I'm probably the only marketing person who did not watch the Superbowl - for the ads or otherwise. But I find it interesting to see the aftermath of what by many accounts was a less than stellar line-up of ads. As advertisers tried to go over the top and make an impact, they ended up alienating various contingents of of their viewers.

The GM suicidal robot spot, which was one of the few ads I was intrigued enough about to watch online, ended up being pulled after the company met with representatives of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. The group felt the spot was offensive and potentially dangerous:

"The GM ad is insensitive to the tens of millions of people who have lost loved ones to suicide," said Robert Gebbia, the group's executive director, in a statement issued on Wednesday. "The ad also suggests a troubling and potentially dangerous message: that suicide is a logical and rational decision should one experience failure or lose their job."

The Snickers commercial featuring two guys accidentally kissing also got pulled after many complaints, including from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and the Matthew Shepard Foundation, that it was homophobic.

Even people in the restaurant industry found something to get upset over, with the "demeaning and offensive" Nationwide Insurance spot that showed Kevin Federline as a fry cook dreaming about being a rap star.

The Mad Scientist over at media brain discussed an article on what brain scans of individuals watching the superbowl ads can tell us about their effectiveness. He says:

The brain scan data indicates that advertisers went over the top on trying to develop edgy, attention grabbing content at the expense of achieving a positive communication effect for the advertised brand. As I tell my students, attention is a necessary but not sufficient condition for an ad to have a positive effect on the target. The FMRI data reported on this year's superbowl ads indicated that several of the ads evoked very strong response in the Amygdala, an area of the brain responsible for processing threat and anxiety, but very little activity in other areas. Apparently, stimuli that evoke a strong response in the Amygdala are likely to be memorable but the memory is NEGATIVE! Not exactly the best effect for a client who just spent 2.6 million dollars placing a superbowl ad!!! The brand that "wins" the award for demonstrating this negative effect....drum roll please.....Snickers (2 men kissing ad). This ad evoked the strongest Amygdala response in viewers with little other activity in other brain areas.

This sounds about right to me, and I would suspect that the suicidal robot ad also evoked similar brain responses -- lots of feelings of threat and anxiety.

Seems like the winners in terms of getting good free publicity from this year's Superbowl ads were the advocacy groups who put their names in the news by protesting various multi-million dollar ad buys. Watch for this tactic to spread as nonprofits and trade associations scrutinize every commercial for possible offensive content related to their causes. Not a bad strategy, as long as a compelling case can be made; otherwise organizations risk a backlash as "the cause who cried wolf."


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