Many dot-com marketers that advertised in Super Bowl XXXIV had two purposes for every dollar they spent to be there: reaching consumers and reaching investors. In addition to publicizing the wedding planning site to prospective users, the original concept for OurBeginning.com’s “Angry Brides” was to use Super Bowl air time “as a way to reach Wall Street in the hopes of going public later in the year,” recalled Laura Phillips Bennett, president of the agency behind the ad, Bennett & Company in Orlando. The ad, accompanied by a four-part series of pre-game ads, generated $21 million worth of publicity, Bennett told Ad Age.

But the market shakeout soon to come prevented any IPO, as it did for many of the other dot coms in the 2000 Super Bowl. (Time-travel to Super Bowl XXXV a year later and watch E-Trade survey the fallout in “Ghost Town.”) The URL OurBeginning.com later would go to a Seattle daycare.

BRAND: OurBeginning.com

YEAR: 2000

AGENCY: Bennett & Co.

SUPERBOWL: XXXIV