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Game viewers: Yes,
you go, GoDaddy
This year's most buzzed-about Super Bowl ad
After all the indecency flap over last year’s
Super Bowl, advertisers figured the best approach was to avoid
controversy at all cost. Indeed, several ads were yanked at the last
minute for fear of offending viewers and spurring a rash of
complaints to the Federal Communications Commission.
Buzz-wise, a big mistake.
The one advertiser that dared to tease, having some fun with
the indecency muck, pretty much succeeded in monopolizing the
Monday-after buzz that's so much a part of how Super Bowl ads are
measured.
GoDaddy hogged most of it.
Amid a very tame lot of Super Bowl commercials, a
GoDaddy spot that aired in the early part of the game easily stood
out for its wit and daring. GoDaddy was further helped by Fox, which
in a rare moral lather actually yanked a second GoDaddy ad that was
slated to run later in the game. That won GoDaddy even more
Monday-after buzz.
The spot that did make it on the air was pretty
simple. It featured a buxom woman in a skimpy tank top testifying
before a congressional committee investigating the indecency furor.
As she was testifying, the woman’s camisole strap snapped, and she
nearly flashed the Super Bowl audience a la Janet Jackson.
Fox, which had already nixed a Budweiser spot dealing
with last year’s halftime fiasco, evidently thought better of
running the second, similar spot later in the game. But by that time
viewers were already abuzz about the ad on the internet, and it
became to the hot talk in various postgame ad surveys.
Cincinnati-based marketing firm Intelliseek found a big
reaction among the 40 blogs, or web logs, that it monitored during
the game. Though not everyone liked the ad, most mentioned it.
According to digital video recording data from TiVo,
GoDaddy had the No. 3 most-played-back ad of the game. It trailed
Emerald Nuts’ unicorn spot and Anheuser-Busch’s designated
driver spot.
GoDaddy dominated postgame ad stories in The New York
Times, New York Post and Chicago Sun-Times yesterday and today.
After GoDaddy, there were a lot of companies splitting
the leftover buzz.
According to USA Today, Budweiser’s sky diving ad was
the most popular. Intelliseek measured Bud’s soldier appreciation ad
the best, according to blog writers.
America Online voters also tabbed the soldier ad the best,
as did Adbowl.com. Taking second place in both polls were AmeriQuest’s
two spots, which urged viewers to wait to pass judgment until you
know the whole story. One featured a man on a cell phone who was
mistaken for a robber and the other showed a white cat knocking over
a pan of spaghetti sauce. The man cooking dinner picks up the
sauce-covered cat in one hand while holding a knife he was using to
chop vegetables in the other, which is how his horrified wife finds
him as she walks in the door.
Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of
Management also rated the ads, tabbing spots by Emerald Nuts,
MasterCard, Pepsi, Tabasco and Toyota Prius as the best at breaking
through the clutter and being persuasive.
Another ad generating lots of buzz was Diet Pepsi’s
eye-catcher spot. It featured an attractive man drinking a Diet
Pepsi, drawing gawking stares from lady passersby such as Cindy
Crawford and, somewhat daringly, “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”
star Carson Kressley in an openly gay ogle.
It was No. 4 on TiVo’s list and also made Intelliseek’s
list.
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Feb. 8, 2005
©
2005 Media Life
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