My Day As A USA Today Expert Super Bowl Ad Panelist

Eric Schulz

My Super Bowl Sunday is usually spent watching the game and eating some nachos and cheesesteaks. All that changed last week when I was invited to participate as a member on the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Panel, rating each and every Super Bowl ad for the paper’s annual Ad Meter Ranking.  See:  http://admeter.usatoday.com

It was a very interesting experience having to focus and evaluate every ad.  I kept getting emails from a USA Today staffer asking my thoughts and opinions on different ads as we progressed through the night.  For the most part, my rankings pretty much agreed with the consumer polling. I ranked the Budweiser Clydesdale “Horse and Trainer Reunited” as the top ad, followed by Tide’s “Montana Miracle Stain”, and Kia’s “Space Babies." 

One place where I differed from the poll was on the evaluation of Dodge Ram’s “God Made A Farmer” (USA Today - 3^rd place; My Rank - 9th) and Jeep’s “Families Waiting/Troops” (USA Today - 5^th place; My Rank - 10th). Both of those ads were touching, poignant, and terrific pieces of art — Norman Rockwell paintings on video — which stirred patriotism and pride in the USA.  But where I had a problem with the ads was they didn’t relate at all to their brands.  Either could have been produced by any American company (McDonalds, Bank of America, Coca-Cola, Ford, Chevrolet, etc.).  

Don’t get me wrong, both ads were fantastic, but I’m not sure that they will drive sales.  In my days back at Coca-Cola there were several ads that consumers really liked, particularly “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing” and “Mean Joe Greene”. Both increased the number of consumers who said Coke was their favorite soft drink, but as the “favorite soft drink” rating increased, actual sales volume was flat or slightly declining.  The gap between these two numbers we came to term as “virtual consumption." Companies don’t like it when advertising creates virtual consumption, they want real consumption. I think the Dodge and Jeep ads will both increase consumers “liking” perception of the brands, but I don’t think it will translate into increased sales – they will create “virtual consumption”. 

Here are some of the notes I made while watching the commercials: 

Budweiser Clydesdales:  It was as brilliantly produced as a Hallmark special. It's hard to strike that emotional chord, but Budweiser nailed it. We all enjoy a good love story, and Budweiser pulled it off in just 60 seconds. The ad was sweet and heartfelt. It was the only commercial that made me cry.

Tide “Montana Miracle Stain”: Brilliant. Topical, fun, and the product is the hero, getting rid of the Montana stain!

Doritos: Eating Doritos was clearly the hero, and both ads told the story in humorous, relevant yet unexpected ways.  

Go-Daddy “Kissing”: The ad was intentionally designed to create “water cooler talk” after the game. Go-Daddy regularly tries to offend people’s sensibilities with their Super Bowl ads to get attention. “Say whatever you want about me, just spell my name right” is the strategy. It works. Their entire brand has been built on titillating Super Bowl advertising.

In the Super Bowl, creativity and entertainment value often get in the way of marketing effectiveness. Agencies consider a great spot to be wildly creative and entertaining. But creativity and entertainment doesn't always equal brand communication effectiveness.

Great advertising should show creativity, entertain, and be relevant yet unexpected — making your product the hero.  Tide’s “Montana Miracle Stain”, Milk's " The Rock - Morning Run" where our superhero can't save the world until he's had his milk; KIA's "Space Babies" where the car has an answer for everything — each of these were winners from a brand communication standpoint.  They were fun to watch and made their product standout as the superhero of the day.

Some of the worst ads, those that did nothing to showcase their products, included Cars.com "Wolf", Axe "Lifeguard", and Lincoln's "Jimmy Falllon - Steer the Script."  While creative, their products were secondary, and got lost in the spots. Budweiser disappointed me and made me feel inferior with their whole “Black Dressed Cool People” the “Black Crown party”, and “Coronation”.

And one other thing, the E-Trade baby is tired and needs to be retired. Several Super Bowls ago, E-Trade had one of the best Super Bowl commercials ever, entitled "Money Coming Out The Wazzoo," where a man being rushed to the hospital ER was being hospitalized because he had "money coming out his wazzoo."  They need to find that mojo again.

Here were my ratings of the commercials, along with the overall scores each ad achieved on the USA Today Ad Meter:

