"Further review" on Monday didn't necessarily sort out the winners and losers of the Super Bowl.
At least not whether TV viewers were the winners or losers after watching The Big Game's advertisements.
The Super Bowl advertising arbiters gathered for Salt Lake-based Richter7's "AdBowl VIII" had varied opinions about individual ads, and a couple of top execs have differing rulings on their overall quality.
Dave Newbold, president and creative director, spoke as if he saw a few good players — if not a bunch of All-Stars, at least not many bench-warmers.
"I think there weren't as many breakthrough spots, but I don't think there were as many bad spots as there have been in past years, so it was a good crowd of spots overall," he said. "I would bet you a lot of the advertisers believe they got their money's worth."
But Peggy Lander, partner and executive vice president of client services, spoke as if she saw the advertising equivalent of the Cincinnati Bengals, with few first-stringers seeing action.
"I was disappointed with the ads overall," she said. "I don't think they were as strong as in years past. There wasn't a campaign feel to a lot of them, and many of them didn't sell the product. They were based on entertainment value rather than selling."
Although individual opinions varied widely, the Richter crew generally gave high marks to ads from McDonald's, PS2, Pepsi Twist (Ozzy Osbourne with Donnie and Marie Osmond), FedEx, H&R Block and Reebok, plus a couple of anti-drug ads.
On the low end were those from Charles Schwab, Honda, Gatorade, Hanes, Levi's, AT&T Wireless, Sony and Subway ("Down with Jared! Down with Jared!" was a brief chant when that ad was replayed Monday).
Newbold's favorite? The H&R Block ad featuring Willie Nelson. He also said he liked the Reebok "office linebacker" spot, "but it sold laughs, not shoes."
"The bottom line is it's gotta sell or it doesn't matter how creative it is," he said. "You can get attention, but if attention doesn't translate, it's useless."
Humor was the running back most advertisers used to try to score. Both Lander and Newbold find that appropriate for a festive Super Bowl atmosphere. But both noted that the anti-drug ads stood out from the pack because of their seriousness.
"There's a really heartfelt message in that, and something we as parents can certainly relate to, especially if you have teenagers," Landers said of a spot showing parents getting the positive results of a home pregnancy test of their daughter who used drugs.
"I think advertisers will always try to use humor, but to that point, a couple of spots that stood out were the serious ones, the anti-drug spots, because they were tucked inside all those humorous ones," Newbold said. "So that's a good strategy, too. And to sell the avoidance of drug use anytime is appropriate, I don't care what venue."
The Super Bowl proved to be a big victory for the Tampa Bay Bucs on the field, while advertisers spent big bucks on their pitches. This year's 30-second slots sold for between $2.1 million and $2.2 million, about 10 percent more than last year. For the second consecutive year, Anheuser-Busch was the game's largest advertiser, with 11 spots.
About 40 percent of the game's commercial spots were bought by four advertising behemoths: Anheuser-Busch, General Motors Corp., Sony Corp. and PepsiCo.
"Being in the Super Bowl is being in the spotlight for many ad agencies and companies or brands, and I think there's a little bit of a fear factor in putting yourself out so strongly with the high expectations that the audience has now and all the hype and hoopla with the ads," Lander said.
Some companies simply rumbled, stumbled, bumbled and ultimately fumbled.
"Frankly, a lot of them that didn't do well lacked what I call a concept," Newbold said. "It was sort of a me-too, ho-hum, been-there/done-that kind of a thing. There were a handful of boring ones I thought I never would have used my money for."
"A lot of them were not entertaining, either in a serious way, like the anti-drug spots, or a humorous way," Lander said. "If it has no value — if you're just sitting there watching it and it's not doing anything for you emotionally, either one way or the other — then you've wasted your money because you haven't connected with people."
Contributing: Associated Press.
E-MAIL: bwallace@desnews.com