The Multimillion-Dollar Super Bowl Gamble

In 1999 and 2000, a new genre of ads began infiltrating Super Bowl ad Top 10 lists, helping make their companies breakthrough success stories. The new ads on the scene were of a very different breed from traditional ads of the time. Well-established products like Coke, Pepsi and Doritos didn’t need to be introduced to the viewing audience, but newer dotcoms found they couldn’t rely solely on their names to get recognition. Instead, they needed to rely on clever campaigns to establish their brands.

Monster.com had just the right mix of ingredients when it aired its Super Bowl ad in 1999. While it’s hard to imagine job-hunting these days without this next breakthrough ad contender, Monster.com was virtually unknown when it aired a commercial during the 1999 Super Bowl, but after this attention-grabbing ad, the company was well on its way to becoming one of the hottest job sites on the internet.

• Ad Title: "When I Grow Up” (released in 1999)
• Company: Monster.com
• Ad Rate: $1.6 million for a 30-second spot; Monster bought three spots
• What It Was All About: This commercial features young children looking directly into the camera and sharing their dreams of what they want to be when they grow up. Instead of the typical responses like “fireman” or “doctor” or “teacher,” however, these kids said things like, “When I grow up, I want to file all day.”
• Why It Succeeded: This spot quickly garnered the attention of Super Bowl viewers because it inspired them to want to be more, and to think back to what they'd always dreamed of doing for a career and possibly giving it a second chance. “Monster wasn’t really on the map before this ad, which was very captivating and really drove a lot of attention to Monster and made them a leading job search site,” says McKee. Monster.com’s former CEO, Jeff Taylor, said the ads were one of the best decisions his company has made: That Sunday night, after the game was over, Monster.com was processing almost 2,900 job searches per minute. And although the number of searches per minute leveled off to 1,500 later that week, that was still 400 more searches per minute than before the Super Bowl ads ran.
• Watch It Now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJB0CzlzSwY

One important lesson from the dotcom ad era is that a Super Bowl ad campaign can’t rely on the ad alone. This next spot clearly illustrates why, if a dotcom wants to survive the past the glory of Super Bowl ad time, they have to follow up their ad with consistent branding messages. E*Trade did that by launching an integrated marketing campaign that included sponsorships, direct marketing and advertising. And although E*Trade faced some tough times after the internet bubble burst in 2002 and the mania over online stock trading subsided, the company has managed to stay afloat and is profitable once again.

• Ad Title: "Monkey” (released in 2000)
• Company: E*Trade
• Ad Rate: $2.1 million for a 30-second spot
• What It Was All About: Two older men are sitting in a garage when a monkey shows up wearing an E*Trade shirt. The monkey turns on a boom box that blasts “La Cucaracha” from the speakers, and the two men begin goofily clapping along while the monkey dances around. The punch line of the spot? “Well, we just wasted 2 million bucks. What are you doing with your money?”
• Why It Succeeded: Humor and strategy were the keys to this ad’s success. “The punch line was a strategic statement that not only drew your attention to them but actually gave people a sense of their business model and their economic value--it was a smart ad,” says McKee. As for humor, it’s difficult to watch this ad and keep a straight face. Though E*Trade lost money in 2001 and 2002, the company has since bounced back to profitability. This year, their annual revenue is expected to top $3 billion for the first time ever.
• Watch It Now: http://youtube.com/watch?v=BnQMq5wtZcg

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While humor is certainly a key ingredient to most Super Bowl ads, so is controversy. And there is one company that does controversial ads the best: GoDaddy.com. Whether people love it or hate it, their Janet Jackson spoof sure got critics talking. Though their ad pushed the censors just about as far as they could, you have to give them credit for establishing their brand in one simple Super Bowl ad. In just 30-seconds, GoDaddy.com let the world know who they were and created instant buzz heard 'round the world.

• Ad Title: "Broadcast Hearing" (released in 2005)
• Company: GoDaddy.com
• Ad Rate: $2.4 million for a 30-second spot. The ad was supposed to run twice, but Fox was forced to pull the second spot, set to air in the fourth quarter, after NFL officials complained. (The ad hadn't been pre-screened by league officials, and they deemed it "inappropriate.")
• What It Was All About: GoDaddy’s “Broadcast Hearing” was a spoof of the Janet Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” from the previous year’s Super Bowl half-time show. In the skit, a buxom “GoDaddy Girl” stands before a congressional committee on broadcast censorship in a skimpy GoDaddy.com tank top, only to have one of her straps come loose and make the members of the committee a bit uncomfortable. 
• Why It Succeeded: Controversy paid off for this dotcom. After the ad aired, the number of visitors to GoDaddy.com increased by nearly 400 percent. On Super Bowl Sunday, the site welcomed 140,000 visitors, compared to its regular Sunday traffic of just about 30,000 visitors. The controversy surrounding the ad in the weeks following the big game increase traffic even more. When news of the second ad being pulled broke on Monday, the site got 590,000 visitors in one day. Today, GoDaddy.com is the world’s largest domain name registrar. And the controversy continues: The site has submitted three different Super Bowl ads so far for this year's game; the first two were already rejected by CBS, the station airing the game this year, and the company hopes their third and supposedly tamest ad will be accepted.
• Watch It Now: http://youtube.com/watch?v=3_xyYaPwLKU

The countdown to Super Bowl Sunday is on. So far, there aren’t any new dotcoms on the lineup, but there should still be plenty of controversy: From the third attempt by GoDaddy to make it on air to a spoof for Nationwide Insurance with Britney Spear’s estranged husband, Kevin Federline, to rumors of a supposed marriage proposal live on the air, you may think twice about taking a bathroom break.

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