A SHOOT STAFF REPORT
At least seven percent of those who watched this past Sunday’s Super Bowl telecast came away disappointed-and they weren’t necessarily Atlanta Falcons fans. According to a pre-game survey by Baltimore agency Eisner & Associates, seven percent of respondents said they watched the Super Bowl only for the ads. Alas, they witnessed a spot crop that was anything but super. Even consumer press accounts have deemed it one of the weakest in years, an assessment that’s largely echoed by agency artisans randomly surveyed by SHOOT.
The game itself was somewhat lackluster in that early on, the ultimate outcome was clear. Appropriately enough, the Denver Broncos prevailed over the Falcons during a Super Sunday marked by what’s become a traditional ad menu heavily reliant on the animal kingdom.
The commercial mix featured a menagerie of critters-some of which scored well with viewers, at least according to the annual USA Today poll whose top three entries were for Anheuser-Busch’s Budweiser: "Separated at Birth" in which two dalmatians reunite, one having earned prestige as a sidekick to Bud’s famous Clydesdales; "Lobster" (see Top Spot, p. 14) in which a crustacean holds a bottle of Bud hostage to escape the prospect of being hurled into a boiling pot of water; and the "Lizards" saga in which Louie gets a tongue lashing from a pair of frogs. The first two entries were out of DDB Needham Chicago while Louie took a licking from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco.
Nonetheless, the overall showing for what’s billed as advertising’s Super Bowl left much to be desired, particularly at a record-high average cost of $1.6 million per 30 seconds of airtime. Again, the perennial questions arise. Do the high stakes translate into a safety-first approach that makes for bland ad product? Does the desire to have mass appeal in this mega-audience event equate to a lowest common denominator tact that ultimately is counter-creative and counterproductive?
Indeed, the Super Bowl is the showcase in which advertising should strut its stuff. Beyond the aforementioned seven percent who cite commercials as THE reason they tune in, the audience also contains viewers who are paying heightened attention to spot fare, which makes the Super Bowl such a unique advertiser opportunity. For example, a survey by SAA/ Research in Farmington Hills, Mich., found that 48% of respondents listed seeing the commercials as one of the reasons they watch the Big Game.
Here’s what some of the pros think. SHOOT randomly surveyed some agency Monday morning quarterbacks to get their picks and pans for Super Bowl ’99. Here’s their feedback:
Paul Cappelli, president,
The Ad Store, New York
They [the spots] were extremely disappointing. There was really nothing that amazed you, that you felt like you hadn’t seen before.
Some were less disappointing than others … I did like the Hal [for Apple Computer via TBWA/Chiat/ Day, Los Angeles], but I also found it a little bit disappointing. … I just wish Hal hadn’t talked about the Macintosh [and rather alluded to it]. It was in the body of the commercial. … It seemed to destroy what could have been a great commercial. … It was Hal. It was the end of the millennium. I thought it had great potential. It sounded like a great concept. I thought it could have been up there with "1984."
It was the only quiet commercial during the Super Bowl, once again proving you can probably get further by keeping the volume down-you attract people’s attention.
First Union Corp. [two spots from Publicis & Hal Riney, San Francisco] seemed like a waste of money. It had a huge production, but why did they spend all the money? … Pepsi One [BBDO New York] was horrible. … And what the hell was Selsun Blue doing there?
Court Crandall, creative
partner, Ground Zero,
Santa Monica
The spots on the whole were really underwhelming. I personally missed seeing Nike there-a company like Nike who used the Super Bowl as an opportunity to do something different, to take some risk. I thought all the advertising was really safe and quiet and relatively uninteresting.
I felt there were a lot of spots that you had actually seen other places, which shocked me, because if you’re going to spend $1.6 million to buy a spot, you think you’d put something on that people hadn’t seen before. Usually the stuff is all very slick, but at least there are some good ideas that make one campaign or one spot stand out from another. In this case, I felt like there was nothing that made them stand out from each other.
