By Mae Anderson, Business Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --Sex sells … frozen food dishes?
Kraft Heinz' frozen-food brand Devour is trying to make waves during its Super Bowl debut with an ad that takes a humorous, innuendo-packed jab at one man's "porn addiction" — as in "frozen food porn."
Super Bowl ads have long used raunchiness and sex to stand out during advertising's biggest stage. Think Cindy Crawford downing a Pepsi wearing skimpy shorts in 1992 or the 2013 GoDaddy ad that showed a squeamishly close-up shot of a kiss. But advertisers have largely toned it down in recent years, focusing instead on crowd-pleasing approaches using animals, humor or celebrities. Raunchy ads risk offending or polarizing a company's intended target audience.
That's likely to happen with Devour's ad, said Allen Adamson, co-founder of the branding consultancy MetaForce.
"Male millennials may get a yuk out of it, but it is going to do very little to sell any products," he said. "It's more likely to do more damage than good for the actual brand."
So why take the risk? The stakes are high as a 30-second ad can cost more than a reported $5 million.
"It's an example of the intense pressure on marketers to at all costs say 'Hey look at me,'" he said. "There's nothing worse than spending $5 million and having no one notice."
Devour released a 60-second "uncensored" version online Wednesday and plans a toned-down, 30-second version during the Feb. 3 game. Devour isn't giving details on what it's cutting, beyond saying it won't use the word "porn." Even so, Adamson said, it can backfire because the suggestive message doesn't tie in closely with the product itself.
In the uncensored version, a woman talks about her boyfriend's problem with "frozen food porn" and says he watches it several times a day and has a hidden stash of photos — of food. Among the suggestive lines is the girlfriend saying that the addiction has made him a "three-minute man," as in the amount of time it takes to heat up a frozen meal.
Though people don't typically associate frozen foods with raunchiness, Devour's latest ad is consistent with prior marketing efforts: It launched in 2016 with the tagline "Food You Want to Fork."
Other Super Bowl advertisers include Anheuser-Busch, Pepsi, Kia and Verizon. Colgate Total was the first advertiser to unveil its Super Bowl ad. The ad released Friday stars Luke Wilson as a close talker.
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More