It Does the Trick : Pepsi Spot Wins Super Bowl Poll

Pepsi-Cola was the high scorer in this year’s Super Bowl of advertising, according to a poll conducted immediately after Sunday’s game.

Creative Marketing Consultants said Pepsi produced the event’s most memorable advertising, followed by Budweiser and Ford. No doubt repetition played a role in viewer recall. Pepsi and Budweiser were also the biggest advertisers, with Pepsi airing seven spots during the broadcast and Budweiser, including Bud Lite, airing five.

Advertisers paid as much as $1.2 million for 30-second spots during the telecast of the annual championship football game, which attracts huge audiences. According to A.C. Nielsen Co., the game had a rating of 46.1, with 138.48 million people tuned in at some point during the game.

Advertisers gambling on spots in the fourth quarter were rewarded. NBC-TV said the audience grew during the second half of the game as the Pittsburgh Steelers briefly rallied against the Dallas Cowboys. NBC said 42% of U.S. households saw the beginning of the game and that 48.9% of households watched Dallas win it. The fourth quarter is considered risky for advertisers because if the game is a blowout, viewership will fall off.

Creative Marketing Consultants said 58% of 500 people surveyed remembered the Pepsi spots, one of which showed a goldfish performing tricks for a drop of Pepsi. Of those surveyed, 48% remembered Budweiser spots and 23% remembered Ford.

A spot by Kinko’s, which relied heavily on special effects to dramatize the evolving workplace, was among the least memorable, according to Creative Marketing Consultants. Only 1% of viewers surveyed remembered the spot, which cost Kinko’s $700,000 to make, nearly three times the amount it typically spends on an ad.