With a creepy finger licker, a resurrected grandpa and a pug puppy getting the best of a bad man, Doritos was the clear fan favorite out of this year’s Super Bowl commercials.
The brand began trending on Twitter by the middle of the first quarter and the commercials were showered with accolades over social media throughout the game. By halftime Doritos was mentioned in more than 32,000 tweets according to BrandBowl2011.com.
“The Doritos commercials work for consumers because they are based on consumer insights. They are simple and real and I think their ads are resonating a lot more than the spots with celebrities and crazy graphics this year,” social media marketing expert Matt Britton, CEO and founder of Mr. Youth, told Fox411.
Companies were desperate to recreate the magic of the Betty White-Snickers ad from last year’s game which meant that celebrities big (Eminem, twice) and small (Kenny G.) ruled the commercial roost this year in ad spots which sold for $3 million per thirty seconds of air time.
Best Buy’s pairing of Ozzy Osbourne with pint-sized pop star Justin Bieber was the best of the celebrity hits. In the ad a confused Osborne is usurped by the younger tech savvy Bieber. But the kicker comes when Ozzy reveals he has no idea who Bieber is.
Among the worst celebrity cameos were Joan Rivers’ stripping down to be a scantily clad Go Daddy model and Adrian Brody’s lounge singer schtick for Stella Artois that just didn’t seem to jibe with a Bowl watching audience. Eminem struck out trying to spoof himself in an ad for Lipton’s Brisk Iced Tea, but managed to redeem himself with a more personal spot for Chrysler, which focused on their shared hometown, Detroit,.
“His first spot for Lipton seemed completely forced, but then the Chrysler spot was amazing,”Britton said. “Unfortunately because Lipton came first it could have hurt Chrysler’s equity.”
Roseanne Barr and Richard Lewis actually did replace Betty White in the Snickers ad, the only highlight of which was seeing Barr get knocked into the mud by a wayward log.
“None of the celebrities seemed to provide significant breakthrough value this year,” branding expert, Rob Scalea, CEO of The Brand Union told Fox411. “Viewers have come to expect increasing shock value from year to year. Moreover, none of the celebrities seem to represent the core values of the advertisers for which they are appearing.”
Skechers certainly got some bang from their buck by choosing social media queen Kim Kardashian to star in their ShapeUps ad. Kardashian promoted her ad all week on Facebook and Twitter, where she has more than 6 million followers. The reality star even alerted non-football watching fans to the exact time of her spot, “close to the 2 minute warning during the second half of the game.”
Some of the ads that aired during the game were already familiar to viewers. Both Volkswagen and Careerbuilder released their ads on YouTube before Sunday night. The Volkswagen “Kid Vader” ad garnered more than 13 million views on the video sharing site since it was released on Feb. 2nd and has already found a soft spot in America’s heart.
Upstart companies Living Social and Groupon both tried to cash in on shock value with two vaguely distasteful ads, Living Social’s ad featured a man who gets so many good deals on the web site that he becomes a cross-dresser and Groupon had past his prime actor Timothy Hutton making light of the problems of the people of Tibet.
“Both Groupon and Living Social were incredibly insensitive. I think most of America still doesn’t know who these brands are and I think it was really risky and could turn people off,” Britton said. “You don’t always win by being shocking.”
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