The commercial also ushered in an era in Super Bowl advertising
that we still inhabit: the ad as entertainment. That we expect ads
during the Super Bowl to be as entertaining as the game itself can
largely be traced back to "1984." But if that were the end of the
story, we'd all still be watching high-concept minimovies directed
by auteurs that made us think or feel different.
But that didn't happen, unless you define "feeling" as what it
would be like to get served a beer by a dog or be hazed by chimps
in a board meeting. Along the way, the Super Bowl got hijacked by
D-list celebrities, talking animals and cheap gags -- anything for
a chuckle -- and that trend can be traced to one thing: USA Today's
Ad Meter.
In 1989, just a few years after "1984," the national newspaper
introduced a revolutionary concept -- and a marketing masterstroke.
Take a small panel of people, isolate them in a room with a meter
and tell them to constantly turn a dial rating what they're seeing
on a scale from one to 10.
The ratings , which came out Monday morning in the paper, became
the most immediate and public scorecard for who "won" the Super
Bowl, setting the agenda for the media of the day, morning shows
and other newspapers.
"That's the way it was, 100%. I can't tell you how many times an
advertiser has told me, 'You've gotta hit the top 10, you've gotta
hit the top 10, you've gotta hit the top 10,'" said Bryan Buckley,
who's directed 42 Super Bowl ads since 1999.
With so much at stake, to please the clients and bolster their
own resumes, directors started creating ads for the panel -- the
media equivalent of teaching for the test . How do you get people
to have an immediate, positive reaction to something they're
seeing? Certainly don't show them a narrative. Make them laugh.
"It better be something that rings some bells or gets measured
on the USA Today Richter Scale," said TBWA/MediaArts Chairman Lee Clow. But the
creator of "1984" also believes it means fewer ads like that one
have been made. "It's a big challenge to spend $3 million on the
time and then a million on the spot. It's kinda difficult to then
come in 19th on the USA Today 'How'd you like our spot?'
scale."
Not just difficult, but dangerous. In 2007, CareerBuilder
famously put its business up for review the day after the Super
Bowl when its Big Game ad did not crack the Ad Meter's top 10.
Cramer-Krasselt
promptly resigned the account in protest. (It's worth noting that
the spot, for the first time in two years, did not feature the
CareerBuilder chimps, but instead was a high-
concept spot set in a jungle.)
One reason the USA Today Ad Meter remained the arbiter for so
long is that the decision to advertise in the Super Bowl is the
most expensive dice-roll of the year.
"Each year we agonize over whether to be in the Super Bowl; it's
$100,000 a second," said
E-Trade CMO Nicholas Utton. "Most CMOs know you don't want to be
in the bottom of the list because some people consider it to be the
definitive methodology."
Even so, the poll's influence is waning. Today, most marketers
combine immediate feedback with sophisticated research from
Nielsen, GFK, Zeta Interactive, Kantar or Ace Metrix to understand
the long-term impact of spots. Now that the real-time web has gone
mass in the form of Facebook and Twitter, marketers and agencies
have dozens of new services and dashboards to monitor, as well as
the means to influence the discussion as it happens, not to mention
giving the commentariat something else to write about.
Second, YouTube views and blog posts allow an ad to succeed or
fail outside traditional media structures. VW's "The Force" has
been viewed more than 90 million times since Super Bowl 2011.
In an age where some Super Bowl campaigns seem to exist mostly
to direct viewers to the web, the idea of judging an ad by the
real-time reactions of some people in a room seems quaint and
anachronistic.
"If you go back 10 years, it was the only thing," said CMO Scott
Keogh. "You didn't have social, YouTube views, you didn't have the
blogs and all the running commentary. Basically, the press would
report on the Ad Meter. Now, the press reports on a lot of things,"
said Mr. Keogh, who is placing one 60-second spot in the first
quarter this year.
Even USA Today has lost faith in the ability of the panel alone
to pick a winner. This year, in addition to selecting two panels of
150 in cities that USA Today won't reveal, the paper is opening up
the voting to the public on Facebook. As a result, for the first
time since 1989, USA Today won't declare a "winner" in Monday
morning's paper. The true winner won't be declared until after the
polls close Wednesday.
Why not dump the panel entirely? In social media, consumers will
rate only the ads they love and hate, a spokesperson said. The
panel is the only way USA Today sees to be sure every ad gets a
vote.
Let's be clear: In the minds of CMOs, the USA Today Ad Meter
still matters. It's just not the only thing that matters. No one
wants to bomb the Ad Meter -- or any well-publicized indices, for
that matter -- but increasingly it's one data point in the deluge
CMOs have to consider after the game.
"We've had spots that have performed poorly on the Ad Meter but
have done stunningly in the other metrics we look at," said Mr.
Keogh. "We've had spots that have done very well and performed at
par. It's one thing to track, but we've moved beyond that ."
E-Trade's Mr. Utton, for example, is bringing its talking baby
to the Super Bowl for the fifth year in a row, despite the fact the
investing infant has never been top-rated by USA Today and last
year came in at an undistinguished 15.
Joel Ewanick, global CMO for General Motors, said
that the Ad Meter is only one of the many things his team will look
at.
"I'll have four screens going during the game in front of me,
showing me charts and graphs," Mr. Ewanick said. "We have five or
six other groups monitoring, then we'll have next-day research,
copy testing, focus groups. There's a lot of money involved here.
You have to really understand your ROI to make sure you learn from
this, so you can apply that the next year."
Still, no matter how marginal, no one wants to bomb the Ad
Meter. "It's still relevant because it's the official one. It's
published, its big," said TBWA/Chiat Day Chief Creative Officer Rob
Schwartz. "Clients can still point to it and say, 'We were No. 4 on
the Ad Meter.' If you're No. 32 on the Ad Meter, better put our
résumés together."
When will we once again get more Super Bowl ads like "1984"?
When creatives stop making spots to incite an instant reaction,
sort of like Chrysler's two-minute "Imported From Detroit," a
high-concept, big-idea spot that put Detroit before the car and
even before the celebrity (Eminem). It was great creative, by most
measures, and probably the closest thing to "1984" in its ambition
since, well, "1984."
A year later, President Obama singled out Chrysler as an example
that America can compete once again in manufacturing.
Predictably, "Imported From Detroit" bombed on the Ad Meter,
coming in at No. 43.
~~
Contributing: Ann-Christine Diaz, Stephen Williams
