BE afraid, Madison Avenue. Be very afraid.
That seems to be the message in the aftermath of the crowded, frenetic advertising bowl that took place inside
Super Bowl XLIV on Sunday. Among those commercials consistently deemed most effective, memorable and talked-about, many were created or suggested by consumers — or produced internally by the sponsors — rather than the work of agency professionals.
That should give the modern-day “Mad Men” pause, particularly since so many people watched the game — an average of 106.5 million, the Nielsen Company reported, the largest audience ever for a television show.
Most notable, according to a cascade of surveys, polls and analyses released on Monday, were a couple of commercials for Doritos snack chips sold by the Frito-Lay division of
PepsiCo, along with a spot for the search-engine services provided by
Google. The Doritos commercials were created by consumers and the Google spot was created internally.
For instance, the two Doritos commercials were among the most-watched among all the spots in households with
TiVo digital video recorders. The commercial called “House Rules” finished first and the commercial called “Underdog” came in fourth.
“The answer is not that everyone should fire their agencies and have users create campaigns,” said Todd Juenger, vice president and general manager for TiVo audience research and measurement. Rather, he added, consumers seem to know best what other consumers will like to watch in the “unique” ad environment of the Super Bowl.
“House Rules” was in fifth place, as of Monday afternoon, among all commercials from the game played by visitors to the FanHouse section of
AOL. Both “House Rules” and “Underdog” received high ratings from those visitors, averaging four out of five stars.
In two separate surveys among users of
Twitter, Doritos finished first. In the BrandBowl — conducted by Mullen, an agency owned by the
Interpublic Group of Companies, and Radian6 — the Doritos brand generated the most Tweets. In a monitoring of Twitter by Colle & McVoy, part of MDC Partners, using a tool called Squawq, the “House Rules” commercial emerged as the leader.
“House Rules” was also the most-liked Super Bowl spot as of Monday afternoon in an online vote at Hulu.com, which will continue through Tuesday night, and “Underdog” was ranked fourth. In a poll on
ChaCha, a free answers service, users — primarily teenagers and young adults — said their favorite commercials were for Doritos.
The Nielsen BuzzMetrics service of Nielsen found that Doritos was the “most buzzed-about” advertiser during and after the game, followed by Google.
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