Short History of the Super Bowl -- Part II

Advertising

Almost as big as the game itself, (some would say bigger) are the Super Bowl Commercials. As you can see by looking at the chart below, the game itself took of in 1968, with the upset of the Baltimore Colts by the New York Jets. Joe Willie Namath's "guarantee" of victory certainly garnered a lot of publicity and viewers eager to see Broadway Joe fall on his face; the upset victory made this a real championship game as opposed to an exhibition between a major and a minor league.

Year Network Rating Share
1967 CBS 22.6 43
1967 NBC 18.5 36
1968 CBS 36.8 68
1969 NBC 36.0 71
1970 CBS 39.4 69
1971 NBC 39.9 75
1972 CBS 44.2 74
1973 NBC 42.7 72
1974 CBS 41.6 73
1975 NBC 42.4 72
1976 CBS 42.3 78
1977 NBC 44.4 73
1978 CBS 47.2 67
1979 NBC 47.1 74
1980 CBS 46.3 67
1981 NBC 44.4 63
1982 CBS 49.1 73
1983 NBC 48.6 69
1984 CBS 46.4 71
1985 ABC 46.4 63
1986 NBC 48.3 70
1987 CBS 45.8 66
1988 ABC 41.9 62
1989 NBC 43.5 68
1990 CBS 39.0 63
1991 ABC 41.8 63
1992 CBS 40.3 61
1993 NBC 45.1 66
1994 NBC 45.4 66
1995 ABC 41.3 63
1996 NBC 46.1 72
1997 FOX 43.3 65
1998 NBC 44.5 67
1999 FOX 40.2 61
2000 ABC 43.2 62
2001 CBS 40.4 61
2002 FOX 40.4 61
2003 ABC 40.7 61
2004 CBS 41.3 63
2005 FOX 41.1 62

Everything changed on January 22, 1984 -- with a single advertisement. Made for Apple computers, the commercial was only shown once. And once was enough. It was unlike any other advertisement ever seen -- almost like a mini-movie. You didn't know what it was for, till then end.

Since then, more time and money has been poured into both the commercials and the nretwork airtime. If you're an advertiser you have two things that make the money worthwhile -- a huge audience, and an audience that will actually be paying attention.

Last year, Fox drew the highest rating in its history as a network with an estimated 86.1 million viewers - down a bit from the 89.8 million pairs of eyeballs CBS pulled in 2004. By contrast, that is more than double what Fox drew for the NFC Championship last Sunday and better than triple the average for the highest-rated primetime program "CSI."

(Go to the bathroom during the game, but be back in time for the commercials. In recent years commercials have striven to be funny (and often crass and misogynistic at the same time -- remember the Bud Light farting horse?).

Hopefully things will be a bit different this year.

As the event has evolved from a male-dominated sports program to a family affair - and following howls of outrage over alleged indecencies ranging from Janet Jackson’s exposed breast to a dot.com ad making fun of it - so has the scrutiny over what kind of commercial messages are appropriate.

"This has been a very top-of-mind subject for us," said Mark Monteiro, executive creative director of DDB Los Angeles, an Omnicom Group company. He declined to discuss the content of the Super Bowl commercial his firm did this year for Ameriquest Mortgage Co., but said: "The Super Bowl audience has changed over the last few years from a guys’ beer-drinking event. Somewhere along the line, it truly turned into family entertainment, family viewing."

Unlike virtually all other sports programming, in the Super Bowl, "it seems there really is 50 percent women and kids in the room," which has had a significant impact on the content of the ads, Monteiro said.

And this year, he noted, the game will be on ABC rather than Fox, a part of News Corp. ABC, owned by Walt Disney Co., "considered the toughest censor of all the networks we deal with."

But who loses out if networks and advertisers require "good taste" and "family friendly" ads? Well, Joe Six-pack, I suppose, but not Mrs. Sixpack or the little Sixpacks. And probably not even the advertisers.

Deliberately pushing the envelope can be its own reward in terms of getting extra attention.

Las Vegas always makes a fuss that it can’t promote the city during the game because of the NFL’s ban on any gambling-related commercials. Last year, GoDaddy.com, an Internet service company, parodied the Jackson brouhaha in a risqué ad, and Fox pulled it after one of two scheduled showings during the game. an triple the average for the highest-rated primetime program "CSI."

This year, it has submitted, and resubmitted, another ad that it says ABC keeps rejecting.

In a written statement, GoDaddy.com founder Bob Parsons said: "It would be disappointing if the Super Bowl, which has long been known as the world’s stage for the most innovative and cutting-edge advertisements, lost its relevance for adventurous companies ..."

Joe Mandese, editor of MediaPost, which covers the advertising and industry, said submitting ads that get rejected has generated barrels of free ink for GoDaddy, which will reap the benefits of Super Bowl hype - even if its spot never makes it onto the air.

"Remember," he said, "when they get into a pissing match with ABC about buying an ad, they are also getting guys like us to write about it."

By the way, the Godaddy spot will be on the air. We'll see just how family-friendly they got.

Speaking of Mrs. Sixpack, the advertisers do know she's watching.