I heard that the top-rated spot was the Budweiser dalmatian spot [DDB Needham Chicago], which I find difficult to believe. I guess my favorite was probably the Bud Light spot where the guys have to debate between the toilet paper and the beer [DDB Needham Chicago]. There seemed like there was an element of truth at least to that. Guys having only so much money and valuing the beer enough that they forego everything else-food and all the other necessities in life to buy Bud Light, so I thought that was pretty cool.
I like the FOX Sports campaign [Cliff Freeman and Partners, New York] they had with the different sounds effects. People mimicking the sounds, whether it’s Brady Anderson hitting the wall or, in the spot they ran, [Ivan] Rodriguez, the catcher, getting hit by a foul ball. The guy getting kicked by the horse, I think that’s a solid idea for a campaign.
I’d like to make some kind of rule that Progressive Auto Insurance [Arnell Group, New York] never be allowed to host the Super Bowl [halftime show] again. I just didn’t understand what the whole connection was [between E.T. and the company’s message]. It just made no sense that they had tease spots, they include him in the halftime show, the only thing they didn’t do was explain why the hell they had him as their spokesperson. I hope they had some reason, but it certainly wasn’t clear.
I felt like [the World Wrestling Federation spot via its in-house agency] was pretty much a takeoff on the SportsCenter campaign Wieden’s done, having the athletes in the headquarters. I thought it was fun at least, it gave you a sense of what pro wrestling is all about. It’s kind of sad that wrestling can afford a Super Bowl spot.
The only trend I noticed was that a couple big companies made conscious efforts not to spend a lot of money there, which were Nike and Coke. I think they probably just decided that it’s becoming too cluttered in itself and it’s just not worth the payoff. I think in Nike’s case, their whole initiative seems to be going back to grassroots and getting some credibility back instead of looking huge. And the Super Bowl, I think, fights that, because you can’t help but look huge. I don’t know what Coke’s [reasoning is]. Because they still ran the one spot, but it was like the worst spot they’ve ever done, I think, which was "Eat football, drink Coke."
Everybody had a similar style of commercial. It used to be Dorito’s [BBDO New York] and Pepsi had a kind of style to them, and they seem to have all adopted that kind of "storytelling-ends-with-a-joke’ spot.
I was torn on [the Apple spot]. I thought it was a good spot. It certainly made that distinction clear-that Apples are the only computers that aren’t scheduled to break down at Y2K. But it made me a little edgy, just them playing up these Y2K fears. Talking about the impending economic crisis I don’t think is going to help the country any. You take a spot out on the biggest viewership day of the country and talk about how the economy is going to fall apart. That was particularly irresponsible.
I thought that "Lobster’ spot [for Budweiser], which I guess was one of the higher rated spots, was going to have a big ending to it. And it never really did.
It just seemed like there were a whole lot of spots that were just very similar in approach, so it just became a battle of who had the best payoff line at the end. I think my favorite spot of the day was the King of the Hill-Full Monty stuff: "They’re prescription.’
I thought [the Monster.com spot, out of Mullen, Wenham, Mass.] was pretty interesting. At least that was a different approach. I thought it was interesting that there were two Internet job search firms on the Super Bowl. Between that and the other one, Hotjobs [McCann-Erickson Detroit, Troy, Mich.]. I just wonder how many [hits] they have to get to pay for the Super Bowl spots. I guess they’ve determined it makes sense financially.
I think [the Yahoo "Hair’ spot] is a fun spot. It’s just that it’s been out. I’ve seen it for a couple months or so.
I just don’t understand [why some advertisers didn’t do new spots]. For instance, the Yahoo spot probably cost them a couple hundred grand to shoot, max, I would think. I think it’s a great spot, but I’m just surprised that the client wouldn’t say, "Well, if we’re going to spend $1.6 [million], what’s another two hundred grand to do something new as part of the campaign.
I think this is the worst year I can remember, in terms of there [not being] anything that stood out. It seems like there was a real opportunity for just an even mediocre spot to gain all the more notice because everything else was so quiet.
