“Even in a year when Anheuser-Busch consciously avoided airing crude Super Bowl commercials, the beer giant bested the field, again, with one of its most potent advertising weapons: a silly sight gag. A skydiver balks, even when urged to jump in pursuit of a six-pack of Bud Light. But the pilot finds the loss too much to bear and leaps after the brew,” Bruce Horovitz writes for USA Today.
“For a record seventh year in a row, Anheuser-Busch has won USA TODAY’s exclusive Ad Meter consumer ranking of the top Super Bowl ads. In this year’s winner, by DDB Chicago, when a skydiver refuses to jump, his buddy tosses out a six-pack of Bud Light. The guy still doesn’t jump, but the pilot does,” Horovitz writes.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Pepsi’s disappointing (for the second year in a row) iTunes ads did not place highly in the rankings. Placing in the aptly-named category, “The rest of the ads,” the long :45 (Gwen Stefani-less) ad scored a 6.01 and the :30 commercial with Stefani scored even lower with a 5.31. The Bud Light commercial topped the list with a score of 8.65.
The good news? Napster’s spot where their feline icon at the football game holds up sign dubiously comparing the “price” of the new Napster service with rival iTunes ($10,000 to fill up an iPod nonsense) was rated the lowest of all ads with a 4.37. Can you spell “backfire?” We knew you could. View the Napster ad in QuickTime here. (All of the Super Bowl ads can be viewed here).
Always known for his excellent timing and ability to misread even the simplest things, tech writer Paul Thurrott called the Napster ad “good stuff” on his Internet-Nexus blog this morning here, so now you know that the ad really did suck badly. “Guaranteed by Thurrott,” you know? He should make stickers, like “Plays for Sure” and other idiocy like that; Wintellites do love stickers plastered all over their hardware. Thurrott’s sticker would be perfect for the front of all three Dell Digital Junkboxes that’ll be sold this year.
Anyway, the Napster commercial was basically a still graphic attempting to smear the iPod and iTunes with FUD, which you can see here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Second Pepsi iTunes television commerical featuring Gwen Stefani posted online – February 04, 2005
$10,000 to fill an iPod? Napster’s going to end up with egg on their face – February 04, 2005
Pepsi-iTunes Super Bowl commercial posted, Gwen Stefani spot also under consideration – February 02, 2005
Pepsi’s iTunes ad places near bottom of Super Bowl Ad Meter list – February 02, 2004
Go Daddy Go Daddy Go! I’m in love.
Man, all the ads were lame this superbowl (the game wasn’t a real zinger either, for that matter). My favorite was actually the FedEx one which made a joke of advertising (the one with Burt Reynolds and the Bear in it). The rest didn’t even give me a laugh, though somehow I missed the “best” Budweiser ad….
Oh well, at least Napster was last
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
Well, you can’t win ’em all!
anyone happen to know the godaddy.com girls name?
So MDN, by this article your site supports an ad not the brand carrying the product! And you’re happy that other ads weren’t doing as good.
good work MDN, keep on commenting useless crap.
Hey, maybe someone should tell Napster to CHECK their math…my wife pointed out that 10,000 songs x .99 cents is only $9,900.
She thought it was dumb they couldn’t even get their math RIGHT…and they were asking people to do the math.
She also though the commercial was stupid. Her comment “why would I rent music that doesn’t work with my iPod?”
I thought the Fed-Ex ad was great because it co-opted all the ads following it. Every time I saw a subsequent ad using one of the 10 points mentioned, which was 98% or so, I thought of fed-Ex. Brilliant. Of course they did the same style of ad a few years ago, but still, if it works…
That ad ranking is absolutely useless. The ad’s that are most memorable don’t have any correlation to how effective their advertising is. I guarrantee no-one remembers that careerbuilder.com was the company behind the monkey ad’s (not to mention that some of the originality was because of the other company using monkeys in their ad).
The Pepsi-iTunes ad’s actually get across that you can win music from the buying pepsi’s….better than most.
Having said that though, I liked the one where the guy gets tazered at the convenience store. hehe. But I thought the Ford convertible Mustang and biker ad’s were really good.
gotta love chimps…
but whether or not the Napster add was entertaining, several of the people at the party I was at had their interest piqued.
I TiVo’d the Super Bowl and went back to watch each block of commercials. While I did see the Pepsi/iTunes commercials, I still managed to miss the Napster commercial. When did it air?
Not that I really care, but since it was clearly an embarrassment, I would have liked to at least had a chance to laugh at it.
I guess Napster spent all their money on the spot of time and couldn’t afford to produce a decent ad. Pathetic.
(That said, the Pepsi/iTunes ads were an absolute disappointment. Again.)
Didn’t Apple iPod come out on top with free advertising from Diet Pepsi and Napster?
It’s about time pepsi gave the money to SJ and ask him to organise the advert.