ESPN Research, in fact, shows last year’s Super Bowl audience was 56% male and 44% female, 40% of whom had kids 18 and under in the house. Judging from the broader category span in this year’s game, which includes everything from antibacterial soaps and Aleve to nuts and life insurance, “media people are starting to see that [the Super Bowl] is a media vehicle that transcends just men,” said Ed Erhardt, president-ad sales and customer marketing for ESPN and ABC Sports.

So you'll see at least one commercial today that will be a little different from the rest.

Unilever, for one, is using it as a platform to run its Dove “Real Beauty” spots and Anheuser-Busch is on record as saying it plans to take female beer drinkers into account while it’s selecting big-game spots this year.

Unilever chose to run its “Real Beauty” campaign on the Bowl not just because of that mass audience, but also because it reasoned the spot would stand out in testosterone-filled commercial pods. Philippe Harousseau, North American marketing director for Dove, the push for women’s self-esteem is “not what most people will be expecting on Super Bowl Sunday.”

But you've got to be careful these days, because you never know who you might offend. Coca~Cola has apparently torqued off the Trucking Industry.

“Every year somebody in Madison Avenue gets lazy and does the old scary truck cliche. This year it was Coca-Cola,” said Mike Russell, VP-public affairs for the American Trucking Association. He cited a blaring air horn, a rearview mirror filled with a Peterbilt grill, a larger truck tailgating and forcing a smaller truck -- adorned with rival Red Bull -- off the main road and a driver yelling "Yahoo!” as the truck drives by.

“It’s taking every negative stereotype about the trucking industry and using it to sell a product,” continued Mr. Russell. “It totally ignores the trucking industry and the 3 million drivers who do their job safely every day. It’s the same as putting billboards on the sides of our truck and saying ‘Coke makes you ill. Drink Pepsi.’”

But not everybody will be tuned in at 6:25 (or tuned in from eleven a.m. or noontime, or whenever the pre-game shows began). So what do you suppose they will be doing?

• Hallmark Channel, for instance, will offer viewers a marathon of "Little House on the Prairie," the classic frontier family drama starring Michael Landon and Melissa Gilbert. It will air from noon Sunday through 3 a.m. Monday.
• Tony Shalhoub shines as an obsessive-compulsive detective in "Monk," the hit comedy-drama regularly airing Fridays on USA. But Sunday from 4 through 11 p.m., USA presents a viewers' choice of seven favorite episodes. They include "Mr. Monk Takes his Medicine," "Goes to Vegas" and "Bumps His Head." Please wash your hands thoroughly beforehand.
• Animal Planet is airing "Puppy Bowl II," which resembles one of those old home football games with the vibrating metal field and players going every which way. It airs at 3 p.m., 6 p.m. and 9 p.m.
• Down-home cooking queen Paula Deen is cooking up a "Supper" Bowl marathon on Food Network from 2 to 8 p.m. Along with episodes of her series "Paula's Home Cooking," the course includes encores of her specials "All-Star Kitchen Makeover" and "Paula Goes Hollywood," plus a special edition of "Behind the Bash" with its host, Giada De Laurentiis, covering Deen's movie-premiere party. (Last year, Deen added "film actress" to her resume, performing alongside Kirsten Dunst and Orlando Bloom in the feature "Elizabethtown.".
• From noon to 9 p.m., VH1 is airing nine episodes of the UPN hit, "America's Next Top Model," with supermodel Tyra Banks guiding the transformation of everyday young women into what might potentially be -- well, the title says it.
• Catch a marathon of personal makeovers as TLC airs five hours of "What Not to Wear" from 7 p.m. to midnight, with a style SWAT team that includes fashion experts Stacy London and Clinton Kelly, hair specialist Nick Arrojo and makeup artist Carmindy.
• Starting at noon, Court TV airs eight hour-long editions of "The Investigators," its documentary series of true stories about law enforcement and the justice system. Then, from 8 p.m. through 4 a.m. Monday, episodes of "Forensic Files" show how legal experts assemble pieces of a crime puzzle to nab the perpetrator.
• In something more akin to a sprint, Fox News Channel will repeat three hours of "The O'Reilly Factor" from 8 to 11 p.m. From his fabled "No-Spin Zone," host Bill O'Reilly tackles topics including the Enron trial, the NSA wiretapping controversy and U.S. border patrol policies.
• Host James Lipton huddles with Liza Minnelli for a two-hour exploration of the legendary singer-actress on Bravo's "Inside the Actors Studio," airing 9 to 11 p.m. A star whose career has spanned decades and delivered her awards including Oscars, Emmys and Grammys, Minnelli has most recently appeared as a series regular on the comedy series "Arrested Development."
• And speaking of comedy, Fox is repeating three favorite episodes of "The Simpsons" (a "Treehouse of Horror" installment, a Christmas episode and a visit from villainous Sideshow Bob), followed by three episodes of "Family Guy" (Lois gets arrested; she becomes a model; Peter gets stranded on a desert isle). They air from 7 to 10 p.m.

For myself, if the game gets boring, I'll switch back over to what I'm watching right now: the Caribbean World Series on the YES network (Domincan Republic 3, Puerto Rico O, after five.)