[In terms of my advice for next year’s creatives], the first is always, like anything else, have a big idea. To spend all that money, have something to say rather than just try to entertain people. Have something important to say about the brand that people are going to be able to take away from the spot. Finally, my temptation would be to do something relatively stark, because it’s all still so highly produced, that it just makes it all blend together even more. If somebody did something very simple and a little rougher, it would probably stand out.
Cliff Freeman, president,
Cliff Freeman and Partners,
New York
I may have missed some. … It was kind of a letdown. I put them into seven categories: Good, disappointing, shameful, tedious, garbage, hose jobs, and "what the hell?’.
Good: Apple Computer, Visa [BBDO New York], Cracker Jack, [Goodby, Silverstein & Partners-A SHOOT Top Spot (1/29, p. 14)], Honda [Rubin Postaer and Associates, Santa Monica].
Disappointing: Budweiser Lizards [Goodby, Silverstein]. It was a little bit of a letdown. It was the last [Lizards’ work] and it didn’t go out with a knockout. Bud Light [DDB Needham Chicago]. American Express with Seinfeld [Ogilvy & Mather, New York]. "Wow. Kerplunk.’
Tedious: Overuse of old songs.
Shameful: Mitsubishi [Deutsch Inc., New York and Santa Monica]. "A complete ripoff of BMW.’
Garbage: Yellow pages. `What are they trying to say?’
Hose job: First Union "six trillion dollars spent on ponderous buildings that bump and grind."
What the hell?: Monster.com
There was one great spot. It was one during halftime [Freeman’s FOX Sports ad].
I apologize for being obnoxious. … It’s how I felt.
Murray Kalis, chairman/
creative director, Kalis &
Savage Advertising,
Pacific Palisades, Calif.
I hate to say it but I think this was one year when the game was better than the spots. I wasn’t as knocked out as I wanted to be. With the Super Bowl, you have made the decision that people aren’t going to see the spot 30 times, which means that this commercial has really got to be sensational. But like the Siebel Systems spot, that’s about as standard as a commercial gets. It was really boring.
The other thing I’m wondering is whether production has begun to out-strip creative. I can see that the concepts are not always there, and that is really a problem. To look at a spot and say, "What wonderful production, too bad there wasn’t an idea there,’ is too bad.
Another thing is that there weren’t that many new spots on, and I’m really surprised that people aren’t using the Super Bowl to premiere their spots and to take advantage of that.
For me the Bud Light spot with the guys and the toilet paper was the best spot in the whole Bowl. I believed the guys, the "Paper or plastic?,’ the receipt, it was brilliant. The filming, the casting was right on. That to me, was perfectly done.
My other favorites included:
€Apple. That was one that really impressed me, for all the speeches about never using borrowed interests, this one really worked, which shows that you shouldn’t make any rules. It really drew me in.
€MasterCard. I thought the use of stock comic characters was really fun. It was right on the point, and it made a lot of sense.
€World Wrestling Federation. I thought that was great. That’s what they’re about, that’s why people watch it, it didn’t try to be something it wasn’t, and it was funny. It gave you a sense of the entertainment value of wrestling.
€And Budweiser’s "Lobster." They really gave the lobster a personality. The animation was well done and that spot really stood out.
The Super Bowl also leads to questions about the value of celebrity. If they’re going to have a celebrity, I’d like to know why the celebrity is in the spot. I don’t know why Cuba Gooding, Jr., while he’s a wonderful actor-what does he do for [Pepsi One] versus another celebrity? For Pizza Hut’s [ad for the New Yorker Pizza], you know, I understood why Fran Drescher was there. Then there’s E.T. for Progressive Auto Insurance; well, I guess people remember the name.
Under the heading new spin or old idea, I’d put:
€Mountain Dew. That idea, with the kid parking the car, has been done a million times, but there were some interesting special effects where the car goes over the building, and I got a kick out of that.
