Super Bowl XLIII: Only 18 more days until USA Today’s Ad Meter gets an agency fired.

When it comes to the Super Bowl, I have a few peeves: The choice of halftime bands, games that are only played in cities with perfect weather, and The USA Today Ad Meter. Yes, ads on this one day are treated differently than they otherwise would be, but the main problem has become this damn survey started in 1989.

It’s now the one metric marketing directors use to gauge the success of their brand’s ad(s) that day among consumers. (USA TODAY gets 234 adult volunteers in Chicago and McLean, VA to measure their reactions to ads that run during the Super Bowl. Volunteers use handheld meters to register how much they liked or disliked an ad.)

Basically, this survey makes or breaks agencies. That a director of marketing relies on a survey they wouldn’t otherwise use the rest of the year is in a word, unreal. So let me get this straight, we’re gonna only look at two cities to help determine what the country is thinking?

Yeah, that works.

It’s a joke first of all because there are now other voting sites that sample a far larger audience, and which also have different outcomes compared to Ad Meter. (YouTube’s own adblitz or Spike where people can vote for their favorite.) While brands like Kraft, GM and Fedex chose to opt out of running any spots this year and thus avoid FadMeter hell, others will be watching closely Monday morning. Worse, an ad that happens to fall in the middle of the pack will also likely be viewed as a failure.

(On a sidenote, let’s REALLY make AdMeter count. I propose a new rule this year, similar to how the team who wins MLB’s All-Star game gets home field advantage in the World Series. The brand that does the worst in the voting gets its category banned for one year from advertising during the Super Bowl. So for example, if that travesity of a spot known as the King Pharmaceuticals roving heart attack gang were to finish last, there would be no pharma ads of any kind allowed the following year. Brands want to be competitive? Well, what’s more of an incentive than making sure you don’t blow a shot at next year’s game for your category.)

But it’s not just the Ad Meter contributing to an agency’s perceived success/failure, the day itself is an anomaly when compared to the rest of the year:

1) Name another day when the attention of 90-100+ million people are focused on ads over a three hour period, and thus skewing how people would otherwise react to them because of the sheer number of people watching. (You’ll likely be watching them with a group of friends/people vs. the one or two you normally would with regular programming.)

2) When you watch ads at other times of the year, do you compare them to the spots around them? I don’t. They do on Super Bowl Sunday though. (“That Bud spot they just had on sucked, but the movie trailer was cool.”)

3) Why don’t agency’s try and produce Super Bowl quality spots the rest of the year? I don’t mean lavish productions because of costs, obviously, but thematically. Shouldn’t you be swinging for the fences each time out and not just at the Super Bowl?

4) When you watch ads at any other time of the year, do you compare their categories? Like, a financial services spot that runs right after a Sonic ad? Of course not. During the ‘Big Game’ though, the brand categories are forgotten and become about two main themes: humor and tenderness. Grandpa shares a Coke with his grandson? Cute puppies frolicking? Awwww. Tenderness for the win! Babies puking? Budweiser d-bags gawking at bikinis and then getting their comeuppance? Chimp laser pointers aimed at a guy’s nuts? Humor for the win!

Chimps or not this year, I only hope they have a 3-D spot for Pepsi. Why, I bet something like that would go No. 1 in Chicago and McLean.

Tags: USA Today Ad Meter