Business Blog: Hoover’s Business Insight Zone

Which Super Bowl ads made the best impression? Which ads fared the worst? These are key business questions as the nation recovers from the televisual orgy known as Super Bowl XLII.

To the Super Bowl ads you missed, or to see them again, check out the video player on our dedicated page, Big Game Central. That page also collects analysis from our industry experts on various business angles of the Super Bowl.

Having read a lot of this morning’s news coverage on Super Bowl commercials, I like these takes best:

• Wall Street Journal: Coke, Clydesdales Score With Super Bowl Viewers
• Reuters: Supermodels, celebrities dominate Super Bowl ads
• AP: Ahead of the Bell: Superbowl Advertisers

At the party I attended, favorite ads inluded Will Ferrell’s goofy Bud Light spot, Audi’s Godfather-themed ad (everyone agreed the Audi R8 advertised is smokin’), and Bridgestone’s spot featuring a petrified squirrel who fears he’s about to be run over. My wife liked the Victoria’s Secret ad featuring Adriana Lima in sexy-but-tasteful black lingerie (thank you, Victoria’s Secret!), and I especially liked two very different football-themed spots: the NFL’s witty spot about oboe-playing lineman Chester Pitts, and Under Armour’s minute-long, semi-apocalyptic, 300-style ad for its shoes — which, by implication, pits Under Armour against the dominance of Nike in that market.

My friends were perplexed by Frito-Lay’s Doritos ad featuring unknown singer Kina Grannis. Nothing wrong with Grannis’s voice or the execution of the ad — we just didn’t grasp what Doritos had to do with promoting unknown musical acts. Many other ads registered no more than an “Ehh” with my crowd.

As for what I disliked, I agree wholeheartedly with Suzanne Vranica’s take from the Wall Street Journal story linked above:

The biggest fumble of the night with viewers was by Salesgenie.com, a company that provides databases to marketers. More than half-a-dozen ad executives found the company’s animation spots offensive. In one ad, a married panda-bear couple speaking with Asian accents worries that they may go out of business but are saved by a panda psychic who recommends Salesgenie; the other ad shows a white boss berating an Indian salesman, Ramesh, who has eight children.

“Its hard to imagine that a company would be that insensitive,” says Rita Rodriguez, chief executive of the Brand Union US, a branding firm owned by WPP Group PLC.

Later on I’ll have more to say about the game on the field and the management lessons we might extract from it.