€Budweiser Frogs. "Those are wonderfully done, but I’m wondering if they’ve run out of ideas. At first when they were talking about getting fired, I thought maybe that’s just in the spot, but now I think maybe they’re telling the truth.
€Visa Checkcard. I think they got the idea across. But I don’t know who’s writing checks these days.
€And Blockbuster Trip a Day Giveaway. I think that’s well done and it’s an example of the positive use of black and white, and you get a feeling of the reportage, what it’s like to be at Cannes.
In terms of selling product, so many things are so cynical, but I think the Budweiser dalmatians spot was well done. I think it reached a broad audience, but I think it got a little too sweet at the end. They just needed a little more restraint.
Monster.com really got to people that are thinking, you know, "who gave that 18 year-old the right to tell me what to do now that I’m 40,’ and I think that is a good way to present it. I think it was very simply done but really made the point.
In terms of work it’s pretty nice for the reel, but will it sell the product? First Union: As far as effects, the spots are just incredible, but I have no idea why they’re showing me this commercial. Either there’s no idea in the first place or the production totally overwhelms it. It’s the biggest waste of money I’ve ever seen. And I gotta say, the Oldsmobile spot [Leo Burnett Co., Chicago], again, great for a reel, great production, but what are they talking about here? It’s got nothing to do with the car.
As for what could have been good, there’s American Express with Jerry Seinfeld. I thought that was really going somewhere until the end. I guess the concept was that he could walk off the set with nothing but an American Express card in his pocket and he could go across the country. But then at the end he walked off the set and that was the spot, which meant that he didn’t go anywhere and he couldn’t use American Express across the whole country. So if you thought about it at all, it kind of killed the whole idea.
As for Buy.com, I’ve gotten in a lot of trouble in my career, but that was beyond sophomoric, That is like grade school, it’s infantile, just silly and stupid. I’m amazed. I’m surprised they got it on [the air].
Overall, it was a pretty poor showing. People are actually tuning in to watch the commercials so it’s a great opportunity. People outside of the ad field really do come in on Monday and discuss the commercials as well as the game, and I think advertisers need to keep that in mind.
Jef Loeb, partner/co-creative
director, Katsin/Loeb Advertising,
San Francisco
I thought the spots were a lot like the game: it came dangerously close to getting exciting, but never quite got there.
I liked the Monster.com ad. It was a great premise and beautifully executed, but it didn’t quite get me smiling. I wished the kids had been a little less polished, a little more interesting.
I’d say best direction would have to go to the hostage-taking lobster spot [for Budweiser]. In the Stupid Pets and Candy category, that was really entertaining and very well done.
And I loved Jon Lovitz [for the Yellow Pages]. I’ve always been a fan of his and he was great.
Anything out of the ordinary?
Not at all. It seems everyone’s headed toward these richer palettes and a semi-documentary style and sort of crunching the blacks. The only new thing was that Apple spot [with Hal the computer]. I think it was The New York Times that reported that that ad was also their Web site commercial, which, if the idea was to show that what’s cool on the Internet is cool on TV, well, we’re not quite there yet.
As for my dislikes, anything that asks "Are you an un?’ They should just put that [7-Up campaign] out of its misery.
And I wish the Siebel people would have saved their $1.6 million. I call that expropriation advertising, when you borrow someone else’s idea and then ruin it. [A colleague of mine said] it’s like advertising that you have a pimple.
I was also surprised that the Budweiser Lizard campaign has all come down to this tongue lashing. It’s disappointing, because it has been one of my favorites. I just love the writing, and I’d have liked to seen one more great Abbott & Costello exchange. If that is the grand finale, it’s very disappointing.
Dennis Ryan, executive
creative director, J. Walter
Thompson, Chicago
"There was no impact at all. It was kind of weird. Even though some of the ads did suck, I think any advertiser who steps up and puts a spot on the Super Bowl kind of deserves respect for, if nothing else, being very public about their support for the belief that advertising works. But there were a couple of spots that smelled out loud. There were times where I wanted to go over and turn on that Murder She Wrote marathon on A&E. It became like a dot.com bowl.
