This ad, for the Chevy Camaro, was the most-watched spot during the Super Bowl, pulling in 119,628,000 sets of eyeballs according to the ratings agency Nielsen.
This ad, for the Chevy Camaro, was the most-watched spot during the Super Bowl, pulling in 119,628,000 sets of eyeballs according to the ratings agency Nielsen. A Chevy Cruze ad took second place in the “most-watched” category, and Chrysler’s much-chattered-about 200 spot tied for fourth (with 5 other spots, including one for Bridgestone Tires), with 17.565m viewers. In short, cars and car-related products not only accounted for many of the ads, they managed to snag the time slots where the fewest people were taking bathroom breaks or grabbing more bacon-wrapped buffalo wings. But remember, there’s more to effective advertising than merely drawing eyeballs…
For one thing, an ad has to reach its viewers on an emotional level. It needs to elicit sympathy… and for the amount of money needed to run a Super Bowl spot, it needs to elicit with gusto. VW’s “Darth Vader” Passat addid just that, although it did so to millions fewer people than Chevy’s spots. Meanwhile, Chevy’s “most-watched” ads didn’t rate on Nielsen’s top ten “most liked,” a quality the ratings agency defines thusly:
The Likeability score is the percentage of viewers who report to like “a lot” an ad they were exposed to during the normal course of viewing the Super Bowl, among those recalling the brand of the ad. These scores are then indexed against the average score for all Super Bowl ads (Likeability Index). 100 equals average. For example, with a Likeability Index of 186, the Volkswagen “Darth Vader” ad was almost twice as liked compared to the average Super Bowl spot.
And in a world that’s oversaturated with advertising, would you prefer a “quantity” impact or a “quality impact”? But then, “likeability” isn’t everything in advertising either. After all, who cares how good an ad makes the viewer feel about a product or brand if said viewer is unable to remember the product or brand being promoted? That’s where Nielsen’s “most recalled” index comes in, a metric described as
the percentage of viewers who can Recall the brand of an ad they were exposed to during the normal course of viewing the Super Bowl. These scores are then indexed against the average score for all Super Bowl ads (Recall Index). 100 equals average. For example, with a Recall Index of 179, the Doritos “Pug” ad was 79% better-recalled than the average Super Bowl spot.
Surprise! Not a single automaker or automotive product made Nielsen’s top ten most-recalled ads. And why, pray tell, was that? My theory is that the number of automotive brands on the market far exceeds the average American’s ability to keep them all straight. Another possible reason is that car advertisers have lost touch with what it means to connect Americans emotionally to specific automobiles… and given the homogenization of modern mass-market cars, can you blame them? Or, if you’re not into the whole “big picture” thing, maybe these were just poorly-made ads (certainly the Camaro ad would have been improved if the Mad Men dialogue were punctuated with snorting sounds and shouts of “my God, this is good coke!” to complete the ad-brainstorming ambiance).
What say you? Why didn’t the Super Bowl’s car ads resonate with viewers? Is this indicative of a wider problem with car advertising, or just the ads themselves?