Millions of people will tune into Super Bowl XXXV on Sunday and many of MSU’s advertising faculty will join them - but perhaps for a different reason.
“We don’t really care much about the game,” advertising instructor Robert Kolt said. “This is the biggest advertising event of the year.”
Each year, about 20 faculty members gather to rate the best and worst television commercials broadcast during the primetime event. Each professor will rate the advertisements on their creativity, strategy, execution and production using a 10-point scale.
Kolt, who organizes the gathering, said the scale most likely fits the habits of most Super Bowl commercial fans.
“I imagine that’s what most viewers sort of do when they watch the commercials,” he said. “It’s an easy scale to follow.”
Almost 8 percent of the U.S. television audience admits to watching the game just for the commercials according to a survey by Eisner Communications, a Baltimore-based firm that conducts Super Bowl research.
Kolt said a lackluster contest between the New York Giants and the Baltimore Ravens will probably draw even more attention to commercial spot this year.
Janice Bukovac, an assistant advertising professor, has attended the faculty Super Bowl parties in the past and said the commercials tend to set the tone for how each company will advertise for the year.
“It’s always fun to see what new stuff comes out,” she said. “This tends to be the stuff that goes down in textbooks.”
The “big names with the big bucks” are the companies that tend to receive high ratings from the professors, Bukovac said.
Past favorites have included Anheuser-Busch, Pepsi and Coca-Cola. Volkswagen and Levi’s will be high-profile newcomers to the Bowl ad competition.
Last year’s winner was Mountain Dew’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” ad, which was rated the highest out of about 60 commercials that aired during Super Bowl XXXIV.
An ad by the National Heart Savers Association was rated the worst of the ads last year.
While 17 dot-coms purchased commercial time for last year’s game, only three will be in the running for best ad this year - Monster.com, HotJobs.com and E-Trade.com.
The Super Bowl is not the place for upstart Internet companies to invest their advertising dollars, said Brenda Wrigley, assistant professor of public relations in the department of advertising.
“I was disappointed in a lot of the dot-coms,” she said. “Those commercials were not memorable. They just weren’t well done. It’s hard for them to advertise in that sort of venue because they need repetition to create long-term awareness. A lot of them just vaporized or faded from view.
“They were putting an awful lot of marbles in one jar.”
The faculty members will rate the commercials as each spot is viewed during the game. Results will be posted on the Web immediately following the game.
