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| Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/madaise/ |
To be clear, I'm not a professional ad reviewer or critic. I've never worked in the automotive industry or on a car account. However, I have spent my career involved in branding, marketing, advertising and communications. All that disclosed, most of what follows was gleaned heavily from discussions during Super Bowl XLVIII between a few of my friends.
My aforementioned friends (M/F, 50+, Middle to Upper Middle HH Income Brackets, Multi-Car, Suburban Families) presumably fall within some of the car manufacturer's target audience and as such, I considered their comments germane and insightful.
As the game began, I mentioned to the group I had registered to be a USA Today Ad Meter panelist and would be rating the commercials. This sparked a discussion about Super Bowl advertising in general, and soon everyone wanted to vote on the commercials as they aired. It added some much needed excitement to the evening as the game itself was fairly uninspiring - this considering it was rather one-sided and no one in attendance was a Seahawks fan.
By the third quarter, as soon as a car ad began, it was followed by a chorus of, "oh no - another car commercial."
Just to make sure we weren't over-reacting, I took a look at the list of ads that appeared between kick-off and through the end of the regulation game, courtesy of Super Bowl Ad Meter Final Results. A whopping 14 commercials out of 57 - or roughly 25% of what we viewed during the game - were ads for automobiles.
The USA Today polling results seem to echo the sentiments of my fellow Super Bowl watchers - the commercials were at best, average. Excluding the highest scoring car commercial - which made it into the top 10 with a score of 6.82 on a scale of 0 to 10 - the average among all the other 15 car ads was an unimpressive 4.936 - just about dead center mediocre.
So what happened? In a nutshell, my small test group felt the advertisers were talking to themselves.
In other words, the advertiser (and their agency partner) strayed from the most basic rule of creating effective communications - connect with your audience in a meaningful, relevant way.
The one exception was the high-scoring Hyundai "Sixth Sense" ad. It nicely connected a key product feature (auto emergency brakes) to a benefit the audience cared about (accident avoidance). This was told in a relevant manner that resonated with this target - tapping into their own experiences performing "accident avoidance" as a parents. Sure the ad used exaggeration tactics to get the attention of the audience, but hey, it is the Super Bowl after all!
Here's a quick recap of my small test audience's reactions to the remaining car ads, grouped into three main categories: Disinterested, Dumb and Disingenuous.
Disinterested
Advertisers: Maserati, Chrysler, Jeep
All these advertisers used long, sometimes disjointed, monologues coupled with arresting images delivered by a spokesperson the viewers were supposed to connect with - ultimately to demonstrate key brand attributes/values the target should care about (i.e. being a nimble company, American ingenuity, being a risk taker) . It occurred to me later that perhaps the famed "Farmer" Ram Truck Super Bowl commercial was the inspiration for this approach - but instead of coming off inspiring, each execution fell short and ended up being labeled as outright boring.
Dumb
Advertisers: See specific notations below.
Some of the brands in this group had a product attribute to tout, but the actual execution went way overboard and distracted the viewers. The commercials were deemed too silly (Toyota Highlander, Honda), stupid (Ford, Hyundai/Nice, Kia, Jaguar), or disturbing and/or disgusting (Audi, Chevrolet/Romance).
Disingenuous
Advertiser: Chevrolet
While some might consider this harsh cynicism, the group did not warm up to any of the advertisers that highlighted corporate goodwill efforts. While those efforts are indeed laudable, the group believed advertisers who opted to use Super Bowl level exposure to highlight being a good corporate citizen were doing so only for a self-serving purpose. That said, the group agreed the Bank of America effort was a better way to execute on corporate philanthropy, since there was some level of action that could be taken immediately to benefit the particular charity/cause (free downloads turned into a donations to support (REDTM).
In closing, I am left wondering... were the ads run through any copy testing? Perhaps my group is not in the target at all? Or maybe they are atypical of the the targets' behavior?
But I have to circle back to the USA Today results which suggest an average effort. Which is disappointing given each brand's opportunity to be a part of an exceptional event like the Super Bowl.
Guess we will have to wait until Super Bowl XLIX to see if there is any improvement.