In the end, for me, the top 10 list turned into who’s the tallest of the midgets. I loved the Clydesdales [Budweiser spot] with the dalmatians. I thought that was nice and clever, although I wish those guys would back off the CGI eyes just a little, but that’s just a quibble. I thought it was a really nice spot-well told. The one I thought was equally good and didn’t get much mention was the hysterical Cracker Jack spot. It was a very simple thing but I thought it was great. And another one that I thought was great that came late in the game was the NFL ad. They aired these two lackluster :15s in the beginning of the game featuring players in Atlanta and Denver, which I thought was a huge mistake-we just watched 7 hours of pre-game and then they show someone in a Falcons or a Broncos jersey and we’re supposed to get excited about it? But when they showed the regular :30 [NFL Films’ in-house agency] with all the players from all the different teams, I thought it was outstanding.
I gotta tell you, you know that Progressive Insurance E.T. extravaganza? That movie is what, 18 years old? It’s like, "Thank you Steven for auctioning off yet another part of our childhood.’ The other thing that killed me is they had these totally overlooked cameos by Buzz Aldrin and Jim Lovell-those are two huge people in American history and they just put them on a shuttle and bypassed them quick-it just seemed really kind of dopey, so that one hurt. And that Siebel ad! Didn’t that look like it was pulled from a stock footage book on corporate America, and please, someone, I love James Brown, but that song, "I Feel Good," I’ve seen it on hospital networks, on everything.
Selsun Blue: Bless their hearts for trying to tell a story rather than showing two sides of a head, that was nice; they tried really hard but it was painful. I thought the 7-Up stuff was really bad and I thought that Bar-B-Q Doritos thing, I just don’t understand it. You’ve got this busty woman in a white shirt and you’ve got sprinklers going off, why not just go the whole nine yards and have a wet T-shirt contest, which is basically what they were doing-it was pathetic. I loved the automotive casting in the Philips ad [Messner Vetere Berger McNamee Schmetterer/Euro RSCG, New York], the ’66 GTO? That’s the best looking car in America so I thought that was perfect.
I personally like the Apple thing but only because I am a true believer, and I wish they would drop the gloves a little more often and give us something to hit back on-that was about as interesting to watch as a toaster oven. I liked the Land Rover spot, it wasn’t a Super Bowl spot but it was OK. HotJobs.com didn’t do anything for me but Monster.com did. Anheuser-Busch’s underage drinking thing: what, did they spend 10 cents on that? The M&M ads [BBDO New York], boy, they’re getting painful to watch.
I think for the first time MasterCard [McCann-Erickson, New York] missed a bet. Those ads have usually been pretty much above reproach, but the cartoons, I didn’t get that. I liked the [Budweiser] Frog stuff. I thought it was kind of funny when they took something we’ve seen like 8 million times and did something with it. I gotta tell you that pimp slap with the tongue thing did make me laugh. I liked that paper versus plastic [Bud Light] poop joke.
They [the spots] just seemed small overall. There was nothing to blow your face off, although the other side of that is the ad for the movie Wild Wild West. Somehow in a movie about the Wild West they were able to work in a CGI monster-it’s amazing. There was one commercial for the WWF, " We Are Not A Role Model,’ that was surprisingly good. It really broke me up. I thought that was outstanding. Great track on the Mitsubishi Montero Sport, although I thought the rest of it looked like every other ad you’ve ever seen.
American Express is still doing that 25 pounds of comedy in a 10 pound bag, which is good but it’s just not that surprising. They didn’t take it anywhere new. It doesn’t break through the way it used to. And no one talks about that Pepsi One spot, the rip-off of Reservoir Dogs-ouch! Especially for a company that has traditionally owned this thing, they just kind of walked away from it. I guess the thinking has changed.
