Super Bowl Ads: More Pedestrian Than Advertising

Published on: February 2, 2004

Sunday's Super Bowl XXXVIII reached a new record. CBS sold ad time at the rate of $2.3 million for a 30-second spot. But unlike previous years, most of the advertisers who paid big bucks, had very little connection to what consumers need and want in the real world. Especially when it came to food!

For example, one of the commercials generally perceived to be among the funniest was the Pepsi ad called "Diner." Directed by Spike Lee, the commercial showed how a waitress reawakens a customer's belief in love with a Pepsi and a sandwich. It was funny but did anyone else notice that the waitress was more than a little overweight which would seem to run in opposition to PepsiCo's commitment to creating healthier lines of products?

The same goes for PepsiCo's ad for Lay's potato chips, which showed an elderly couple racing (slowly) for a bag of chips; the old guy gets there first by knocking down the elderly woman with his cane, but she gets the last laugh because she's holding his false teeth. Again, funny but what about an ad that speaks to the company's new direction and terrific execution to focus more on nutritious snack foods? Without overselling the benefits of a healthier line of chips, PepsiCo could have done something really interesting that addressed the obesity issue in a compelling and entertaining way.

The Sierra Mist commercials seemed uninspired -- especially the one that had the Scotsman standing over a grate with frigid air blowing up his kilt. Now, even though we got the reference to the Marilyn Monroe-Tom Ewell film "The Seven-Year Itch," we found it a little disconcerting when the commercial showed a little boy looking up the guy's kilt and saying to his father, "That's just wrong." It was wrong - but mostly because in an environment where child abuse is on the front pages and accusations are flying about how Michael Jackson behaves with young boys, this ad was tasteless and untimely.

In fact, toilet/crotch humor seemed to be the theme of the game's commercial segments. There was the dog who bites a man's crotch in order to get his owner a Bud Light, and the quarterback who gets distracted because there's a piece of Charmin toilet paper hanging out the back of his center's pants that feels so good he can't call the play.

And the non-food ads were just as off focus.

The Visa commercial that had women's beach volleyball being played in the snow was amusing as was the FedEx commercial that had an alien sitting behind a desk and passing for an executive because it knows how to say, "Why don't we use FedEx?" The Gillette ad for the company's Mach 3 Turbo razor was simply boring, as were the commercials for AOL's new high-speed service. An ad for Staples that was a takeoff on the "Sopranos" was okay but left us feeling that it could have been a lot more clever.

We did like the anti-smoking commercial done for the American Legacy Foundation that compared cigarettes to Popsicles imbedded with shards of glass. Tough stuff for a Super Bowl, but well done.

And what was the best commercial on the Super Bowl?

According to the USA Today Ad Meter the winners for the top five ads are:

#1 - Anheuser-Busch: dog owners demonstrate how their dogs fetch Bud Light

#2 - Pepsi: bears find food and an empty Pepsi cooler

#3 - Anheuser-Busch: a donkey dreams of being a Clydesdale

#4 - Anheuser-Busch: a romantic sleigh ride goes amiss

#5 - Frito-Lay: grandma & grandpa fighting over chips

Each year USA Today has consumers ranking which ads were their favorite. This year the 136 volunteers used hand-held meters to register their likes and dislikes in real-time.

Makes us yearn for the days of dot.com ads!

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