It was a big Super Bowl for car ads, with General Motors doing well with an Armageddon-proof Chevy Silverado truck {link no longer active} and a Chrysler ad with Clint Eastwood giving a “halftime in America” speech {link no longer active} was also well received. The later ad mimicked the Eminem Chrysler commercial last year.
“It’s tough to do a serious commercial in the Super Bowl,” said Ewen Cameron, CEO for WPP ad agency Berlin Cameron United. “I think it will last.”
The ad from Chrysler had the air of a political ad, perhaps appropriate given that its an election year and the fact that the company received a government bailout. “Powerful spot,” tweeted David Axelrod, a senior adviser to President Obama’s re-election team, tweeted.
“Saving the America Auto Industry: Something Eminem and Clint Eastwood can agree on,” tweeted White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer in agreement.
Comcast Corp’s NBC television network said that a 30-second commercial slot cost $3.5 million on average this year, up from $3 million for Super Bowl XLV last year. The average price of Super Bowl ads have risen more than 50 percent in the last 10 years despite tumult in the economy.
They weren’t all winners, as Anheuser-Busch ads for Bud Light Platinum {link no longer active} and a dog trained to fetch Bud Light {link no longer active}weren’t huge attention getters. “Other than that, I think the Bud ads were kind of dull,” said Charles Taylor, marketing professor at the Villanova School of Business.
Coke, meanwhile, tried to make a social media event out of the polar bears on Twitter and Facebook but the spot was unexceptional {link no longer active}. “We’ve seen that before with the polar bears,” said George Belch, a San Diego State University marketing professor. “There’s no real novelty there.”
“[Many ads featured] babies, celebrities, big musical productions, a lot of the usual things,” added WPP’s Cameron. “It was a little bit familiar.”
Source: Reuters.com