Top Ten				USA Today
Company	Description	My Score		Ad Meter Score
Anheuser-Busch	Horse and trainer reunited	10		7.76
Tide	Miracle Stain	10		7.75
Kia	Space Babies	10		6.74
Doritos	Fashionista Dad	10		7.27
NFL	Deion Sanders returns	10		6.68
Mercedes-Benz	Deal with the devil	10		6.11
Doritos	Goat 4 Sale	10		6.71
M&Ms	Love ballad	10		6.34
RAM	God Made A Farmer	9		7.43
JEEP	Families waiting	9		7.2
11-20				USA Today
Company	Description	My Score		Ad Meter Score
Coke	Mirage	9		5.54
MILK	The Rock - Superhero	9		5.98
Anheuser-Busch	Bud Light Voodoo Doll	9		6.01 (tie)
Walt Disney	Oz trailer	9		5.48
Kia	Hot Bots	8		5.51
Wonderful Pistachios	PSY Gangnam Style	8		5.58
SodaStream	The effect of SodaStream	7		5.39
Best Buy	Asking Amy Poehler	7		6.23
Hyundai	Kid assembles team	7		6.65
Audi	Prom	7		6.64
21-30				USA Today
Company	Description	My Score		Ad Meter Score
VW	Get Happy office guy	7		6.19
Toyota	Rav4 wish granted	7		6.16 (tie)
Samsung	Paul Rudd and Seth Rogan	7		6.06
NFL	Thank you	7		6.14
Paramount Pictures	Star Trek trailer	7		5.4
GoDaddy.co	Danica Patrick pilots plane	7		4.8
Speed Stick	Guy doing laundry	7		5.97
Anheuser-Busch	Bud Light lucky chair	6		5.55
Universal Pictures	Fast & Furious 6 trailer	6		5.11
Century 21	Wedding faints	5		4.98 (tie)
31-44				USA Today
Company	Description	My Score		Ad Meter Score
Oreo	Whispering in the library	5		5.88
Walt Disney	Iron Man 3 trailer	4		5.6
Cars.com	Puppy is a wolf	3		5.52
Coke	Security Camera	3		6.38
Pepsi Next	Parents like to party	3		4.81
Subway	Jocks love Jared	3		4.86
Skechers	Cheetah race	3		6.16 (tie)
MiO Fit	Tracy Morgan anthem	2		4.45
Pepsi	Halftime show countdown	2		4.63
Subway	Jocks can’t say Februany	2		4.07The Bottom 5
Hyundai	Passing obstacles	2		6.01 (tie)
E*Trade	Baby getting wealthy	2		5.93
Hyundai	Epic play date	2		5.42
Lincoln	MKZ Phoenix	2		4.66
BOTTOM TEN				USA Today
Company	Description	My Score		Ad Meter Score
Blackberry	My new Blackberry	2		5.16
Gildan	Guy needs his t-shirt	2		4.98 (tie)
Axe	Lifeguard	2		4.33
Lincoln	Jimmy Fallon - Road Trip Story	1		4.19
Calvin Klein	Guy in underwear	1		3.88
Anheuser-Busch	Black Crown party	1		3.73
Anheuser-Busch	Beck’s Sapphire fish singing	1		3.66
Anheuser-Busch	Black Crown “coronation”	1		3.64
Taco Bell	Viva Young	1		6.55
GoDaddy.co	Bar Refaeli  "Kiss"	1		3.3

Holding The World’s Largest Gripe Session

Eric Schulz

We all know that person who can gripe about anything.  A beautiful day with blue skies and 78 degrees (wouldn’t that be nice right about now), and they complain about pollens making them sneeze, bugs or anything else they can think of. 

While griping is hardly ever encouraged, this week in my marketing classes I took off the gloves for an hour and declared our time together as “The World’s Largest Gripe Session." "Complain to your delight!" I told them. "What bugs you? What do you hate?"

It was wonderful. Everything from “I hate scraping ice off the inside of my car windows," to “I hate not having a place to put my backpack under my seat," to “I hate when the dryer eats my socks.”  In just one hour the class generated over 1,500 complaints and gripes!  Why did I open up the class to nothing but negativism and criticism? Because within gripes and complaints are the seeds for innovation!

Now we will take those seeds of problems and use them as inspiration in DESIGN THINKING, designing and creating new products and services to solve these very problems.  For example, using the three gripes above, great new product ideas jump out — what about a hot can of air to melt the inside ice on your car window?  Or an ice scraper with the right bend to conform to scraping the INSIDE of your car window?  Or adding backpack holders under the seats in classrooms (similar to the holders on the California Adventure ride at Disneyland)?  Or what about “Snap Socks” where your sock all now have a snap at the top to snap them together before washing and drying so that one of them doesn’t fall prey to the dryer monster? 

If you are looking for new ideas, BEFORE you start brainstorming, do a giant gripe session to identify problem areas, and your time spent creating new ideas will be much more fruitful and useful!

The Idiocy of Apple

Eric Schulz

Everyone thinks that Apple is brilliant. Phooey. What kind of genius company takes their best-selling products and discontinues them, introducing an upgrade virtually every year?  Apple! Did the world really need an iPhone 2, iPhone 3, iPhone 4, iPhone 5; iPad, iPad 2, The New iPad, mini iPad? Did they ask for an iPod, iPod mini, iPod Touch, or an iPod Shuffle? Not only did the world need these upgrades; they demanded them!

Apple IS brilliant. They understand the importance of innovation, of having a healthy dissatisfaction for the status quo. Apple has an inbred DNA that says, “we can do better," and then goes out and does it.

Look at the personal music player business segment. For decades, SONY dominated the market with its Walkman, first introduced in 1979. They did very little innovation to the product. Every five years, from 1979 to 1999, they celebrated their anniversary with a new cassette model introduced on July 1. Every FIVE years! 

In 2001, Apple introduced the first iPod, using digital storage instead of cassettes or CD’s. They introduced the iTunes store from which customers could acquire their music. And instantly, the Walkman was dead.

By all rights, SONY should be the dominant player in personal music. They had worldwide domination of the category with their players. But they didn’t do what Apple did—innovate, and vertically integrate. Instead of saying, “lets sell a new digital music player," Apple said “lets sell music AND a digital music player, and an online storage vault for our customers to store their music and download onto other Apple devices.” Game over. Apple won. And what is sometimes lost in this history is that at the time of Apple’s move into music, it was a struggling computer company that was popular only in the graphic-designers market. 

It’s been said that courage is the willingness to innovate when you don’t have to. It’s easy to change when your business is on the rocks, but when things are going well, it takes real courage to say, “let’s make it better." Studies have shown that companies that have innovation as part of their primary business model average more than15% profit margins, the highest in most industries. Why? Because they are in tune with their customer needs, constantly working to improve and make their products even better and more relevant to their customer's changing needs. The SONY example clearly shows that when you are self-satisfied and stand-still, that’s when you are most vulnerable, as somebody will surely come from behind and run you over, and you likely won’t even see it coming. Every business should learn from Apple, and start working on an innovation pipeline and begin hiring innovation managers to lead their new initiatives.