Budweiser Wins Super Bowl of Advertising Again. What Does Bud Get That Others Don’t?

February 6, 2015December 4, 2022 ~ K. Quesenberry ~ 2 Comments

As I pointed out in a previous Super Bowl post, my research found that the more complete story a Super Bowl commercial tells (in Five Acts) the higher the commercial performed in Super Bowl Ad Ratings Polls. We found that other factors like sex appeal, humor, emotion or animals didn’t matter. They appeared at the top and bottom of the polls with no discernible pattern. In Super Bowl XLIX the research held up again. Take a look at USA Today’s Ad Meter’s results, do some quick Five Act coding and you will see for yourself.

Budweiser Wins Super Bowl of Advertising Again. What Does Bud Get That Others Don't? Click To Tweet

This year Budweiser again takes home the prize. They finished number one in the 2015 USA Today Ad Meter and other consumer Super Bowl Ad rating polls with “Lost Dog.” This was a sequel to last year’s top spot “Puppy Love.” View the spot below to see how it is a full Five Act story. But is it the dog that makes them a winner? Take a look at the top 10 spots in the poll. None of the other most likable commercials feature animals, but they all do tell complete Five Act stories.

Story may be more likable, but does it sell? Many who view and like the Bud spots say that is great, but this does it sell? According to a 2014 Beer Industry Report, Bud and Bud Light control 34% of domestic beer sales – more than any competitor. The closest is Coors Light with 10% and Miller Lite and High Life for another 10%. And despite increased growth, all the craft beers combined (Sam Adams, Sierra Nevada, New Belgium, Shiner, etc.) still only account for 8% of all domestic beer sales – 1/4 of Bud and Bud Light sales.

Who Fumbled in the Super Bowl of Advertising? Many did, but Carnival really missed the boat. They had a great complete Five Act commercial that they released before the game called “Get Away,” but for some reason choose to run another spot called “To The Sea” during the game. The spot they ran did not have story development. Instead it featured a JFK speech voice over with typical cruise ship imagery. I believe “Get Away” would have been a top 10 spot, but instead they finish at the bottom of the poll at 44. What do you think of the two spots?

Is there dramatic form? “Get Away” is a great complete story of a woman getting away from everyday life responsibilities and hassles. This has great action movie like drama drawing you in as she runs from the mob of life to the cruise ship at the end of the road. Will she make it? Yes and all is resolved as she swims in the ship pool with her family. A great relatable story in Five Acts. On the other hand, “To The Sea” is shots of a cruise ship with the JFK speech. There is really no character introduction, complication, rise in action, climax, falling action or resolve. This has Zero Acts. One Act if you consider JFK as a character in the story.

In a Blomberg article the creators of the Carnival spot said they wanted to reach people who never cruised. Which spot do you think does a better job?

What Makes A Super Bowl Ad Super? Five Act Dramatic Form.

January 28, 2015December 4, 2022 ~ K. Quesenberry ~ 37 Comments

When I was an advertising copywriter I had an intuition about what type of ads worked and which did not, but mainly I and many of my colleagues stumbled into them. Sometime we would have a hit and other times we missed the mark. This pressure to perform becomes intense this time of year as over 111 million people tune into to watch a Super Bowl match between the top NFL teams, but also to watch the TV ads.

There are even advertising polls and show dedicated to which are the “best” ads. Being one of the best pays off in additional attention, views and buzz. The more buzz you get for the TV ad before and after the big game the more you are getting for the 4.5 million investment. It makes those 30 seconds go a lot further.

So what makes one ad more likable to finish in the top ten of USA Today Ad Meter versus the bottom ten? When I became a professor at Johns Hopkins University my research colleague Michael Coolsen from Shippensburg University and I asked ourselves that very question. Then we conducted a two-year analysis of 108 Super Bowl commercials to find the answer. Is it humor or emotion? Sex appeal or cute animals? What is the secret ingredient to helping ensure a Super Bowl commercial is liked and talked about?

