This year's Super Bowl commercials featured rambunctious geriatrics, cross-dressing husbands and Jamaicans from Minnesota. But brand mascots, once a staple of the advertising world, were almost completely absent.
At $3.8 million for 30 seconds, a bad Super Bowl commercial can be an expensive marketing mistake. Boston.com's Brand Bowl rated them all for both buzz and sentiment. So which ads were the biggest losers? Read on ...
SodaStream's proposed Super Bowl ad was rejected for denigrating competitors Coke and Pepsi. But its brash advertising isn't the only controversial thing about the Israeli-based maker of soft drink machines.
Like many of us, savvy investors will be watching the Super Bowl with an eye on the ads. Those commercials are about more than brand building: Companies often use the Big Game stage to tout new, innovative products and ideas that you want to know about.
Every year, America gets treated to a Super Bowl side show of TV commercial controversies. Sometimes the ads air, sometimes they don't, but this year, Volkswagen, GoDaddy and PornHub are all getting pre-game publicity out of their Super Bowl commercial offerings.
Chevy's Super Bowl ad poking fun at Ford's pickups has turned into an all-out brawl in Detroit. Has Ford just lost its sense of humor, or is there more at stake here than meets the eye? Actually, there's a lot more -- and some of it's great news.
Between 2002 and 2011, companies spent a whopping $2.5 billion on Super Bowl advertising; this year, a 30-second commercial cost an average of $3.5 million. But what do you get for all that cash. In the case of these eight major advertisers, not as much as they'd hoped.
Hershey has been disturbingly lax in addressing abusive child labor practices in the Africa's cocoa industry, and recently, over 100,000 consumers let the company know they're not pleased. Now the chocolatier is changing its ways -- just in time.
Call it the "second-screen" Super Bowl. About two-thirds of smartphone and tablet owners use their gadgets to do things like text or post on Twitter while watching TV, according to research firm Nielsen. So, for Sunday's game, companies from Coke to Chevy are trying to reach fans on all the "second screens" they have.
It used to be all about surprising game-day viewers with knock-out ads and creating buzz after the final whistle. But lately more advertisers are posting commercials online ahead of the game, trying to build early buzz instead. Which strategy works better? At risk is a tidy sum.
As American Idol continues to fall flat with viewers, advertisers are flocking to the Super Bowl, which may just turn out to be the Hail Mary pass that Fox Broadcasting needs.
Showbiz veteran Betty White has been cresting quite the popularity wave lately. After work on TV shows like The Golden Girls, Super Bowl ads and a guest-hosting stint on Saturday Night Live, she has landed a two-book deal with Penguin.
It was controversial for CBS to accept an anti-abortion ad from group Focus on the Family. But long before the game started, Focus had already accomplished its goal of communicating a pro-life message through the vehicle of affable college-football star Tim Tebow and his mother.
Are these spots still worth the jaw-dropping $3 million and up for 30 seconds to reach 100 million viewers? It depends on what you're selling -- and how well you make your pitch. Here's why only some advertisers will come away winners in the big game.
Audi's "Green Police" ad campaign, featuring green-uniformed cops who give energy-saving tips, will launch during the Super Bowl. But in a historic faux pas, the German carmaker has picked a name with some unpleasant Nazi-era connotations.
What type of content will get an commercial banned from the Super Bowl? As domain name registrar Go Daddy discovered, one answer apparently involves mixing an effeminate ex-football player and lingerie.
For the past week, CBS has been under fire for accepting an ad, starring college football star Tim Tebow, from the Christian-conservative group Focus on the Family opposing abortion. Now a gay dating site is taking advantage of the dust-up, asking: If them, why not us?
With many advertisers sitting out the big game to save money, commercial prices are down this year. But a recent study shows that avoiding the Super Bowl, even in a recession, may be the wrong play. Turns out, the best defense is a funny offense on the first Sunday in February.
The price of a 30-second Super Bowl ad dipped to slightly from a record $3 million in 2009, according to a study from ad researcher TNS Media Intelligence. But this year, the time allotted to ads could expand to a new record.
While watching the Super Bowl this coming February, some viewers may notice a conspicuous absence: PepsiCo, which has advertised during the past 23 Super Bowl shows, won't be running any commercials for its bubbly drinks.
