Rule No. 1 in Super Bowl advertising: Seize your massive audience’s attention and hold onto it. That’s hard enough with all the party noise, game talk, eating and drinking and more going on among viewers. It’s harder even for a one-minute spot, something only a handful of marketers tried in 2000’s Super Bowl XXXIV, including Electronic Data Systems’ absolute classic “Cat Herders,” FedEx’s “Delivery for Oz” and Nuveen Investments’ “Advances,” which used visual effects to show Christopher Reeve walking. In other words, you need something pretty striking.

Pepsi-Cola’s Mountain Dew and BBDO New York come through with this one. Ad professors at Michigan State University who evaluated every commercial in the game called “Mock Opera” their favorite. (They liked "Bad Cheetah," Mountain Dew's other spot in Super Bowl XXXIV, too.)

Mountain Dew subsequently took off 16 years before returning with BBDO and completely taking control of viewers once again in the bizarre "Puppymonkeybaby."

Director: Samuel Bayer, who would make the epic “Born of Fire” for Chrysler’s 2011 Super Bowl stand and a clutch of Super Bowl ads for Anheuser-Busch in 2013, among many other credits.

BRAND: Mountain Dew

YEAR: 2000

AGENCY: BBDO

SUPERBOWL: XXXIV