Super Bowl Fourth Quarter Report: Teaser Troubles, and the NFL’s 5-Star Win

Super Bowl advertising slots are notoriously expensive. This year, a lot of brands got round the problem by releasing ‘teasers’ online which were actually extended versions of their eventual 30-second spots. The risk, though, is that truncating the commercials for Game Day leads to a loss of emotional impact. And this is definitely what we’ve seen with insights gathered from our brand testing platform. Most strikingly, Michelob Ultra’s Chris Pratt ad plunged from a 4-Star teaser to a 2-Star ad. In the 4th Quarter we saw the game day verson of our most successful teaser – Universal Parks and Resorts’ ad starring Peyton Manning as the “Vacation Quarterback”.

But while the actual ad did see a slight falling off from its pre-game score, it managed to hold onto its 5-Star status, becoming the 5th ad of the might to earn that score. It was quickly followed by a 6th, from the NFL itself, who followed last year’s 5-Star NFL babies ad with a hilarious spot showing Super Bowl stars “dirty dancing” to “I’ve Had The Time Of My Life”. It looks set to finish as the top-scoring humorous ad of the night, in an evening dominated by inspirational ads and Winter Olympians. Speaking of which, NBC’s Winter Olympics “mash-up” ad got a very solid 4-Star score,  but couldn’t outshine their 5-Star individual stories.

Congratulations to the Eagles and their fans, and congratulations to all our emotional advertisers. We’ll be testing the immediate post-game ads with our suite of market research tools too so our competition isn’t quite over yet – check back tomorrow for our Monday Morning Quarterbacking and commentary on the final Top 10 list.