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FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2001
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Added Appeal by Deanna Symoski
Super Bowl XXXV managed to give new meaning to the phrase "Bud Bowl"
as Anheuser-Busch purchased a total four minutes of advertising this year for
Budweiser and Bud Light. At a record-breaking $2.3 million for every thirty
seconds, it was the single biggest advertiser at the event. It was also quite
possibly the most entertaining. The company's flagship "Wassupp" slogan was
conspicuously spoofed in the "What are you doing?" ads. But the real
showstopper was Cedric and the date-gone-wrong. This favorite in the 13'
Annual USA Today Ad Meter Poll scored highest not just of Bud ads, but out of
all the ads, among the 119 adult volunteers.
Pepsi-Cola Co. scored three minutes of precious Super Bowl ad space,
replacing the two-year-old "Joy of Cola" theme with a new "Joy of Pepsi"
slogan. Subtle. Missing from this year's spots was Hallie Eisenberg who in the past channeled voices and sang
with divas. Instead Bob Dole resurrected his product-pushing days to inspire a little life in Pepsi.
Last year Electronic Data Systems Corp. brought us cat herders, this year it was the running of the squirrels in a
clever piece about competition—a word the dot-corns might know something about. After dominating Super Bowl
XXXIV with 17 online companies, fledgling upstarts were noticeably absent from the action this year. Three online
companies did make it back, however. E*Trade again employed the dancing ape from last year, and Monster.com
and flotJobs.com tackled a weary stock market and devised a new game plan (to actually make money), allowing
them to return. In total, dot-corn ads only comprised ten percent of the 30 available minutes.
Taking the place of electronic business was first-time Super Bowl advertiser Volkswagen, the only car company
to show up. In a charming little spot, two guys throw sticks at a tree until their car falls out. Satisfactory for their
first attempt, but the spot failed to stand out amidst heavy-hitters like Budweiser. Lackluster spots are what kept
other car companies from playing, according to Scott McGraw, head of sports sales for CBS. Their ads couldn't
stand up against the tough analysis that Super Bowl ads are subjected to.
Also debuting was Levi Strauss & Co., which kicked off its new line of jeans with a strange spot featuring a
sickly man who is revived after receiving jeans from an unconscious donor. But perhaps the most disturbing ad
was for the new mobile phone company, Cingular Wireless. One of their spots featured a mentally challenged man
painting via headgear. The ad communicated that despite his difficulty, he was intelligent and actually very lucky
as it intercut with his paintings. Moving, until the blatant exploitation of the wireless company became clear at the
end when they slapped their name on the ad.
The variety of tactics of Super Bowl advertisers point to a common theme, however--emotional appeal. With
130 million viewers worldwide, the biggest TV audience of the year, the idea is to make some sort of connection,
whether it's to make viewers laugh or just really think. And that's really how this whole thing got started. Apple's
1984 "Big Brother" pitch, which introduced the Macintosh computer, was so epic that Madison Avenue found a
way to jump on board. With everything from Pepsi's "Just one look" spot to the Budweiser frogs, Super Bowl
audiences tune in as much for the ads as for the football, making advertising for the event more than just a game.
It's big business.
But that wasn't always the case. When Super Bowl I kicked off in 1967, approximately 46 million fans tuned in.
Both NBC and CBS televised the last of the post season games from Los Angeles. Then, advertisers paid only
$42,000 for a 30-second spot, and football enthusiasts could catch the game in person for $6 to $l2. But the times,
they are a-changin'. Last Sunday each second of ad space sold for $76,667.
Fumble!
Even the Giants scored more
points than the halftime show
If you looked closely, you could ac
tually see the exact moment Steven
Tyler sacrificed his dignity for his
fame. It could have been when
N'Sync approached the stage to per
form first, it even might have been
when Britney emerged (wearing Mr.
Socko on her arm). But I think it offi
cially happened when the entire en
semble destroyed "Walk This Way."
The E*Trade Half-time show, a de
bacle featuring Aerosmith, N'Sync,
Mary J. Blige, Britney Spears and
Nelly, was supposed to unite genera
tions, entertain sports fans and basi
cally make a lot of money for MTV's
sister station, CBS. What it actually
did was create an air of hostility in liv
ing rooms around the country.
