Competitive Intelligence: The Business Take on Super Bowl XXXVIII: Decent Game Overshadowed by Mostly Tacky Ads & Janet Jackson’s Stupid Publicity Stunt

February 02, 2004

The Business Take on Super Bowl XXXVIII: Decent Game Overshadowed by Mostly Tacky Ads & Janet Jackson’s Stupid Publicity Stunt

Well, another Super Bowl is behind us and the general consensus is the game was a lot better than the ads were. CNN had a summary of the ads online and all of them let me down fairly uniformly.

Despite the lack of creativity, which AdWeek says there’s a good reason for, the ads are still a relative bargain at $2.25 million per 30-second spot (though AOL might disagree).

One theory for the lack of interesting ads was that Super Bowl advertisers got cold feet because of the critiquing of their ads itself:

Among many creative critiques, perhaps the best known is USA Today's Ad Meter, a survey of several hundred viewers who watch the game under the supervision of USA Today officials and rate the Super Bowl in-game commercials. Results are published in the newspaper the next day.

Now in its 16th year, the survey's media coverage has grown. That greater exposure has helped make some would-be advertisers gun shy about spending the $2 million-plus per spot (on top of production costs), only to have the bad reviews published in a national paper.

"The scrutiny ... has driven some advertisers away," said Ed Erhardt, president of ABC/ESPN Sports Customer Marketing and Sales. "The advertisers who finish in the top 30 or 40 percent of the USA Today Ad Meter come out OK, but if they finish below that, their company officers and shareholders begin to question whether the heavy expenditure was worth it."

"It bothers me who these people are, how they are picked, and are they really qualified to judge the creativeness of advertising," said Larry Novenstern, svp and director of national broadcast at Deutsch. "And they tend to pick the same types of commercials every year. Commercials with comedy do well. That's why Budweiser and Pepsi always do well, and auto companies and movie companies do not traditionally do as well."

John Hillkirk, editor of USA Today's Money section, where the Ad Meter results run, defended the survey. "It is not supposed to be the experts' view; it really is the view of the average person watching the game," he said.

In the 2003 Super Bowl Ad Meter, Anheuser-Busch (Budweiser) had six of the Top 10 spots. It is running multiple units in this year's telecast.

Despite the white noise surrounding the Super Bowl, it remains the year's marquee media buy. For example, most major movie studios have purchased at least one spot again this year, though most of their ads finished in the lower half of the meter last year.

Though not everyone thought so, the game was fun to watch. BusinessWeek had a complimentary critique excerpted below:

Another competitive NFL season and thrilling Super Bowl like this one, and football fans will be bursting into song - whether or not they remember any of the big game's ads.

And, Slate’s Ad Report Card had a rich bit of recap:

A Levitra ad, starring spokesman Mike Ditka, compares football to baseball. Not surprisingly, since Levitra is an NFL sponsor and Viagra is endorsed by a baseball star, football comes out on top. Ditka actually says, "Baseball could use Levitra." Translation: Baseball is limp! You can't get it up, baseball! As I have previously shown, Levitra's euphemism for sex is the image of a football being thrown through a tire. In this ad, Ditka throws the football through the tire, and shouts, "You gotta love that!" This forced me to contemplate the thought of a sweaty Ditka, immediately post-coitus, shouting "You gotta love that!" at his partner. Horrifying.

Kids get their mouths washed out with soap - they can't help but curse in disbelief when they see the new line of Chevys. This ad is kind of funny, but what's funnier is that the Linux kid is in it. It's just two commercial breaks later, and already he's gone from grandiose metaphor to kid with soap in mouth. Side note: Shouldn't IBM have some sort of exclusivity clause? They can't be too pleased to see their metaphor hawking cars.

The big Cialis launch! At last, another hard-on pill. The selling point with this one is that it lasts for 36 hours. "If a relaxing moment turns into the right moment, will you be ready?" the ad asks. And it shows several common, everyday moments - like taking a walk, doing the dishes, or soaking in side-by-side outdoor bathtubs perched on the side of a mountain. (The more-interesting-than-usual side-effect warning notes that a nonstop, 4-hour erection merits medical attention. Yipes!) Over all, Cialis' branding seems more woman-friendly, with a lot of tender scenes and intimate looks and not a lot of Mike Ditka shouting, "You gotta love that!"

