Super Bowl

If you’ve been in the business long enough, you come to understand there are some basic rules to follow when running an ad on the Super Bowl. Humor works best. Use animals or big-breasted women – or both.  Wow people with extraordinary settings and production values.

I'd planned in all sincerity to write an essay about the three Super Bowl commercials that I thought wouldn't get the recognition in most "top ten" lists, but that I believed might actually do something business-wise down the road. I meant it. I wanted to be positive...

by: Roger Dooley

Wonder what your brain looks like while watching commercials? Or, more to the point, what the electrical activity in your brain looks like? The folks at Sands Research have helped Neuromarketing readers by making available videos from five of the most engaging (by their metrics) 2009 Super Bowl ads.

by: Roger Dooley

Most of us have gotten over our short-lived obsession with the 2009 Super Bowl ads, but at neuromarketing firm Sands Research technologists have been slaving away analyzing all 72 of those commercials. Sands measures viewers’ EEG activity to gauge both emotional and cognitive responses to ads. In addition, they collect questionnaires before and after the ads are viewed.

by: Roger Dooley

Innerscope Research has released the results of its biometric tests of the 2009 Super Bowl ads, and found that three of the top 5 ads seemed tied to the concerns people have about the current economy and financial security. The top scoring ads were:

1. CareerBuilder.com — It’s Time
2. Cash4Gold — Heeere’s Money
3. Castrol Oil — Monkeys
4. GoDaddy.com — Shower
5. Bud Light — Meeting

by: Roger Dooley

No brain scans or biometrics were used in selecting my winner in the Super Bowl ad sweepstakes: Hyundai. This is a highly subjective choice, based on my guess as to which company might see the most bottom-line benefit from their Super Bowl ads. My pick isn’t supported by the USA Today Ad Meter ratings, or their online viewing/rating measures.

by: Jonathan Salem Baskin

I've written for the past few years now on my utter befuddlement over Super Bowl advertising.

We live in an age when making a connection between the fleeting exposure of mass-market awareness and subsequent sales keeps getting harder, less dependable, and certainly more expensive. Yet some bold, damn-the-torpedoes brand marketers seem committed to not just thinking otherwise, but putting their employer's/client's money where their, er, bravado is.

by: Jonathan Salem Baskin

Fart jokes. Bad puns. Scantily clad models. 

That's what the commercials on Super Bowl Sunday will give us next month. Created to appear but once in the light of TV, the spots will endeavor to out-dare one another in a virtual arms-race of foolishness, ribaldry, and expense.

by: Roger Dooley

While sports analysts pick over the performances of the Colts and Bears, the real work begins for advertising pundits: declaring winners and losers among the Super Bowl commercials. And this year, once again, we have brain scan data to help compare the Super Bowl Ads.

by: Roger Dooley