The ads during this year's game had a different feel from last year, but the expectations—and cost—were plenty highThe New York Giants and New England Patriots have been fielding media questions and tuning up their bodies for two weeks leading up to Super Bowl XLII. The same can be said of competitive creative directors and video editors who have prepared for their biggest game of the year: The Super Bowl ads that cost their clients $2.7 million for every 30 seconds.
As recently as Tuesday and Wednesday before the big game, ad agencies were tweaking the sound quality and pacing of their ads. "It would be bad to put all this effort in and then not get the story or message across," says Joel Ewanick, Hyundai Motor America's marketing chief. He says the automaker's agency, Goodby Silverstein & Partners, views their ads on small, inexpensive TVs to verify production quality rather than relying on the expensive gear at ad agencies. Hyundai advertised the coming of their Genesis luxury car later this year. Last year, Deutsch LA created a clever, poignant spot about a robot on a General Motors (GM) assembly line, but after the game it received pressure from special interest groups to re-cut the ad over a sequence that showed the robot jumping off a bridge (BusinessWeek.com, 2/5/07). "It's such a big audience…it can be like what happens in a political debate when something someone says or does has an unintended consequence," says independent marketing consultant Dennis Keene.
Indeed, there were a lot of dark, controversial, and violent images in Super Bowl ads last year (BusinessWeek.com, 2/5/07)—from a kiss between two men, to fighting, and even suicide. But that trend has been reversed for this year's game. Advertisers from Pepsi (PEP) to Budweiser (BUD), Federal Express (FDX) to Audi, seem to be going for less controversy and more sight gags. While Justin Timberlake co-starred in the most infamous Super Bowl moment of the last decade in Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction, this year he was merely the focus of a sight gag as a woman sucks Pepsi through a straw, pulling Timberlake down streets and through traffic until he lands in her yard. The pitch is for earning Amazon.com (AMZN) MP3 downloads by drinking more Pepsi. And where Careerbuilder.com had tribal fighting in jungles, this year it made the ads more about self-help and listening to one's heart about changing jobs.
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