Patriotism Barely Gets Off the Bench

Anheuser-Busch Cos. draped one of its five commercials in red, white and blue in memory of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, but most advertisers that paid an average of $1.9 million for 30-second spots during Sunday’s Super Bowl XXXVI broadcast stuck with tradition and went for laughs.

Along the way, General Motors Corp. resurrected Led Zeppelin for Cadillac, H&R; Block Inc. enlisted the Beatles, and Britney Spears time-warped her way through a jingle for Pepsi. Advertisers plastered their names on video billboards leading in and out of commercials, and News Corp.’s Fox network, which broadcast the game, worked with advertisers to present the “Cadillac Super Bowl MVP,” the “Taco Bell Play of the Game” and the “H&R; Block of the Game.”

A group of USC business school graduate students who watched the commercials as part of a sports marketing class handed out game balls to Anheuser-Busch for two first-quarter commercials. The first showed a trained falcon that terrorized outdoor cafes while retrieving bottles of Bud Light for its owner; the second parodied the popular “BattleBots” show on Comedy Central that features death matches between mechanized robots.

“I loved the Bud Light commercials,” said USC graduate student Abby Harris, 25, who is pursuing law and MBA degrees. “I always go into the Super Bowl knowing that Bud Light will have some good commercials, and they didn’t let me down.”

But the students threw delay-of-game flags for a commercial from E-Trade Group Inc. starring a chimpanzee; a commercial for mlife, AT&T; Corp.’s new wireless service; and the lengthy spot from PepsiCo Inc. featuring singer Spears.

“The E-Trade commercial was just bad,” said Marianne Leu, 27. As for the Pepsi spot: “I guess it was a tribute to Pepsi and Britney Spears, but I don’t know who it was supposed to reach,” Leu said. “There was nothing original or creative about it.”

The Anheuser-Busch advertisement that showed the company’s famous Clydesdales making a cross-country trip to a point near ground zero in New York was one of the two overtly patriotic commercials during Fox’s lengthy broadcast of Super Bowl XXXVI from the Superdome in New Orleans. Barbara Lippert, a critic with trade magazine Adweek, described the Anheuser-Busch spot for Budweiser beer as “a tractor pull on the tear ducts.”

USC students agreed; the room fell quiet as they watched the storied Clydesdales end their journey in New York. But the only other commercial to incorporate patriotism--a spot from online job search site Monster.com starring former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani--fell short of the mark.

“It’s like Monster.com tried to capitalize on [the events of Sept. 11],” said Leu, who has lived and worked in Manhattan.

The average cost of a 30-second commercial during the most-watched telecast of the year fell below the $2-million average that CBS commanded during last year’s broadcast of Super Bowl XXXV, marking the first back-to-back tumble in the broadcast’s history.

The dulling effect of the recession and the fact that NBC will begin its coverage of the Winter Olympics on Friday created some anxious moments for the News Corp. network’s sales team. Shortly before the network sold its last spot Thursday, John Nesvig, head of the Fox sales team, joked that he hadn’t “slept at all for the last three months.”

Despite the highly publicized drop in prices, and pregame evidence suggesting that the St. Louis Rams would make quick work of the underdog New England Patriots, the Super Bowl was expected to remain the most expensive buy on television this year, as well as the most watched.

But New England’s thrilling 20-17 win on a 48-yard field goal with just seconds left in the game gave advertisers their money’s worth, said David Carter, a Los Angeles-based consultant who teaches the USC sports marketing class. Effective commercials won’t be seen, Carter said, unless “the broadcast contains a compelling sports product.”

The broadcast included commercial appeals from several Super Bowl rookies, including Levi Strauss & Co.’s Dockers brand, Quizno’s Corp. and H&R; Block. The timing also was right for such late arrivals as FedEx Corp. and Masterfoods USA, owner of the M&M; candy brand. The companies waited until late in the advertising game to secure third- and fourth-quarter spots with price tags reportedly well below $2 million.

Students were divided over the effectiveness of anti-drug commercials paid for by the federal government. Some thought the messages might prompt recreational drug users to reconsider their actions; others thought the Super Bowl was the wrong venue for serious messages.

The USC students also voted thumbs-down on the mlife advertisement, which ended with a scene that showed a newborn baby about to have its umbilical cord cut. The commercial “lost me,” Harris said. “People are watching the Super Bowl to escape reality.”

The Super Bowl broadcast transcends mere football, which usually is a male-dominated domain. Largely on the strength of commercials that promise to entertain, the broadcast is unusually attractive to advertisers trying to reach males and females of all ages.

Universal Studios’ Orlando Resort used a spot that showed Frankenstein’s monster pampering a hotel guest at poolside. Universal opted for the Super Bowl because the broadcast “is a fun place for a family to be together,” said David Angelo, chief creative officer of David & Goliath, the Los Angeles-based advertising agency that created the commercial for the unit of Vivendi Universal.

Timing was the key reason Taco Bell suited up for the big game. The Irvine-based fast food chain had been planning to introduce its new steak quesadilla sandwich on Sunday. Taco Bell, which last advertised during the Super Bowl in 1997, began to talk to Fox only after the NFL delayed postseason play by a week and pushed the Super Bowl to Sunday.

“If the Super Bowl hadn’t been moved back, we wouldn’t have been advertising,” said Debbie Myers, vice president of media services, entertainment and licensing for Taco Bell, a division of Tricon Global Restaurants Inc.

E-Trade’s spot early in the first quarter, which poked fun at itself for being a bad commercial, missed the mark with the six USC students. They said last year’s E-Trade commercial--which joked about the failure of competing dot-coms--was more effective.

A first-quarter commercial from Charles Schwab Corp. that showed home run champ Barry Bonds taking late-night batting practice, scored favorable reviews.

“It ended with the product, financial services, which is good, because it’s important to keep the emphasis on the product,” said Harte Chaden, 28.

Advertisers look for any edge possible during the pricey Super Bowl. A minor tussle surfaced over the weekend when Pizza Hut Inc. and Schwab argued over which advertiser had scored the coveted spot right before the game started. Pizza Hut, a division of Tricon, claimed the honor with a spot that ran immediately after the coin toss; Schwab countered that it sneaked into the advertising end zone with a 30-second spot sandwiched between the coin toss and the kickoff.