Super Bowl advertisers spend months trying to come up with the funniest, most creative ads for the big game in order to win postgame buzz. But some of those funny, creative ads aren’t doing much to help advertisers establish their brand, according to a new study from the University of Tampa and Boston-based agency Brain on Brand that questioned 100 students about the 2006 Super Bowl ads a year after the game. It found viewers rarely made a definitive connection between the commercials and the product being sold. Even for advertisements that stood out for their originality, viewers frequently misidentified the product that each ad was promoting. For example, a spot for Fed Ex most respondents misidentified as one for UPS. That suggests that many advertisers, while paying millions for their Super Bowl spots, aren’t getting the value they thought they were paying for. Dr. Stephen Blessing, assistant professor of psychology at The University of Tampa and co-author of the study, talks to Media Life about how advertisers can avoid this problem, why Budweiser benefits, and when advertisers should stay on message.

 
What did you find most interesting or most surprising about this study?
 
In this study that I conducted with my colleague, Dr. Lisa Haverty of Brain on Brand, we found that our cognitive model of brand memory, which we call CogScore, predicted brand recall 20 percent better than the popular AdMeter rankings.

AdMeter measures the likeability of an ad, and people may be surprised to learn that being likable doesn't translate to being remembered.

CogScore takes into account how the information is presented in the commercial, given what we know about how humans process information, resulting in a more accurate picture of what makes an ad truly memorable.

Why did respondents have such difficulty remembering the brands correlated with different spots?
 
There are two main things that an advertiser needs to do for the consumer to remember the brand.

First, be mindful of the amount and kind of information humans can process. In a typical 30-second spot, only two or three pieces of information should be presented, preferably in a way that complements how auditory and visual information is processed.

Second, provide strong links between the brand, the consumer's existing knowledge, and what's going on in the commercial. If the brand is only mentioned as an afterthought and you have visual information trouncing verbal information, the brand recall will suffer.
 

What were some of the most glaring examples of respondents not being able to match commercials and product?
 
AmeriQuest had a couple of ads, and no one remembered the brand. In one spot two airplane passengers ended up getting caught in a comprising position due to turbulence. It was a funny ad, and extremely well-liked according to the AdMeter rankings. However, no one remembered it was for AmeriQuest.

From a cognitive standpoint, this wasn’t surprising. What does being on an airplane have to do with mortgages? Plus, the brand was only visually mentioned in the last 5 seconds of the ad.
 

On the flip side, which companies did a good job of brand-spot association?
 
The most accurately remembered ad was Budweiser’s Magic Fridge ad, in which a guy had installed a revolving wall in order to keep his beer safe. In fact, more people remembered this 30-second spot (46 percent of our participants) than the game itself (who played and who won, 33 percent).

Budweiser does a good job of making ads that are likable, but when it comes to being memorable, they have an advantage, because the Super Bowl is so strongly associated with their brand. 

The best non-Bud ad in the study featured the Burger King Whopperettes, although it didn’t even make the top 20 according to AdMeter.

This was typical: when you remove the Budweiser spots from the sample of ads that we examined, the AdMeter scores essentially provided no information about brand recall. By contrast, CogScore is not dependent on Bud for its results; it predicts recall for all types of brands.

Does this suggest that some Super Bowl ads are ineffective or that the money might be better spent elsewhere?
 
Particularly when it comes to other beer brands, yes. Michelob ran an ad, and all of our people remembered it as an ad for Budweiser.

Likewise, many people remembered a Honda ad as one for other car makers. Some people even remembered the ubiquitous Mastercard “Priceless” ads as Visa. We call this phenomenon, when a person recalls a competitor’s brand, “brand fuzziness.”

At least Michelob and Budweiser are both Anheuser-Busch beers. But, if you were Honda, you would be very disappointed if someone thought your ad was for a competitor.
 

How could brands help ensure that the point of their ads will be recalled more clearly?
 
Keep in mind the two key points. First, do not bombard the viewer with lots of information: keep it simple, and pick the two most important pieces of information. Second, make sure to make lots of links between your brand and what's going on in the ad.
 

Do you think the big push to come up with the most humorous, most memorable and most creative ads has actually hurt Super Bowl advertisers in the long run?
 
Not necessarily, as long as they keep in mind that main goal should still be to sell the product, not the commercial.

Humor and creativity are great tools, and can be used to great effect to make the brand memorable. If the humor gets in the way of the brand, as it did in some of the most popular ads, then the brand will not be remembered.

Finally, who do you think will win the game, the New England Patriots or New York Giants?

Over my wife's protestations, I'm going with the Patriots.