“In the dog-eat-dog world of creating great Super Bowl spots, Anheuser-Busch has once again made the rest of the marketing giants roll over. For the record sixth consecutive year, the beer giant easily won USA TODAY’S exclusive Ad Meter consumer ranking of the top Super Bowl commercials with an ad featuring a painfully preppie dog walker. His pedigreed border collie is outperformed by a working stiff’s mutt that bites the yuppie’s crotch to get him to give up his Bud Light,” Bruce Horovitz reports for USA Today.
“In fact, ad watchers might have felt more as if they were viewing Animal Planet than the Super Bowl. Each of the top four ads featured animals. Pepsi clawed its way to the No. 2 slot with a spot featuring a bear that disguises itself as a grizzled bear hunter to pass a check for Pepsi at a convenience store,” Horovitz reports.
Pepsi’s iTunes ad showing kids prosecuted for unauthorized music downloads garnered a score of 5.90 to place near the bottom of the list (the top ad for Bud-Light scored 9.04).
See the full char of Super Bowl ad winners and losers here.
MacDailyNews Take: When we first saw the ad, we stated, “A fairly awful and pedestrian ad. An interesting idea muddled. Still, we think it will serve its purpose and get the word out.” Hopefully our last sentence will prove to be as correct as our first two. More info and link to see the ad here.
The ad was a bit of a disappointment. Iwas holding out hope that Apple would suprise us with something else..
I dont think the Pepsi/iTunes commercial was best suited for the Superbowl. It would have been more wise to air it days BEFORE the Superbowl to encourage people to buy Pepsi bottles for those that don’t drink beer and perhaps that would have spurred “supersales” for the big game night. It was not an award winning commercial. It was a reach the masses commercial. Served it’s purpose and the placement is somewhat well deserved.
Pepsi hasn’t had any really good commercials at the Super Bowl for quite some time anyway. The iTunes promo commercial wasn’t horrible, but it certainly wasn’t catchy at all either and that’s where they missed the boat, especially considering the huge audience. They need to take a hint from either Budweiser or NFL Network, they did by far the best yesterday.
The Pepsi/iTunes commercial was pretty bad, that girls voice was so annoying! I was just plain bad all the way around I think. Definitely not an Apple made commercial. Not that Apples commercials are GREAT or anything, just that there is a certain filming quality that Pepsi just does not have.
I think Apple should produce the next commercial and target it more towards the college student, not the high school student. I know there are big bucks in high schoolers, but that commercial has been made now (even though it was bad), and now the target should be more a more educated consumer.
I think you need to produce a good commercial to create some buzz within the college group. These are the guys and gals who are up all night cramming and drinking soda to stay awake. Make an ad that states some like a student cramming for an exam, then decides s/he needs to take a break to refresh (serria mist?), gets a Pepsi/Serria Mist and wins a tune, does a quick song download, starts playing song and studying, cut to the exam scores showing said student getting an 80 or 85%, add a line like “Peps/Serria Mist is a refreshing drink, not an elixir of knowledge” or something like that.
Just my .02�, no refunds!
My friends, not followers of the digital music saga, all enjoyed the commercial. They thought it was cute and to the point. Maybe the general public will respond as well?
The iTunes/Pepsi ad was the only ad watched throughout the Superbowl Commercial onslaught that actually generated more than 2 minutes of discussion. Being the only Mac user in the crowd of gathered friends, I was asked a ton of questions about iTunes Music Store, the Pepsi promo, iTunes, and of course, a few debates on Mac OSX over XP. The rest of the commercials were sometimes funny, getting some laughs, but never generated any discussion.
Lackluster as it may have been, it did create a buzz, and it’s going to sell a lot of Pepsi.
That girl’s voice was annoying? What about all those loser footballers singing “the sun will come out tomorrow”? Geezuz that was hideous!! Almost as bad as Beyonce singing the national anthem as a love song, but much funnier.
I thought all the ads pretty much sucked. Does anybody make ads for the SuperBowl anymore besides Budweiser and Pepsi? Has it gotten so expensive that those are the only companies willing to buy time?
I thought it was generally a good ad, just not Superbowl quality. The concept is great though. Keep in mind that there are a lot of people out there who didn’t even know that you could legally download music from the internet. This was an introduction to those that had no knowledge. I wish they would have shown some screenshots of iTMS though.
Frankly I wasn’t impressed by any of the ads this year.
In general the super-bowl ads weren’t very outstanding this year. It was the same last year. However, I do think that the Pepsi/iTMS ad served it purpose very well. I’m not saying that it was the best ad ever, but it certainly wasn’t horrible.
Because of some of the comments I feel the following really needs to be said: This was not an Apple ad, it was a Pepsi ad. The ad was designed to sell Pepsi drinks, not iTMS music.
Viewers didn’t like the iTunes ad, but LOVED the ad where the dog bites the guy’s crotch. Nuff said.
I saw the commercial the night before the Superbowl, and thought it was horrible … tacky, unsophisticated, and sent mixed messages. Probably a typical middle-aged, Mac-Lover reaction. By time it aired, it had become more OK somehow. Now, I’m just sitting back and chuckling over it. Go back and watch it again. Those kids along with Apple and Pepsi are having a great joke on all of us. And kids in general got the message — 100 million free music downloads! How can that be called anything but successful?
The polls for “Best” Superbowl commercials placed the Pepsi ad very low in the standings, but if you look at the ones voted in the top 5 places you have to start suspecting that the winner’s products were influencing the voting. (tongue-in-cheek) Personally, I thought the Visa commercial was great, but it was down in the bottom of voting barrel too.
BusinessWeek Online today applauded the Pepsi/Apple ad strategy today. When did they start employing teenagers?
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/feb2004/nf2004022_5456_db035.htm