The lack of celebrity faces in ads this year had a few good reasons behind it, as USATODAY.com explains:

They're costly. They're risky. They're unpredictable. They're bound to tight schedules. And, too often, the celebrity overshadows the product that's being hawked. As a result, some "everyday folks" found on cable and reality shows replaced big-name celebrities in ads for AOL and Pepsi. And it's why many marquee names from recent Super Bowl commercials - including Michael Jordan, Britney Spears and Celine Dion - are nowhere to be found this year.

Marketers are increasingly risk averse when it comes to the big game. Advertisers paid CBS a record $2.3 million for a 30-second spot and expose their message to nearly 90 million viewers. Most didn't want to rely on risky stars for a hit ad.

That isn't to say there weren't any celebrities. Muhammad Ali is featured in an IBM commercial. Willie Nelson stars in another H&R Block ad. And Homer Simpson shows up in a MasterCard spot. But the hot, "A-list" celebrities are nowhere to be found. Here's why:

• Messy scandals. Scandals, like those around Kobe Bryant, who was recently dropped as a McDonald's endorser, are forcing marketers to reconsider the high risk of putting stars alongside their brands.

"There's Michael Jackson, Britney Spears and Kobe Bryant rub-off," says ad trend watcher Marian Salzman of Euro RSCG Worldwide.

• Exploding costs. Besides the high cost of the broadcast time, the cost to make the ads also has spiraled to the point where some ads cost upward of $1 million to make. "The price has risen to the stratosphere," Salzman says. Then, there's the cost of the celebrity, too, which can add $100,000 to $1 million.

• Celeb confusion. The use of celebrities can be confusing. Some viewers quickly forget what product a celebrity is hawking. Others are so mesmerized by the celebrity, they never make the link in the first place.

"You run the risk of having consumers remember the Celine Dion spot but not remembering what the ad was for," says Kathy Delaney, managing partner at Deutsch, N.Y., with four ads for three clients (Monster.com, Mitsubishi and Expedia). "It's not about out-celebrity-ing the other guy. It's about striking a chord with people through the brand essence."

• Idea first, celebrity second. Pepsi, which has featured everyone from Michael Jackson to Madonna to Mike Tyson in past ads has learned the hard way. And the use of Britney Spears in its Super Bowl spot two years ago failed to boost the brand's image.

Keeping with its current "It's the Cola" ad campaign, Pepsi promotes soft drinks, not superstars. One ad, to launch Pepsi's giveaway of 100 million free downloads from iTunes, features 17 teens sued for allegedly making unauthorized music downloads.

"Use of celebrities always depends on the creative idea," says Dave Burwick, chief marketing officer, Pepsi North America. "You could argue we're using different types of celebrities."

• Unknown appeal. Most Americans don't know the stars of the Discovery Channel's hit show American Chopper. But that's likely to change after Sunday's Super Bowl, when the show's stars - Paul Sr., Paul Jr. and Mikey Teutul - appear in three ads for AOL.

The family's semi-anonymity is part of the appeal. "The Teutuls are on the bubble," says Len Short, executive vice president, brand marketing. "So we avoid the pitfalls of a big star pasted to our message."

And, a few other newsworthy observations on the advertising mix:

The other "news" to come out of Super Bowl XXXVIII was the shameless publicity stunt – a desperate cry for attention, in my view – by Janet Jackson and duet-accomplice Justin Timberlake to bare her right breast to 90 million viewers tuning in. To say it was a "wardrobe malfunction" is to insult the intelligence of the American populace – a crime I think best met with a boycott of both "artists" output, hereafter. After the Britney-Madonna-Kissing silliness at the MTV awards and all the rest of the escalating shock-stunts of the past year, isn’t it time we all just said, "Enough, already…?" let’s all just tuned-out and gave them all the attention they deserve, eh?

Well, that probably won’t happen, but there’s no way Janet and Justin should get camera-time at the Grammy’s this Sunday night – especially given the violence with which Timberlake ripped Jackson’s top and then today was nonchalant about the whole episode. I don’t think we want our girls and boys thinking this is acceptable behavior and that’s exactly what they got out of all of this.

