The Super Bowl is an annual contest featuring huge, heavily padded men trying to run each other over while chasing around a small, oddly-shaped bag of leather. It’s fun, but often not nearly as entertaining as the commercials sandwiched between the grunting and groaning.

Canadians without satellite feeds are often not part of the over 100 million worldwide audience that gets to see the much buzzed about American ads. Call it pity or good business sense, but some marketers responded by airing their U.S. commercials on the Canadian feed.

Although the audience is tiny compared to that in the U.S., 3.56 million Canadians tuned in, according to BBM Canada.

Of course, air time on Super Bowl broadcaster Global also went for a premium: A 30-second spot on the network cost $90,000.

However, while popular, the game is nowhere near the event it is in the U.S. Sunni Boot, president of Toronto-based media buying agency ZenithOptimedia Canada says her company, for one, tends to focus on spot buys for clients. She adds, ‘You get your diehard football watchers but it’s not the same national momentum.’

Among the marketers airing U.S. work on both the American and Canadian broadcasts were Pepsi QTG, Frito-Lay, and Procter & Gamble.

P&G, which broke a spot for its Charmin Ultra brand of toilet tissue, bought into the Super Bowl for the first time ever. It did so in part because 35% of the game’s viewers are women.

The spot, called ‘Snap,’ by Publicis New York, featured a quarterback getting distracted by tissue (instead of the customary towel) hanging out of the snapper’s waistline. The tagline is ‘the softest and strongest Charmin for your end zone’ and it was filmed at Toronto’s SkyDome.

Gord Meyer, director of marketing for P&G, says that as part of a drive to make the product more mainstream, the Super Bowl ad aimed to initiate trial and get new users.

‘In a category which is low involvement, you need to keep finding creative ways to do that,’ he says.

Meyer says P&G is trying to change its image and its approach to creative. ‘P&G has a history of creating dowdy advertising with a functional benefit. We know that doesn’t work in the new world. [The Super Bowl ad] is the tip of the iceberg in terms of new marketing approaches.’

‘The old P&G thinking was,’We can talk ourselves out of the Super Bowl pretty easily – what a waste of money.’ And what we’ve said is let’s turn that on its head and reframe it and say, ‘How can we exploit the Super Bowl in a way that no one else has?”

Humour was the common theme as it invariably is for Super Bowl advertising. Pepsi, a Super Bowl staple, aired two humorous spots for its flagship soft drink. ‘Just Lunch,’ featured a dog and a victimized cat and ‘Vacuum’ featured comedian Dave Chapelle and a randy robot.

‘This year’s ads highlight that Pepsi goes with everything from food to fun, which is what the Super Bowl is all about,’ says Chris Hamilton, director of marketing for the Toronto-based company. ‘These ads put the spotlight on the product itself and show why people drink Pepsi.’

Throwing three spots at Canadian viewers, Frito-Lay aired creative for its Lays Stax potato chip (previously aired in the U.S.) and Tostitos Bite-Sized Rounds, plus a re-run of a Canadian-produced spot for its Doritos brand.

The BBDO New York-produced Stax spot, called ‘Casino,’ featured comedian Dana Carvey playing two different characters and using the chips as playing cards to show how creative you can be with the product.

Before anyone decries the lack of made-for-Canada ads, there is good news: Toronto-based Downtown Partners DDB created the number one-rated Super Bowl spot (according to the industry bellwether USA Today Ad Meter). Bud Light’s ‘Good Dog’ was seen by millions on Sunday night. The bad news? It didn’t air on the Canadian feed.

Still, as coups go, Dan Pawych, CD, says it’s huge. ‘It’s an honour to be there because the Super Bowl is such a huge event.’ He says the spot continues Anheuser-Busch’s ‘great lengths’ strategy. (For more, see Campaign Strategy, page 3.)

While Budweiser had six spots on the U.S. feed, other marketers down south questioned the high price (an estimated U.S. $2.3 million for 30 seconds). However, marketers airing U.S. spots on the Canadian feeds say they’re happy with the value they got.