That’s two lame efforts in a row. ( SJ could always threaten to ‘Go with Coke’ if they don’t buck up.)
My wife won a free song from her Diet Pepsi yesterday. Is this relevant? I don’t know.
TimT
well, in the room I was in everyone loved the commercial and laughed a lot watching it. The Gwen Stefani one was not as good, it just wasn’t as funny or creative. Overall, I’d say it was the #3 commercial, behind the Bud six pack throw, and the Mustang (which they played one too many times).
Anyway, I was way too caught up in the loss to really care too much. Being an Eagles fan can be really hard some times…
Here is the thing about the Napster To Go promotion that has me confused. They are making a big deal about trying it free for two weeks. The only way to try it for “free” is if you already own one of the three players that is compatible with the service.
Interesting the players that are compatible are only 5gb yet they are comparing their service to a 40gb iPod – capable of holding 8 times as much music. Seems like they are trying to convince people they can carry around 10,000 songs for $15/month when the supported devices are not that large.
Doesn’t some group monitor false & misleading claims in advertising?
Stickers you won’t see:
“Thurrott Approved”
In regards to Napster’s advertising (http://www.napster.com/using_napster/ipod_and_napster.html), it is very poor taste and unprofessional to discredit your competition, especially doing so directly. If your product/service cannot stand upon its own merits then it has no future.
People don’t mind a subscription service that offers an ongoing benefit, such as cable and telephone services. Napster’s problem is overcoming the customer’s feeling of paying a ransom once they have all of the songs they want/need from their service. Once the music is downloaded, there is no more “service” and it becomes “pay us or else the things you enjoy will vanish”.
For the price of Napster, and iTunes customer can download and KEEP 3 albums every 2 months. They don’t have to worry about ANOTHER monthly bill. They OWN the music forever at no additional cost. After a year, $180, the iTunes customer will have 18 albums and the Napster customer will have nothing unless they continue to pay the ransom. Perhaps Napster is unaware, but the general public does NOT go on music buying frenzies every month. For someone to buy 18 albums in a year is actually rather aggressive for the general population. This is why Napster is failing; they are out of touch with reality.
People have traditionally BOUGHT their favorite music. If they wanted to hear a ton of music from one genre, they just click onto a particular radio station and listen to it for free. People are NOT going to pay a fee just to borrow their favorite music.
Napster’s model may work very well for renting videos, but not for music. The two media are used in completely different ways, and Napster just doesn’t seem to “get it”.
go to iflims.com if u wanna see this years super bowl ads
and the napster ad if u miss it
u can even find the 1984 apple ad too!
i meant ifilm.com not iflims
o and did u see the bud comercial for last years wardrobe malfunction ad?
Sunday, February 6. 2005
What happened to Go Daddy’s second Super Bowl ad spot?
As you may have noticed our Super Bowl ad only appeared during the scheduled first quarter spot. It was scheduled to run also in the second ad position during the final two minute warning. Our ad never ran a second time. Instead, in its place, we saw an advertisement promoting “The Simpsons.”
The NFL persuaded FOX to pull our ad.
We immediately contacted Fox to find out what happened. Here’s what we were told: After our first ad was aired, the NFL became upset and they, together with Fox, decided to pull the ad from running a second time. Because we purchased two spots, we were also entitled to a “Brought to you by GoDaddy.com” 5 second marquis spot. They also chose to pull the marquis spot.
Our ad is finishing high in opinion polls.
So far in early opinion polls, our ad seems to be finishing fairly high. In fact, in checking the one on the Fox site, it is in the number two position. Not bad for an ad that could only be aired once.
Stay tuned for more news as it develops.
I’m sure you’ll be hearing more about this over the next few days. I believe that it’s the first time ever a decision was made to pull an ad after it had already been run once during the same broadcast.
If you haven’t seen our Super Bowl ad, or want to see it again, there’s a link that will take you to it.
http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/superbowl05/landing.asp?isc=bpshdr001&se;=+
Yeah, I agree, All the Ads sucked. The half time show was good though..
The fact that the Pepsi ad ranked low means nothing. People consistently rank these ads by humor value. The humorous ads always out rank all the others.
Just because the Pepsi ad didn’t have slapstick humor or women popping their tops, doesn’t mean it was in any way ineffective. In fact it completely neutralized napster’s lameass ads and more.
Napster’s rental service would be perfect for College campus situations where students wouldn’t be illegally downloading MP3’s and where they have no money to buy music and where the discounted subscription would be part of their tuition.
It would be ideal, that is, if it worked on Mac’s too, used iTunes and could be used with iPods.
As it is, it costs $180 per year plus $200 to $300 for a new MP3 player plus $34.95 or so for a used Windows XP PC to run it on. That’s a lot of money that could be spent on music. Besides, who in their right mind would pay $34.95 for a used Windows XP PC? College kids are smart kids, aren’t they?