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Wowing the Superbowl crowd

Super Bowl ads are known for generating buzz—and viewers—but not all creatives are created equal. Chrysler courted controversy and won kudos for a two-minute Super Bowl advertisement that was less a car sales pitch than a rousing political message in election year. Chrysler ignored the unwritten rules of Super Bowl advertising – to be brief and funny, for the second year in a row. But it was still voted best ad of the event. Volkswagen’s The Dog Strikes Back was a distant second and M&M’s dancing candy ad polled third (results here).

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“Detroit’s showing us it can be done,” Eastwood said.

Traffic on Twitter showed overwhelmingly positive comments for the advertisement. The “Dirty Harry” star and Academy Award-winning director spoke to Americans as if he were a football coach making a halftime speech encouraging his team to work together to win in the second half.

“This country can’t be knocked out with one punch,” Eastwood said in the ad. “We get right back up again and when we do the world is going to hear the roar of our engines. Yeah, it’s halftime America. And, our second half is about to begin.”

A 30-second spot in this year’s game televised by NBC cost US$3.5 million. Chrysler has not said how much the Eastwood spot cost. Last year’s Chrysler ad featured rapper Eminem. The ad has now been seen more than 21 million times on YouTube and Chrysler executives say it helped push U.S. sales of the automaker’s brands including Jeep, Dodge, Ram trucks and Chrysler up 24 percent last year.

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According to numbers released on Monday, Madonna’s half time performance was the most-watched Super Bowl halftime show on record – even edging out the game’s averages in both ratings and total viewers. Madonna’s halftime performance was watched by 114 million viewers, and scored a 47.4 household rating, narrowly beating out the overall averages for the game, which averaged 111.3 million total viewers and a 47.0 household rating. Which goes some way to explain why the Material Girl, who earned US$58 million in 2010 and grossed US$280 million on her last tour, was happy to perform without receiving a single penny. Madonna is releasing her new record MDNA this March.

“Typically, the entertainers for the Super Bowl do not get a cash payment,” explains Marc Ganis, president of the consultancy Sportscorp Ltd, told MSN.

“This is the kind of exposure that entertainers would give their right arm for … they could do 20 Leno and Letterman appearances and still not reach that [kind of]audience.”

In the advertiser-coveted adults 18-49 demographic, the singer’s mid-game spectacular also squeaked out a victory, grabbing a 41.5 rating, versus the game average of 40.5.

In the world of social networking Super Bowl 2012 broke all Twitter records as fans worldwide sent more than 10,000 tweets per second during the climax of the sport showpiece. According to official statistics released by Twitter, the highest tweets per second came at the end of the NFL season finale, at a record-busting 12,233.

BrandBowl2012 analysed 400,000 tweets based on the “volume of chatter and positive/negative commentary”, and found that Doritos was the most effective brand to advertise on NBC’s Super Bowl telecast, ahead of fashion retailer H&M and car maker Chrysler.

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Doritos ran a series of spots, including one featuring a dog bribing a man with the crisps to conceal the whereabouts of the family cat, while another had a grandmother sling-shooting a baby in a swinging seat to grab a bag of Doritos from a little boy.

But it was the GM ad that showed a Chevy Silverado truck surviving a 2012 Mayan post-apocalyptic scenario that won praise from marketing experts. The spot “really stood out” among a heavy rotation of car commercials, Tim Calkins, marketing professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management told Reuters, which runs a review of Super Bowl ads. In the ad, the truck’s driver looks for his friend, “Dave,” but learns Dave, who drives a Ford, didn’t make it. A pre-game letter from a Ford attorney asked GM not to run the ad, arguing that insurance industry data show it is Ford, and not GM, that makes the safer pickup truck.

In terms of celebrity endorsements, Matthew Broderick played off his iconic film role as Ferris Bueller by calling in sick and spending a day cruising around town in a Honda CR-V. A buff and tattooed soccer star David Beckham posed in his underwear for Swedish fashion retailer H&M. So much for his promise three days ago to stop prancing about half clad – for the sake of his kids.

Brandbowl’s top 10 brand impacts on volume and positivity run as follows:

1. Doritos (48,498 tweets) (Sentiment +29%)
2. H&M (43,536 tweets) (Sentiment +14%)
3. Chrysler (33,943 tweets) (Sentiment +10%)
4. Pepsi (39,242 tweets) (Sentiment +8%)
5. Chevrolet (36,934 tweets) (Sentiment +17%)
6. M&M’s (18,316 tweets) (Sentiment +41%)
7. Budweiser (18,916 tweets) (Sentiment +12%)
8. VW (17,131 tweets) (Sentiment +26%)
9. Coke (18,463 tweets) (Sentiment +4%)
10. Bud Light (15,298 tweets) (Sentiment +18%)

Youtube Video Volkswagon wins fans doggy style.

Youtube Video M&M’s dancing candy ad polled third in an online vote.

The result of the actual sports game, the New York Giants won, 21-17, over the New England Patriots. Forcing Victoria’s Secret supermodel Gisele to defend her player husband Tom Brady. After being taunted by a Giants fan, Gisele retorted, possibly unaware she was being filmed:

“My husband cannot f$@king throw the ball and catch the ball at the same time. I can’t believe they dropped the ball so many times.”

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All Super Bowl 2012 ads can be seen here

Nielsen reveals America’s most liked commercials over the past five years, and the NFL itself tops the list. Of the 144 brands that have advertised during the Super Bowl over the past five years, only a handful of companies have appeared in all of them, and only five hold the distinction of being among the ten best liked Super Bowl ads of the past five years: Volkswagon, Coca-Cola, Doritos, Budweiser, and E*Trade.

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