There is no doubt that "Walk This
Way" is a song meant for numerous
interpretations, the best of which of
course was the Aerosmith-RunDMC
original. A great runner up was when
Movies
Head Over Heels
Valentine
Left Behind
Feb. 2
s ate: 2/6
A play by play of everything Super Bowl
Kid Rock helped out at the MTV
movie awards. But to think the
popsters could be 'hard' enough to
hold their own for this legendary
crossover was certainly a mistake.
The popularity stunt (presumably
for Aerosmith) made the rockers look
nothing more than old and made the
popsters look ridiculous trying to keep
up. Nelly's animated theatrics seemed
to unnerve the rest of the crew and
upstage the only thing anyone really
wanted to hear--Aerosmith perform
"Walk This Way." The only performer
to maintain an air of class on stage was
Blige who let the show unravel with
out her.
In fact, the best part of the show
came in the first minute and a half'
when Ben Stiller, wearing a "maniac"
T-shirt, Adam Sandler, and Chris
Rock, appeared to help out the per
formers. Should've put them on in
stead. --by Deanna Symoski
Digimon: The Movie
Farscape
Supernova
Where the Heart Is
Gundam Wing: The
Movie-Endless Waltz
Sailor Moon S:
Pure Hearts
The Love War
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You kiss Justin with that mouth?
Oops! She did it again. In a related story,
half-time queen Britney Spears demonstrated
just how eloquent her vernacular can be. At
a recent performance at the Rock in Rio Fes
tival in Brazil, Miss Spears threw an exuber
ant but quite impressive swearing tantrum.
Her obscene pre-show was apparently the
result of there being no opening musi , : be
fore her performance. According to her own
website www.britneyspears.com, the teen
diva was quoted as saying, "Don't tell me
they're just letting the audience f---ing stand
out there like that. Oh my God," she says.
"Okay, let's hurry ya'll, seriously... They told
me they were gonna do a vamp." A 'vamp'
being musician slang for the opening music,
which is usually repeated before an artist en-
ters the stage
Spears went on to say, "Oh s---! Oh, noon,
what are they doing? (Squealing) Oh, my
pants are too short! I grew! I thought they were gonna f---ing vamp!"
Brit's sing-song tantrum spread like wildfire, vastly heating up the Internet.
Her dirty words became the hot new Napster MP3. Fans wanting their own
copy of Spears' new single can simply search under "Britney Spears" and
"Rio."
Eminem must be pleased
~~.
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Music*
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see you
If Keanu Reeves were going to
leave a legacy, no doubt it would be
The Matrix . With innovative effects
and pageantry, the film kicked off the
new way to impress audiences. So it
was only a matter of time before
sports, leaning a bit closer to enter
tainment these days, picked up on the
trend for the big game.
Super Bowl XXXV was privy to
the exact technology that catapulted
The Matrix and certain swinging GAP
commercials into the mainstream.
It's called "Eye Vision," a more ad
vanced virtualized reality, and it made
a huge impact on Jamaal Lewis' third
quarter touchdown. In fact, replays
may never look the same again.
The idea is to create a three dimen
sional image of the action. To do that,
33 cameras were set up in seven de
gree intervals and timed as if to ro
tate around the players. The technol
ogy for such an idea was developed
by the Carnegie Mellon Robotics In
stitute and Carnegie Mellon profes
sor Takeo Kanade. Kanade, one of
the primary creators of virtualized
reality, warned prior to the game that
the system is very much in its pre
liminary stages. Ken Aagaard, senior
vice president of operations at CBS,
hoped to be able to use the technol
ogy just three or four times.
Virtuali zed reality proved much
more successful, however. Eye Vi
sion was used numerous times both
for replays and to get a better glimpse
at the half-time extravaganza. But
those involved are not settling just
yet. Aagaard believes the technology
will greatly develop by next year,
making Superbowl XXXVI not only
a sporting event, but a technological
breakthrough Eye Vision should be
able to broaden its horizons for other
events, such as NCAA tournaments
and the U.S. Open.
by Katrina Everett
staff writer
DVD*
Digimon: The Movie
Farscape
Gundam Wing: The
Movie-Endless Waltz
Sailor Moon S
Dr. T and the Women
Urban Legend:
Final Cut
`Eye'
--by Deanna Symoski
TMS Campus
Aerosmith's Steven
Tyler smooches potty
mouth Spears at the
Super Bowl XXXV half
time show.
R'En
To Go
by Erin McCarty
What Game?
