1.  Anheuser-Busch wins again!  Or does it?  If you criticize schools for teaching to the test, how do you feel about Anheuser-Busch and likability tests?  That’s the measure USA Today uses in their famous overnight ratings of all Super Bowl commercials.  We can confirm that Anheuser-Busch has learned how to make more likable commercials than any other Super Bowl advertiser, because likability is one of the many measures we use in the detailed post testing of all Super Bowl commercials we have been conducting for the past 14 years.  The standing ovation the returning troops got at the airport, the zoo full of animals that wanted to join the Clydesdales, and the pilot jumping out of the plane for a six-pack after the skydiver refuses, also proved to be exceptionally well liked commercials in our tests.  However, the other measures we use, a number of which are covered in the following paragraphs, show Anheuser-Busch was not always tops in other characteristics, like getting people to buy the product. 

2.  Pepsi and Batman were best at getting the name across.  When people can’t remember who a commercial was for, it can’t be of much help to the advertiser.   We wait until a week after the game to check that, and see if the commercials are having any lasting effects.  Repeated shots of Pepsi bottles, showing music comes out when the cap is removed, proved one of the best ways of ensuring people remembered who it was for.  Featuring a black caped figure in a movie trailer was another.  In both cases over 90% of those who claimed to have seen the commercial could demonstrate they were paying attention by correctly identifying what was being advertised.  The best Anheuser-Busch could do with its eight commercials was to have one at a respectable 80% (the one with Clydesdales), and all the rest falling in the more average range of 39% to 67% correct sponsor identification. They obviously do a great job pretesting their commercials for likability.  They don’t do as well testing for branding ability.  But at least they are doing better than last year when Budweiser had the most poorly branded commercial on the Super Bowl (Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s car beating a jet to LA to return a girl’s lipstick, only to learn it wasn’t hers. People liked it, but had no idea what it was supposed to be selling). 

3. Movie commercials increased buying interest the most.  In our questioning, before we ask about commercials, we ask how likely people would be to purchase various brands, or makes, or go to various movies, etc.  Then we compare the results between those who recognized the commercial for that product, and those who didn’t.  That shows if there was any "lift" in buying interest associated with seeing the commercial.   The movies "Batman Begins" and "Hitch" produced the greatest lift. The pilot diving out of the plane for the six-pack gave Bud one lift score that was fairly close to the leaders.  Showing people who have an unusual devotion to the product is obviously a creative strategy that can work.  But Bud’s other commercials, even though they were very well liked, were not above average in creating any buying interest.

4.  A variety of commercials increased awareness of their brand.  Here the top performers included a number of commercials for lesser known products and brands: the movie Hitch, Tabasco hot sauce, Olympus with a new miniature camera/music player, and Ameriquest, the home loan specialists.  One virtually unknown name, GoDaddy.com, was obviously gambling on becoming better known with the commercial showing a buxom woman having a wardrobe malfunction that upsets a censorship hearing.  In spite of a much publicized cancellation of a second showing during the game, it only got a small, but about average, 4 point increase in first name awareness.   A very well known brand, Visa, was also one of the top performers in this measure with a commercial about Super Heroes who can’t help a lady who lost her Visa check card because she is already protected.  But the best known brands, Bud and Pepsi, albeit with little room for greater awareness, were at the bottom in this measure of performance. 

5.  What it takes to be well remembered:  The movie "Hitch" with Will Smith was being released the week after the Super Bowl and had commercials appearing continuously on every network.  It was this Super Bowl’s most recognized commercial, showing additional exposure certainly helps.  Staples did almost as well with an "Easy Button" commercial that was also aired prior to the game, as did Quizno’s with the talking "Baby Bob" by a pool.  That left Subway with the best remembered of the 2005 Super Bowl commercials that were being aired for the first time.  It showed police approaching a parked car at night with steamed up windows.  Hedonistic anticipation worked its magic with the brain’s cognitive functions, and we had the best remembered new commercial, even though the only thing they found in the car were two men eating hot Subway sandwiches. 

6.  Lay’s "Ball over the fence" was funny.  Kids don’t think old man Higgins will ever give their ball back until a girl thinks of throwing over a bag of Lay’s Chips.  Not only does the ball come back over the fence, but also their dog, dad’s old car, and MC Hammer.  This essentially tied with two Bud commercials (Clydesdales & Skydiving) as the year’s funniest Super Bowl commercials.  Also included as one of the "cleverest" was an Ameriquest commercial about a cat knocking over tomato sauce, being covered with it, and getting picked up by the husband, who has a knife in his other hand, just as the wife walks in, making it look like the husband just slaughtered the cat.

7. Pepsi’s "P Diddy" commercial had the strongest overall performance of all this year’s new Super Bowl commercials.  The number that recognized it, knew who it was for, and liked it, was higher than any other.  The stranded P Diddy bumming a ride to the awards in a Pepsi truck, and starting a fad where everyone wants to drive around and party in Pepsi trucks, was rated one of the tops for originality.  It also makes it tough for those who have been saying the value of using celebrities in Super Bowl commercials has been fading.

8.  Dull openings reduced the impact of several strong commercials.   These are the types of errors that are likely to be made using plain old forced exposure pretesting, and they were all too apparent on this year’s Super Bowl.  In our type of post testing we make a point of first measuring how many noticed and paid attention to the commercial, and then measuring the impact it had on those who paid attention.  The simple old forced exposure pretest  ("Watch this commercial.  How did you like it? Etc.")  can only hope to measure the last part.  The prime example?  11 commercials were better remembered than the Bud six-pack being thrown from the plane - the commercial USA Today’s likability pole said was the best.  How come?  The instant reaction of many brains to that commercial’s opening shot of a plane peacefully flying through the clouds might well have been "Nothing exciting here.  Time to hit the guacamole dip!"  By the time they finish munching, they’ve missed the whole commercial.  Ameriquest’s apparent cat slaughter, and the singing Pepsi bottles were additional examples where the creatives felt starting with mundane items would help set up the payoff, but they ended up with strong commercials that were being ignored by too many people - and apparently the type of research they were conducting didn’t warn them about that.  (BRC’s will!) 

9.  Viewers are getting bored with cars.  Every list of ad expenditures we have seen in recent years shows more money is spent on automotive advertising than in any other category.  So, what did all that money accomplish in terms of this year’s Super Bowl commercials?  Surprisingly little!   There were five of them: two for Honda and one each for Cadillac, Toyota and Volvo.  All ended up in the bottom half by almost every measure.  A lack of recognition was the most critical.  They appeared during the same game as all the others, but the percent that remembered seeing the car commercials was only a fraction of what it was for the more successful Super Bowl commercials.

10.  Don’t mean to trash USA Today.  Their research is exactly what they say it is: an overnight measure of how well hundreds of people in several markets liked each of the 50+ commercials aired during the game, measured electronically as they watched the game.  All that for the price of a paper!  It has to be the greatest bargain in advertising research!  While we might quibble about a commercial’s exact rank on a likability scale, their best liked commercials almost always turn out to be our best liked commercials, and our least liked commercials also show up as their least liked commercials.  It is all pulled together by USA Today’s brilliant Bruce Horovitz (brilliant because he has been known to cite our research on occasion ever since his years at the LA Times).  And we certainly agree with Bruce and the Advertising Research Foundation that if you can only measure one thing about an ad, likability is the most important.   Our point is that is not the whole story.  You also need to measure other things to really find out which Super Bowl commercials reached and affected the most people - and why.  Hopefully something our firm, and this newsletter, can help with.

                                                                                          Don Bruzzone