MUSEUM OF TELEVISION & RADIO SCREENING SERIES, THE: SUPER BOWL: SUPER SHOWCASE FOR COMMERCIALS {2000/2001 VERSION NARRATED BY FRANK GIFFORD} {PACKAGE}
Summary
For millions of football fans, the Super Bowl is the most exhilarating event in television sports -- a one-game, winner-take-all contest for supremacy of the National Football League.
For Madison Avenue, the game is all that and more: the premier showcase for new television advertising.
While the game has drawn strong ratings and top sponsor dollars from its start in 1967, two events played key roles in the rise of Super Bowl advertising. In 1969 Joe Namath's New York Jets upset the Baltimore Colts, giving instant credibility to the American Football Conference and sending Super Bowl ad rates skyrocketing. Fifteen years later, "1984," the most acclaimed Super Bowl spot of all time, introduced the Macintosh computer, and a new standard was set for Super Bowl advertising. Inspired by this spot's brilliance, creative workers at the agencies began competitively stretching for new heights. The press, until then uninterested in Super Bowl advertising, caught on, and in the fourteen years since, publicity for the ads has come to rival that for the game itself.
The Museum of Television & Radio's compendium screening "Super Bowl: Super Showcase for Commercials" follows the championship's emergence as a showcase for advertising. Football star Frank Gifford provides the on-screen narration for more than fifty memorable spots from Super Sundays.
SCREENING HIGHLIGHTS
INTERNET: The 2000 Super Bowl was dubbed the "e-bowl" as a staggering seventeen dot-coms "went Bowling," driving prices up in the process to a record average of $2.2 million per thirty second ad. While some, like Pets.com with its Sock Puppet mascot, scored points with viewers, nine internet companies either parted ways with their agencies or quit consumer advertising altogether after the game.
SOFT DRINKS: Did any of Ray Charles's famous Diet Pepsi spots premiere on the Super Bowl? Uh-huh. And parched for Pepsi, Michael J. Fox tries to outfox a dog. For Coke, Pierce Brosnan plays a James Bond-like secret agent years before he signs as 007 in films, and Demi Moore drops in unexpectedly on a male neighbor. In 2000 Pepsi, seeking to capitalize on the buzz surrounding its Mountain Dew, focused on Generation X-targeted ads for the brand.
BEER: The Bud Bowl campaign, launched in 1989, is among the Super Bowl's best known, but a year earlier Stroh's challenged Bud by spoofing Spuds McKenzie. In 1998 and 1999 Bud's spots featuring antagonistic lizards and frogs proved favorites with viewers, placing in USA Today's Ad Meter Top Ten. And one year later Budweiser's infectious campaign about a circle of friends greeting each other on the phone made "Whassup" a national catchphrase.
CONTROVERSY: What are the most controversial spots in Super Bowl history? And why did Nissan's "Turbo Z Dreamer" spot, directed by Ridley Scott, and Holiday Inn's "Bob Johnson" both air just once? All of these questions are answered on the tape.
Details
- NETWORK: N/A
- DATE: November 30, 1999
- RUNNING TIME: 1:05:40
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: AT:61762
- GENRE: N/A
- SUBJECT HEADING: Football; Sports; Super Bowl
- SERIES RUN: N/A
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Frank Gifford … Narrator
- Pierce Brosnan
- Ray Charles
- Michael J. Fox
- Demi Moore
- Ridley Scott