Bud, Tide, Pepsi Winning Brands in Super Bowl Polls

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Along with the New York Giants, Budweiser, Tide and Pepsi came out the big winners in Super Bowl XLII.

Closely watched advertising polls showed on Monday that U.S.audiences went for humor above all else, with four of the top fivespots in USA Today’s Ad Meter taken by commercials aiming for laughs.

Anheuser-Busch Cos Inc’s Budweiser spot showing a Dalmatian trainingan underdog Clydesdale horse — the beer’s mascot — scored the highestmarks on the Ad Meter, which tracks the second-by-second response tocommercials from a viewer panel.

Second through fifth places went to advertisements from Fedex, Bridgestone, Doritos, and Bud Light.

Another review, from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School ofManagement, rated commercials from Tide, which featured a talkingstain, and E-trade, which starred a day-trading toddler with anattitude, among the top spots for the year.

"Overall it was a great year for Super Bowl advertising," said professor Tim Calkins, who leads the Kellogg review.

Broadcast by Fox, the Super Bowl came down to the final seconds,with the New York Giants pulling off an upset of the New EnglandPatriots in what will probably be the year’s most-watched TV event inthe United States.

At an average price of $2.7 million for 30-second spot, theadvertisers and the agencies that created the spots were anxious tomake a lasting impression with audiences and win honors in poll ratings.

TiVo Inc, using second-by-second audience measurement data fromsubscribers, rated the spot from E-trade, as well as a PepsiCocommercial with singer Justin Timberlake and a Doritos commercial knownas "Mouse Trap," as the most popular.

And among bloggers, Pepsi scored the most buzz during and after theSuper Bowl with its advertisements, according to Collective Intellect.

As always, however, some companies dropped the ball, creating eitherforgettable or poorly received commercials with the millions they spent.

A pair of animated commercials from Salesgenie.com landed in thebottom two spots in an AOL poll. One showed a couple of panda bears,speaking with Asian accents as they worried about going out ofbusiness, while the other showed an American boss chewing out hisIndian employee.

An online poll by The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, found CareerBuilder ahead in the rankings of worst commercial.

The spot for the online job site run by Gannett Co, Tribune Co,McClatchy Co and Microsoft Corp showed a heart jumping out of asecretary’s chest, hopping over to her boss, and holding up a sign thatsays: "I Quit."

(Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

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