THE TOP 10 INSIGHTS

"What We Learned From This Year’s Super Bowl Commercials"

From Don Bruzzone’s ARF WebCasts March 19 & 30 2004

and talks at Toronto’s PMRS and San Francisco’s AMA

1. Showing things new and different captured the most attention. Our recognition-based tracking of the 58 commercials on this year’s Super Bowl showed the three best remembered included trailers for two new movies ("50 First Dates" and "Miracle") and a new product innovation (a 4-blade razor from Schick). Both movies opened a week or two after the Super Bowl, so the commercials were aired again fairly frequently after the game. We control for that using Nielsen Media Plus counts of the number of times each Super Bowl commercial is aired on the networks between game day and the end of our online interviewing 9 days later. (We wait a week before starting so we can see if the commercials are having any lasting effects.) We found the number of additional airings only accounted for 14% of the differences in recognition. And the differences were wide. Among our cross section of the US online population, the percent that remembered seeing them one week later ranged all the way from 12% to 79%. That’s similar to what we find every year. Showing something new that people had not seen before proved to be the key for this year’s top attention getters.

2.  One of the best remembered was remembered as a commercial for its competitor. It was the commercial for Schick’s new 4-bladed "Quattro" razor. 40% of those who remembered seeing it remembered it as a commercial for Gillette. Only 39% remembered it as a commercial for Schick. That was handy for Gillette, because they also ran a commercial on this year’s Super Bowl, but it looked and sounded like commercials they were running over a decade ago, and most viewers ignored it. In one sense, the Schick commercial did more for Gillette than their own Gillette commercial. The percent that noticed the Schick commercial and thought it was for Gillette was almost three times greater than the percent that noticed the Gillette commercial and knew it was for Gillette (23% vs. 8%). It shows quite dramatically, capturing attention is only the first step. (To be fair, shouldn’t Gillette be sending a check to Schick?)

3.  Bud had the best AND the worst branded commercial. The donkey who wanted to join the Clydesdales was the best - 96% of those who remembered seeing it knew it was for Bud. It was also a top performer by almost every other measure. But the interesting part is this year’s most poorly branded commercial was from the same advertiser: Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s car beating a jet to LA to return a girl’s lipstick, only to learn it was not hers. Only 38% of those who recognized that commercial could remember it was for Bud. Budweiser obviously pretests for something other than a commercial’s ability to get across the brand name, because they did have this year’s funniest and best liked commercials, as they do most years.

4.  Likable was better than funny. The two were related. Funny commercials tended to be better liked, and a lot of the best-liked commercials were funny. But they are not identical measures. Likability proved to be the one more closely related to all major measures of performance: recognition, remembering who it was for, increased brand awareness and increased buying interest. Further, the results showed you don’t have to be funny to be successful. A larger than usual number of this year’s commercials did it with empathy or relevance.

5.  Two of the most amusing commercials did little else but entertain. Pepsi’s bears raiding a cabin in the winter, then dressing up as the owner and going to the store when they found nothing but empty Pepsi bottles, was one. The other was the Bud commercial about Cedric who apparently went in for a massage but ended up with a bikini wax job. Both struck respondents as extremely funny, but they did not end up near the top of any of our basic measures of performance.

6.  Several executions overpowered the message: This year provided a number of examples where the action on the screen accounted for relatively poor performance by keeping people from focusing on the product. They included the race driver beating the jet (Bud), a husband raised by wolves (Honda), a monkey on a person’s back (Dodge), and those strong, but largely irrelevant characters in the AOL commercials.

7.  Monster.com had success with commercials most people ignored: They both showed people getting up, getting ready and going to work. That proved to be something most people found mundane and easy to ignore. But not their target - folks who only wished they could be getting ready for work in the morning - the unemployed. The result? Monster.com had a greater gain in name awareness among those who noticed their commercials than any other commercials on this year’s Super Bowl.

8.  Movie trailers were best in increasing buying interest. We measured this by asking everyone how likely they were to buy, use, or see, whatever was being advertised. We did this for a number of brands before we showed them any advertising for that category. Then we compared results from two key groups: those who recognized the commercial and those who didn’t. When we looked for the ones showing the biggest increase in buying interest among those who noticed the commercial, we found the top three were all for movies: "Troy," "Hidalgo" and "50 First Dates." We also ask if every commercial has an effect on the respondent’s perception of the product. These three movie trailers scored very high in this measure. Movie trailers come much closer to giving the viewer a "free sample" of the actual product than any other type of advertising. As a result, movie trailers performed better in this key measure than any other Super Bowl commercials. Four years ago Warner Bros.’ Dan Rosen and I addressed an ARF conference in Beverly Hills on "Advertising Movies on the Super Bowl, What Works and What Doesn’t." Now they are among the most effective, leading to this year where there were more commercials for movies on the Super Bowl than for any other type of product or service. Is that enough to assume a cause and effect relationship?

9.  Feature the product. For the Super Bowl it is easy to overemphasize entertainment value. Working in the product proved essential. Old folks fighting over a bag of Lay’s was a prime example this year. Skits showing Subway sandwiches help make up for eating bad, not being bad, also worked well in keeping attention focused on the product. The success of movie trailers provides more examples. By their very nature they enjoy the double advantage of being entertaining and featuring nothing but the product being advertised. The Clydesdales provide a powerful reminder of the brand. In past years M&Ms enjoyed similar success. If you remember anything about their commercials, you remember the animated candy characters - and, that it was for M&Ms.

10.  Relatively few were offended. Critics, the press and even congressional hearings made a big issue of this year’s lack of taste in the half time show and the offensive humor in commercials. We are not sure what it says about public taste, but we found only 19% of our respondents had any strong objections to what they saw on this year’s Super Bowl. And that held true everywhere, including the Bible Belt.

Happy to address any questions you may have, but I should warn you, if you are looking for more details on the performance of specific commercials, you may be asking about information we charge for. For a copy of the talk, and for any questions, drop me a note at DonBruzzone@Bruzzone-Research.com.

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