debate when something someone says or does has an unintended consequence," says independent marketing consultant Dennis Keene.

Indeed, there were a lot of dark, controversial, and violent images in Super Bowl ads last year (BusinessWeek.com, 2/5/07)—from a kiss between two men, to fighting, and even suicide. But that trend has been reversed for this year's game. Advertisers from Pepsi (PEP) to Budweiser (BUD), Federal Express (FDX) to Audi, seem to be going for less controversy and more sight gags. While Justin Timberlake co-starred in the most infamous Super Bowl moment of the last decade in Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction, this year he was merely the focus of a sight gag as a woman sucks Pepsi through a straw, pulling Timberlake down streets and through traffic until he lands in her yard. The pitch is for earning Amazon.com (AMZN) MP3 downloads by drinking more Pepsi. And where Careerbuilder.com had tribal fighting in jungles, this year it made the ads more about self-help and listening to one's heart about changing jobs.

A Record Breaker?

Is the Super Bowl really worth all the cost? Expectations were that this year's game would break the 1996 record audience of 94.1 million people. That's because the Giants and Patriots represent two of the top five media markets, with New York being No. 1. The Patriots were trying to make history with an undefeated season, capped by a championship. And in the last game of the regular season, the Giants came within a field goal of beating the Patriots, setting up anticipation of a close game. In the end, however, the Giants' magnificent upset of the Patriots' perfect season in a game that was decided in the last minute meant every eyeball was tuned in until the end.

"This is a huge year for us with an exciting new product, and the Super Bowl is an unbeatable venue to get it across to our target," says Steve Battista, vice-president for marketing at Under Armour (UA), the sportswear company that launched its first ever sneaker (BusinessWeek.com, 1/29/08). Under Armour's share price actually climbed about 30% after it announced it was advertising the new shoe during the Super Bowl, a signal to investors and Wall Street that it's serious about taking on Nike (NKE) and Adidas (ADDDY) in footwear.

Fox, meanwhile, is expected to take in $170 million in ad revenue, and some $225 million if pre-game ads are counted.

The Super Bowl had added importance for advertisers this year. With the writers' strike still on and most first-run TV shows delayed, greater importance is being placed on news and sports programming. Also, because Super Bowl ads have become a cultural phenomenon, and consumers often say they watch the ads as or more closely than the game, it is a unique opportunity to get a message across. Millions of consumers began watching ads posted on the Internet or run on news programs before the game, and they even watch them again on digital video recorders and on Web sites like YouTube (GOOG). "The Super Bowl is a good spend because you get the chance to create a lot of buzz ahead of the game," says Tim Calkins, a clinical professor of marketing at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

For the second consecutive year BusinessWeek Marketing Editor Burt Helm and Senior Correspondent David Kiley stayed home to watch the game, and the ads, and have made their picks and pans. Check out the slide show to see their picks for which advertisers and ad agencies rang the bell at the big game, and which ones deserved the gong.

Kiley is a senior correspondent in BusinessWeek's Detroit bureau.