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For some, Super Bowl ad is just a start

NEW YORK - If Miss Piggy is dressing up like Jessica Simpson, monkeys are rampaging around office cubicles and networking druids are yammering into cell phones, it can only mean one thing. Super Bowl ads are on the way.

Despite nagging worries about declining TV viewership as more people plug in to their iPods and the Internet, the Super Bowl has proven to be a resilient stronghold of mass media. The game, which airs Feb. 5 on Walt Disney Co.'s ABC, is expected to draw some 90-million viewers, along with advertisers who want to reach them.

Super Bowl ads - estimated at about $2.5-million for a 30-second spot this year - cost way more than the top price of $750,000 for a spot during the Olympics, which start on NBC just five days later. For smaller marketers, that can make up a significant chunk of their annual advertising budget, but there's a certain cachet to being seen during the Super Bowl, which is the most watched broadcast of the year.

To make sure they get their money's worth several advertisers plan to leverage the effect of their spots this year by rolling out online promotions and other tie-ins.

Emerald Nuts, the snack food brand of Diamond Foods Inc., and men's deodorant Degree are returning to the Super Bowl after successful debuts in last year's broadcast, and are doing more online.

Degree took a chance last year with an oddball set of ads featuring doll-like figures who never took risks. While they weren't a huge hit with critics, the ads wound up generating a lot of interest online, said Kevin George, head of marketing at Unilever, Degree's parent.

This time, Degree will be making its new ad - which depicts daily life in a city populated entirely by stunt men - widely available for viewing and downloading on the Internet, including a "director's cut" and other variations, George said.

"It really helped get the message out there in a different way," George said of the online interest in last year's spots, which featured characters such as a "Mama's Boy" who got pushed around in a shopping cart by his mother.

"Not everybody's going to love your ads," George said. "We're concerned that the consumers we're talking to get the ad, and research showed that they did."

Coming back to the Super Bowl was an easy decision after seeing sales for Degree jump 35 percent last year, which George attributed partly to the effect from the Super Bowl ad.

"It's arguably the best, most efficient way to launch a campaign," George said.

Emerald Nuts won attention last year with an ad featuring a talking unicorn. It is putting 10 percent of its annual ad-buying budget into the Super Bowl, stepping up a recent campaign that uses the letters of its brand to spell out surreal situations. Coming up on Super Bowl Sunday: Eagle-eyed Machete Enthusiasts Recognize A Little Druid Networking Under The Stairs.

Michael Mendes, chief executive of Diamond Foods, said the company hopes to capitalize on the word-puzzle aspect of the campaign by running ads featuring the letter jumble next to the crossword puzzle in the New York Times, and inviting readers to submit variations online.

Also, the goofy characters in the ad - several machete-wielding businessmen and a fast-talking druid - will appear in an online ad campaign around the same time as the game, Mendes said. He's also hoping to get more for his money by persuading retailers to showcase his product around the time of the game, since they hope the ad will stir up sales.

Another of last year's first-timers, CareerBuilder, is coming back with a quirky campaign backed up with an online component. The online job-search company will air more ads featuring monkeys as office workers, while running a guerilla-marketing style e-mail chain letter featuring animated monkeys who talk.

Tim Spengler, executive vice president of Initiative, an ad-buying agency owned by the Interpublic Group of Companies Inc., said marketers are adapting their campaigns to deal with an increasingly fragmented audience.

"Media is becoming a more personalized experience, but in a communications program there is still going to be a mix of mass awareness with more one-to-one communications," Spengler said. "For the marketer, the art is going to be in the mix of mass and personalized media."

Other notable ads in the Super Bowl this year:

DOVE SOAP: Continues its "Campaign for Real Beauty" campaign with spots focused on improving self-esteem among teenage girls.

TOYOTA MOTOR CORP.: A warm-hearted spot featuring a Hispanic father and son who switch easily between Spanish and English.

ALEVE: The pain reliever owned by Bayer AG is using a spot featuring actor Leonard Nimoy.

PIZZA HUT: The unit of Yum! Brands Inc., which owns KFC and Taco Bell, is again showcasing the Muppets. The ad also features singer Jessica Simpson, who appeared alongside the Jim Henson characters two years ago. Miss Piggy and Simpson will wear matching outfits.

[Last modified January 21, 2006, 01:33:17]