Only a few ad chefs get recipe right

It's the multimillion-dollar question Super Bowl advertisers and their agencies grapple with every year: How do we make our ad stand above the rest?

And, as you've seen in past years, some commercials get it right. Others don't.

So what makes a Super Bowl commercial great? What makes them memorable?

According to a sampling of Omaha-area advertising professionals, the consensus is that the best ads have to have these three things: creative entertainment value, brand identification and emotional engagement.

Many miss one of these points. Some miss more. Only a few each year get all the points right, but when they do, those are the ones viewers remember, said Marty Amsler, vice president and creative director at the Bailey Lauerman firm in Omaha.

Dissecting what makes ads work is such a pastime in the business that Bailey Lauerman staffers gather to watch the game together and rate the commercials, and the Omaha chapter of the American Marketing Association will meet later this week to compare notes about the commercials.

The ads that most often misfire and fail to live on as all-time-great commercials are those that aim for a quick chuckle, the professionals say.

"There are some really funny ads that can be a huge waste of money," Amsler said. "They're usually funny and make you laugh, but you just spent a whole lot of money to tell a joke, and aren't getting credit for it."

That's because in many funny commercials, there's no tie-in to the brand.

Some examples of recent commercials that have fallen flat, according to the local advertising professionals, were the racy GoDaddy.com spots that tried to add a dash of humor; a number of funny, but formulaic beer commercials that didn't differentiate one brand from another; and Groupon's controversial fake public service announcements that prompted it to issue an apology, yank the ads and ditch its Miami-based advertising firm.

Jonna Holland, a professor of marketing at the University of Nebraska at Omaha refers to those ads as using "vampire creativity."

"It sucks the lifeblood right out of the message," she said.

Last year, the highest-rated commercials were Volkswagen's spot featuring a kid version of Darth Vader and Chrysler's two-minute mini-drama on the struggles and resilience of Detroit featuring rapper Eminem.

"(The Chrysler ad) painted a picture of a city rebuilding from the economic crisis and made it bigger than just Chrysler," said Bryan Gottula, a copywriter for the Omaha advertising firm SKAR. "I thought that was a great spot. It was subtle but it just drew me in."

Apple's groundbreaking 1984 commercial that introduced the Macintosh computer helped set off the race to make memorable spots, the professionals said.

"That was an all-time favorite of mine," said Greg Ahrens, vice president and co-creative director at SKAR. "It was daring and took chances, and the message was 'there's going to be change.'

"It wasn't a high-dollar production spot and it only ran one time, but it kind of started this whole competition of who can do the best TV commercials."

Contact the writer:

402-444-1414, ross.boettcher@owh.com

twitter.com/rossboettcher

« Money

Share