Adland_ Searching for the Meaning of Life on a Branded Planet - James P. Othmer [88]
Understandably, Cramer-Krasselt’s take on the Ad Meter is different from that of the folks at DDB Chicago, whose work for Budweiser and Bud Light has established it as something of an Ad Meter dynasty. The DDB Group’s creative director, Mark Gross, takes obvious pride while rolling off stats about his agency’s success with the meter, and he admits that it takes a certain type of spot to crack the code. “Visually driven comedy, based upon a simple story line, with a surprise that leaves you smiling.” It also helps to have a seemingly limitless budget that allows Bud Light to sometimes shoot several dozen spots and do thorough pretesting. Gross said spots that score highest in a pretesting environment that, incidentally, is not unlike the Ad Meter methodology are the ones most likely to make it on the air. For instance, prior to the 2008 game, Anheuser-Busch claimed that its Clydesdale “Rocky” entry for the mother brand scored higher in pretesting than any previous A-B spot, and the game-night meter results would prove it right.
“Whether you’re shooting for it or not, the meter is a reality,” said Jill Nykoliation, president of the Toronto ad boutique Juniper Park, whose Frito Lay client is a regular Super Bowl advertiser. “There’s nothing we’d do differently as far as tapping into the essence of the brand or the psyche of the public, but because it’s a Super Bowl spot, we might ultimately choose to produce the spot different.”
One would think that a polling device as important as the Ad Meter would be incredibly sophisticated and the methodology intricate and complex. But according to USA Today’s polling editor, Jim Norman, the only difference between this current Ad Meter and the one used when it was introduced twenty-one years ago is that this year’s gadget is wireless.
“On a device a little bigger than an iPod, the audience rates a spot on a scale of 1 to 7 (later prorated to a 1-to-10 scale),” Norman explained. “The score from each device reflects the highest point reached during a spot, usually the punch line of a joke [or the point at which a woman’s breasts are most seductively presented]. The final score for each spot reflects an average of the highest grades given by each individual.”
The recruitment process is equally straightforward. Norman says that in an attempt to reflect the makeup of the ninety-three-million-plus watching the game, they recruit about 60 percent men and 40 percent women of various ages, economic backgrounds, and races. None of whom, apparently, have anything better to do on the de facto national holiday that is Super Sunday.
Why test in McLean? Because USA Today has its offices there. And is the second location based on a desire to reflect regional diversity? Not according to Norman. Usually it reflects a desire on USA Today’s part to go to someplace fun, affordable, and convenient.
Anyway, according to Norman, the spot that recorded the highest score ever is the 1995 Pepsi commercial that featured a boy sucking so hard to get the last drop that he sucked himself right into the bottle. The score was 9.66.
By comparison, 2007’s top spot was Bud Light’s “Crabs Worshipping Ice Chest,” which scored 8.56; the lowest, at 4.05, was for Salesgenie.com’s lone spot. Apparently inspired in some strange, self-destructive way by his results, Vinod Gupta, the chairman and CEO of Salesgenie’s parent company, infoUSA, vowed to do even worse in 2008, the results of which are discussed below.
Of course the Ad Meter, despite its influence, has been subjected to the wrath of many agency and brand executives over the years. It has been called everything from irrelevant to fascist. Does Norman agree? “It is,” the veteran pollster