The Super Bowl was
no match for its ads
All right, I admit it. When it comes to football, I fit right in with all
those stereotypical women depicted in the funnies this past Sunday. I just
don't get it. So when I watched the Super Bowl last week, it wasn't the game
coverage I was interested in. Oh, I could certainly appreciate the irony when
the Giants finally managed to score a touchdown and the Ravens Rimed around
and scored one for themselves just seconds later. And the pre- and mid-game
shows were entertaining, but they seemed to be more spectacle than substance.
The notable exception was Ray Charles, whose moving rendition of "America
the Beautiful" was about as patriotically classy as you could get.
So if it wasn't the game and it wasn't the entertainment, what was I watching
the Super Bowl for? The commercials. And I wasn't the only one. The Super
Bowl is touted as the only event on television during which the ads are given as
much attention as the actual program. I found last year's crop of commercials
to be pretty disappointing overall, so I wasn't sure what to expect this time
around. I began to feel hopeful pretty early on. For starters, the number of dot
corn companies was reduced and unlike last year, I really couldn't point to an ad
in which I had no clue what was being advertised.
I counted at least 25 commercials that impressed me and only four - plus one
company's entire string of commercials that really turned me off. The first
commercial I labeled "bad" was the monster.com ad depicting a man in his
cubicle lustily inhaling a business card. A little too weird for me, as it reminded
me of the guy who blows the aroma of french fries through his office with a
mini-fan.
Accenture's commercials all featured innovations of some kind, then the
caption "now it gets interesting." I got that they were some sort of
consulting company, but I really didn't understand what their commercials
were trying to convey. I think the worst ad was for Levi's, in which a man
is killed at the beach and his jeans are rushed to a sickly-looking,
underwear-clad man in his home for a jean transplant. Very poor taste.
But these low points were made up for by a host of terrific ads, led by
Budweiser. Bud's greats included several "wussupp" ads and an ad in which
the dog eats everything in the fridge to make room for the Bud Light. The
notable "wussupp" ad depicted several nerds sitting around talking on the
phone, drinking an unkown beverage and saying "what are you doing?" The
second was a George Lucas-style scene in which an alien is beamed aboard the
mother ship and sheds his dog disguise to impart the wisdom he learned from
Earth. I'm not sure which is more disturbing: the concept that our dogs could
be alien spies, or that "wussupp" would be what an alien would bring back as
his impression of Earth.
The cat-herders of yesteryear became the squirrel-fighters of 2001 in the ad
for eds.com, a hilarious parody of the running of the bulls in Spain reminiscent
of Monty Python's killer bunny scene. This dot-corn promises to deal with the
quick and nimble competitors as well as the big, tough ones. Schwab showed
us Fergie telling her daughter a bedtime story about how she would grow up to
marry a white knight and live in a beautiful castle...but just in case it didn't
work out she would have to know about PE ratios. Snicker's Crunch gave us
two entertaining examples of things not to do when we felt the need to crunch
something. Cingular wireless provided a series of ads about self-expression,
from the one quoting everyone from Kermit the Frog to Homer Simpson to the
one featuring the ballet dancing football players to the inspiring one about the
handicapped artist. I still don't think wireless communication is directly related
to the kind of self-expression detailed there, but they got the point across.
The best, though, were both parodies of famous commercials. Second place
in my book goes to Bob Dole on the beach, talking about a product that has
brought joy back into his life. I rolled my eyes through most of it, thinking that
I thought I had seen the end of Bob talking about his intimacy problems
something I definitely did not want to hear about. But when he introduces the
world to his "little blue friend," it turns out to be a can of Pepsi. Absolutely
hilarious, it was the best in a series of great offerings by Pepsi. (A close second
goes to the chess champ who has all the machinery turn on him.)
And number one has to be E*Trade, which parodied the famous 1970 s
environmental commercial in which a Native American rides through a desolate
wasteland and surveys the once beautiful land with a silent tear running down
each cheek. Here, it is a chimpanzee, and he is riding through the dot-corn
ghost town. At one point he even picks up something that looks suspiciously
like the Pets.com sock puppet. Another hilarious offering, it was especially
pertinent after the demise of so many dot-corns that advertised during last
year's Super Bowl.
All in all, I'd say that while this year's game may not have been as
dynamic as last year's, the commercials were a hundred percent better. And
something tells me that there won't be nearly as many companies who won't be
back next year.