Jim Spruell, senior VP/execu-
tive creative director, Austin
Kelley Advertising, Atlanta
Like 99.9% of people in advertising, I was just jealous my stuff wasn’t on there. It’s real easy to sit back and take shots at it, but it would have been cool to have my stuff on there. But that being said, my absolute favorite spot was the spot for Monster.com where the kids-shot beautifully in black and white-are basically talking about shitty jobs that they aspire to have as grown-ups. I thought that was a great spot.
I thought the premise was wonderful, to have these young kids talking in a real up-with-people way and throwing the curveball of them talking about being yes-men and brown-nosing the boss, with the sappy music behind it, [and] exquisitely shot. I just thought that was different. That seemed to come at it from a whole different angle. Having been in the business for 20 years, you sit there and think, "Yeah! Yeah!’ Anybody’s been in any business for 20 years, you sit there and think, "The world’s full of yes-men and brown-nosers and dead-end jobs.’ The premise was great, the execution was flawless, really delivered it great. And I’d never heard of Monster.com. I thought it was great.
I hated the Fran Drescher Pizza Hut thing [BBDO New York], you know, the New Yorker Pizza. To me, it was so embarrassing, it made me proud to be a Southerner. I was just like, "Oh my God, that is awful.’ I thought the Budweiser spot with the lobster was pretty funny. Hated the 7-Up stuff, it seemed like a bunch of ad guys’ versions of hip youth in a convenience store. I thought the Mountain Dew snowboarder thing was pretty cool. "What snowboarders do in the off-season.’ I thought that was great.
All in all, there were no grand surprises, but I think these days everybody’s threshold of being surprised is extremely high. I don’t think there was anything that made anybody go, "Oh my Lord, who would have thunk it.?’
I think [this year is] comparable [to earlier years]. Unless you go all the way back to the "1984′ spot, when advertising definitely took a quantum leap forward conceptually and execution-wise. The writing all in all seemed to be pretty good, the art direction seemed to be really good, and certainly the quality of the spots was extremely hip and good. Like I say, I think everybody’s threshold is just so high now, and their expectations are humongous. It’s like Christmas morning. A lot of people wait all year to see these commercials. If that’s the way you go into it, you’re never going to be thrilled.
Some of the trends [in the spots] seemed to be a little bit older and dated. Going back to the 7-Up thing: Oh, let’s crunch the blacks, let’s make the lighting sort of frightening and have a blue tone to the skin. People have been doing that for 10 years. [Also] it was nice not to see the MTV editorial stuff, where it’s like a gazillion cuts in one spot. It was kind of nice that that’s gone bye-bye. There seemed to be a little bit more intent on storytelling, which I thought was pretty good.
The Budweiser "Lobster’ thing told a story, it was a funny story. Very funny. I’ve always pitied the lobster anyway, it’s about time they got away. The fired Frogs stuff for Budweiser, the old Budweiser Frogs telling a story. I thought that was kind of nice.
[The Apple spot] kinda left me cold. It didn’t make me go, "Whoo-hoo!’ You talk about high expectations, you really have high expectations from that work. It didn’t wow me. But then again, it’s easy when your work’s not up there to take shots at others.
I felt [the spots as a whole] leaned a little on the conservative side, but then again, most of the products, well, a lot of the products that they’re advertising come from a conservative corporate culture. Even if you think Apple, I think that’s a fairly conservative corporate culture. Siebel, that was probably the most conservative thing, but it was probably the most conservative client. Even if it was conservative, I’m not sure that that was exactly a mistake. You don’t want to be hip just for the sake of being hip.
[The Internet spots] took more risks. There again the whole setup of the Internet is a no-barriers kind of motif. It tends to be a lot more full of young entrepreneurs, as opposed to big corporate behemoths.
It seemed to me that the ones that started out with a decent premise held true and made it to the end. And that’s the key, coming up with the idea is about a third of the problem. I thought the executions were all very good.
[My advice for next year’s creatives would be to] simplify, and concentrate more on the premise of the spot. Because I think the ones that really knocked it over the fence were the ones that kept it to a simple premise and just hammered it.