It’s not the nudity itself, per se that bothers us – it’s the grandstanding and attention-grabbing and seeming escalation of stunts like this that’s most disturbing. Let’s hope for a mea-culpa from both performers as they own up to the plot – in the meantime, I appreciated AlterNet’s fun but rather over-the-top, anti-business critique:

Anyway, Justin and Janet danced a duet, and at the end of it Justin grabbed the leather cup covering Janet’s right breast and ripped it off. If you believe Timberlake, a red liner was supposed to cover Jackson’s skin, but he ripped that off too. For about half a second, if you looked really hard, you could kinda-sorta see Jackson’s breast. But even then, not really – as the Drudge Report later showed in great close-up, Jackson was wearing what I can only describe as a throwing-star nipple ring, which suggests either that she had wisely prepared for the incident or that Janet Jackson wears some really funky jewelry.

The outrage came fast and furious. The NFL announced that MTV wouldn’t be producing another halftime show anytime soon. Deeply offended newspaper columnists wrote articles like The Boston Globe’s "Jackson & Co. sink to new low," which would, in fact, be an interesting thesis to debate.

And inevitably, cultural conservatives saw a prime opportunity to engage in a little fundraising. Both the Family Research Council and the Parents Television Council, headed by right-wing media critic (i.e., nut) Brent Bozell, cranked out high-minded criticisms. Predictably, CBS "deeply" regretted the incident, and Timberlake apologized too. (In my vision of heaven, I dream of having to apologize for ripping off Janet Jackson’s breastplate at halftime of the Super Bowl.)

First, CBS and MTV are both owned by Viacom, which obviously saw a chance to exploit corporate synergy by hiring MTV to produce the halftime show. I don’t know about you, but it warms my heart when massive media corporations try to foist corporate synergy on the unsuspecting public and wind up being investigated by the FCC.

Second, CBS is the company that wouldn’t air an anti-Bush ad by MoveOn.org because it didn’t want to offend the White House and conservatives, just as it spiked a Ronald Reagan mini-series to avoid offending the White House and conservatives. And then it runs a halftime show which offends the White House and conservatives. How quickly all the previous sucking up is forgotten.

Third, let us not forget that this outrage is all about a half-second of partially nipple ring-covered breast. This in an hours-long game of brutal violence – CBS certainly didn't hesitate to show blood spilling from one player's nose in the first quarter – in a sport with a steroid problem, many of whose players have taken to owning unregistered guns, while other players are encouraged to become so obese that they risk dying on the field. Yes, it’s definitely the breast that we should get worked up about.

At least there wasn’t any other female flesh to tempt the God-fearing men of America! No scantily clad, artificially enhanced cheerleaders whom CBS kept using as a segue into and out of commercials, for example. And I’m sure that Visa used the bikini-wearing women’s volleyball team to promote the summer Olympics simply because of its athleticism.

What’s really going on here? Well, American hypocrisy about sex, of course. We run ads for drugs that help men get erections without ever mentioning the word "sex"; we grow irate at an exposed breast amidst an orgy of capitalist decadence. We nurse from the breast as children, but we fetishize it as adults, make it an object of lust and taboo – so that showing a breast, a source of human life, becomes worthy of government investigation.

It is, literally, a clash of human nature versus corporate culture. The Super Bowl has become the first American corporate holiday, a nationwide celebration of capitalism. (We watch it for the ads!) Any element of spontaneity threatens the corporate control of people’s minds and, yes, bodies. That’s why I loved the rebellious symbolism of the guy who streaked across the field (which, of course, CBS wouldn’t show). That’s also why the corporate producers don't mind the lip-synching – mouthing the approved words is the perfect metaphor for this synthetic event, actually preferable to the authentic but imperfect human voice.

Still, the FCC has launched an investigation – officially making a "Federal case out of it":

Tom Freston, chairman of MTV Networks, said he welcomed the FCC's investigation, which he said will prove that the show's producers and broadcasters had no prior knowledge of the stunt. MTV produced the halftime show. "We were really ripped off. We were punk'd by Janet Jackson," Freston said, referring to MTV's reality show that makes celebrities the butt of practical jokes.

Meanwhile, AOL, which had planned to make the Halftime Show available to members and nonmembers for about two weeks which was expected to generate heavy traffic for the online company, decided to yank its stream of the show, after spending about $10 million to air ads promoting its "Top Speed" Internet service and sponsor show. Hopefully AOL can succeed in getting a refund of at least part of that misguided investment. "While AOL was the sponsor of the Super Bowl Halftime Show, we did not produce it," AOL said in a statement. "Like the NFL, we were surprised and disappointed with certain elements of the show."

Yup. Me too.

- Arik

Posted by Arik Johnson at February 2, 2004 01:02 PM | TrackBack

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