Supersizing the soft sell

Associated Press

NEW YORK — Cadillac tuned up a classic 1959 Eldorado and borrowed a 30-year-old rock anthem for its new Super Bowl ads.

Pop star Britney Spears reprises Pepsi’s jingles dating as far back as the 1950s. And tax preparer H&R Block plays a version of an aptly named Beatles’ tune from 1966 in its first appearance in the big show.

Some Super Bowl advertisers are hoping to score points Sunday on television’s biggest and most expensive attraction of the year by stirring warm, nostalgic feelings among the 130 million viewers expected to watch at least part of the National Football League championship game.

Ad salesmen at the Fox network, which is broadcasting the game between St. Louis and New England from New Orleans, may be pining for yesteryear, too.

The recession, a pullback in ad spending and competition for ad budgets from the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City starting five days later have depressed Super Bowl ad prices. Some marketers wonder if Americans are ready to party after the Sept. 11 attacks and while America is still at war in Afghanistan.

Fox still had "a couple or three" half-minute commercial spots left Tuesday from the 60 available in the game, according to Jon Nesvig, head of ad sales for Fox Broadcasting. The telecast usually sells out early.

He said the average price in the game was "a little south of $2 million." That would be down from the revised $2.1 million average that industry insiders say CBS got a year ago.

Both prices are below the record $2.2 million average for a 30-second spot that ABC said it got in 2000, when 17 dot-com advertisers flush with venture capital bought 40 percent of the commercial time. The dot-com bust later that year saw many fail, and some who survived have not been back.

But even at just under $2 million for 30 seconds, the Super Bowl towers over the $400,000 that ad buyers say top-rated series shows usually get.

Nielsen Media Research said "Friends" has been the highest-rated prime-time series so far this season with a 15 rating; last year’s Super Bowl had a 40.4. Each rating point represents about 1.06 million homes. Nielsen estimated the Super Bowl’s average audience was 84.3 million, vs. 24.3 million for "Friends."

Besides the big audiences and high prices, the Super Bowl has become known as a showcase for advertising.

"It is the most heavily viewed program of the year, and some people will be watching just for the ads," said Gretchen Hoffman, a marketing executive for the first-time Super Bowl advertiser Universal Orlando Resort.

Critics say the Super Bowl is a huge risk for smaller marketers.

"Brands are developed by touching consumers again and again in their daily lives and not with just one commercial," said Don Pettit, president and chief executive of Sterling Group, a brand consulting firm.

Brewer Anheuser-Busch will be the biggest sponsor this year, with five minutes of ads. Pepsi has three minutes, including one minute for reformulated Lipton Brisk. A half-dozen studios will pitch their movies.

General Motors’ Cadillac division hopes to broaden its customer base with an ad that shows a 1959 Eldorado with signature tail fins breaking from the pack and driving past pricey new Caddy models. The ad features the Led Zeppelin’s energetic "Rock and Roll" from the early 1970s.

In a 90-second ad for Pepsi, Spears dresses for the period as she performs Pepsi jingles from generations past. She is a sweater girl in a 1950s diner pitching Pepsi as the drink "for those who think young." In a modest one-piece swimsuit in a beach scene set in the 1960s, she sings Pepsi has "the taste that beats the others cold."

Dawn Hudson, a top marketer for Pepsi, said the ad resonates with older viewers who remember the original ads as well as youngsters "who like it because it is retro and hip."