‘While it’s not inexpensive, we feel it is a worthwhile investment because it does reinforce our brand image to millions of Canadians during a really fun event,’ says Pepsi’s Hamilton. ‘Some other expensive shows may have reach but they may not have that great link between fun and food.’

Strategy brought together three Monday morning quarterbacks to tell us whose money was well spent, who threw up a Hail Mary and whether they laughed and pointed or just laughed.

Joan Fedoruk, president, Big House Communications, Vancouver

Big House is an independent ad agency. Clients include Money Mart and Pepsi.

[The wisdom of advertising on the Super Bowl] depends on the marketer. If you have a product that gets immediate water cooler discussion, then it’s an appropriate time to spend your money. The TD Waterhouse ad had great frequency going and it would be a good ad any other time, but they lost that ability to resonate with the audience because of the fact it was an inappropriate message. Nobody likes to talk about their finances in a social situation. So that was a downer.

[The Charmin ad] was one of those where the emotional tone was appropriate for the event. It attacked the seriousness of the game head on and created a very unique situation that was appropriate for discussion. At the same time they addressed the audience while presenting the benefit of the product. Nobody walked away from that without knowing that Charmin is soft.

The audience response at the event I was at was very polarized. The women thought, ‘that was just disturbing’ and the men thought it was highly comical. So immediately discussion took place.

[How can you decide whether it’s worth paying that much to run an existing ad?] If you can sit back and be objective about your ad and say it’s highly noticeable, it’s a well-known brand with a history of entertaining advertising, it’s a socially acceptable conversation topic, it has high entertainment value and you know it’s been talked about before – then it’s an appropriate use. If it doesn’t measure up on all five of those counts then it’s an inappropriate use of your media dollar.

Kelly O’Keefe, president, Emergence, Richmond, Va.

Emergence is a brand strategy company with creative and loyalty marketing services. Clients include Popeye’s, AT&T, Bloomingdale’s and Barnes & Noble.

It was a very disappointing year [on the American feed]. There were a lot of commercials that were flat, or that had made their debut prior to the Super Bowl. And in general there were not as many commercials. What we saw was an awful lot of CBS commercials, which suggests it was far from a sellout. And that in itself says something about people migrating away from this as a venue for advertising.

Anheuser-Busch did a good job capturing the evening, although I would say even their efforts paled in comparison to prior years. They had some good spots like ‘Good Dog’ which ran early in the game. In general, the humour did pretty well although there were some striking non-humour spots like IBM’s ‘Muhammad Ali’ spot promoting Linux.

It’s high time that people recognize that women are watching the Super Bowl in great numbers. From that point of view [P&G’s Charmin ad is] right on the money. They might have picked something that was a little higher interest than toilet paper, but that’s one of the challenges that you have with several of the spots – toilet paper, razor blades, impotency drugs.

The point is advertisers forget that this is a social viewing event and not a private one. And it kind of changes our disposition. So do we really want to get engaged with a toilet paper commercial in a social viewing event? Maybe not. It’s a little more fun to crack jokes about a dog who goes after someone’s crotch.

Simon Creet, associate CD, TBWAToronto

With a few exceptions [on the Canadian feed] it was pretty underwhelming. It was the first time in recent memory that the game actually stole the show.

‘I didn’t think much of the Frito-Lay spot [‘Casino’], especially considering what it must have cost them to get Dana Carvey. It just felt dated.

The Charmin spot [‘Snap’] was possibly the most disturbing commercial and tagline I’d ever seen. It was pretty bad. I just can’t help but think it would have turned off so many men. There were some pretty horrible camera angles, a lot of butt shots, bum jokes – when the testosterone’s flowing, it’s probably not the best time for a whole lot of bum stuff.

You have to do something that is different. I think back to some of the dot-com work – I’ll remember the E-trade monkey and Outpost gerbils forever.

You don’t necessarily have to be that outrageous, but you do need to do something that’s never been done before.

I think it’s a bit of a missed opportunity [for Canadian marketers]. But the timing is a bit odd. With original Canadian TV ads down so much, the opportunity to actually launch during the Super Bowl often doesn’t get worked into marketing plans.