Remember studying five-act Shakespearian Plays in high school? There was a reason Shakespeare was so popular and why he used to tell a story in five acts. It is a powerful formula that has drawn people’s attention for hundreds of years. Starting with Aristotle’s Poetics in 335 B.C., dramatic theory was first developed. Aristotle consider plot, having a beginning, middle and end, to be the most important element in drama – even more important than character. Much later, in 1863, German novelist and playwright Gustav Freytag developed his theory of dramatic structure advancing Aristotle’s to include a more precise five-act structure as seen below.

We coded the over 100 Super Bowl ads in a two-year span for the number of acts developed in the commercial. Then we compared that number with the ratings number those commercials received in the top consumer Advertising Super Bowl Polls. After analysis we found a correlation between number of acts and higher ratings. In other words, the more acts in a commercial (a more complete story with a plot) the higher the ratings or likability. The results of the study were published in The Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice in the Fall of 2014. What about all those other factors like sex appeal, humor, emotion or animals? They didn’t matter. We found these variables all over. They appeared at the top and bottom of the polls with no discernible pattern.

Does story and likability sell? Likable ads are more likely to be viewed and shared multiple times increasing viral buzz and generating greater awareness. Other research has proven that online buzz increases ad recall, recognition and emotional response. The latest research claims a direct connection. Advertisers can buy consumer attention for those 30 seconds during the game, but when advertising hits social media, it is all about likability. People are drawn to and give their attention to story. Beyond Super Bowl ads where else have you seen story have an impact?

100 Insights For New Media Marketing

April 18, 2014May 25, 2014 ~ K. Quesenberry ~ Leave a comment

For my 100th post on this blog, I thought I would share all 100 insights in one place. Each listing is a link back to the original post.

100 Insights For New Media Marketing:

USA Today Ad Meter Super Bowl Results: Story Wins With Puppy Love And Others!

February 3, 2014 ~ K. Quesenberry ~ 1 Comment

The 2014 Super Bowl is over and even though there wasn’t much plot development in the game, the winning Super Bowl ads knew the power of a good story. As I posted on Saturday “Shakespeare Predicts Super Bowl Commercial Winners” Budweiser’s Puppy Love won USA Today’s Ad Meter voting.

Our two-year analysis of 108 Super Bowl commercials found that dramatic form impacts favorability in advertising rating polls – consumer ratings went up as ads had more acts in a the five-act dramatic form expressed in Freytag’s Pyramid and used by William Shakespeare.

Did story win out this year? Let’s take a look at the top spots in the 2014 Ad Meter results and one at the bottom to see if they have five act dramatic form:

1. “Puppy Love” – Budweiser: This has five acts of story from the inciting moment of the puppy pound, and rising action of a new animal friendship to the climax of Clydesdales surrounding the car, falling action and moment of release when the puppy finds a home.

2. “Cowboy Love” – Doritos: The mom and younger brother win out over the bratty kid in this complete story in five acts.

3. “Hero’s Welcome” – Budweiser: The beer brand delivers another heart felt complete story. The plot in this story heightens knowing it features a real soldier returning from war.

4. “Time Machine” – Doritos: This snack brand has been telling good stories for years with their “Crash the Superbowl” contest. Here the complete story shows how a kid tricks an adult out of his Doritos.

5. “Phone Call” – Radio Shack: This is a story of Radio Shack getting a makeover. A simple story, but the real drama (climax) comes as 1980s stars come in and slowly dismantle the store leading to the falling action and moment of release with the two store employees left alone.

That is the top five, but does story appear in the Super Bowl poll losers? At the bottom of the list we have a Bud Light commercial “Cool Twist.” This Super Bowl ad is 30 seconds of spinning bottle with a voice over talking about the bottle. I see no plot or story development in any acts. Budweiser uses the power of story to earn two top 5 spots, why are they so flat with this effort?

This disparity has happened before. In the first year of our Super Bowl analysis, Budweiser had a top 5 hit with “Clydesdale’s Friend” or “Fence” that leveraged the power of story. However, in the 2010 Super Bowl, Budweiser also had a bottom five spot with Select 55 “World’s Lightest Beer” that simply featured a spinning bottle with an announcer talking about the beer – no story.

It looks like story is the ingredient needed to make Super Bowl ads super. SpotBowl.com voting is still open, polls close at 3:00 p.m. today. People think it’s all about sex or humor or animals, but what we’ve found is that the underbelly of a great commercial is whether it tells a story or not.