Budweiser's Dog and Pony Show Takes Top Ad Meter Spot

The Patriots' streak was broken, but Anheuser-Busch's was not.

In the high-stakes world of Super Bowl advertising, it aired the best-liked Super Bowl ad for a record 10th-consecutive year, according to results of USA TODAY'S exclusive Super Bowl Ad Meter real-time consumer focus group testing.

Unlike many of its previous winners, A-B's big winner this time didn't tickle the funny bone, but it certainly plucked the heart strings.

The ad featured a Dalmatian who becomes personal trainer to a dejected draft horse eager to make the team pulling the famous Budweiser beer wagon.

In a nod to millions of boomer viewers, the valiant steed trains to the theme from the movie Rocky. And like Rocky, it won big.

"Ten in a row is a dream," said A-B's Bob Lachky, chief creative officer. "It's validation of the brand strategies we have in place and that Clydesdales are America's favorite icon.

"It is a spot about tradition, about the little guy succeeding," Lachky said. "There's a real era of cynicism right now, and America was ready for this message. It has a message about trying harder."

The Clydesdale ad "had a beginning, a middle and an end," said Richard Lackner, a teacher from Downers Grove, Ill. "It told a little story and got you to root for the underdog, actually underhorse."

Indeed, no advertiser in the game did. But for a change, A-B faced serious competition for the top slot. A FedEx ad featuring giant pigeons chaotically trying to deliver overnight packages placed second. A Bridgestone tire ad that finished third showed a forest full of critters screaming when a beloved squirrel almost gets hit by a car.

And a year-old Doritos spot made by a consumer cracked the top five. The ad, in which a giant rat tackles a chip eater, finished third last year in Doritos' make-your-own Super Bowl ad contest.

Arguably, A-B may be slipping — or the competition is stiffer. Only three of its commercials landed in Ad Meter's top 10 this go-round. Last year, seven of its spots landed there.

For A-B, it's become an annual ritual whose formula is far less secretive than that of its brews. First, A-B stacks the Super Bowl ad deck by buying the most media time of any advertiser — seven commercials. Next, it orders up roughly 20 top-flight ads from its agencies — typically, with strong punch lines or knock-out sight gags. Finally, it tests, re-tests and tweaks the ads until finally, it's narrowed them to the very best.

Some 37 advertisers paid a record price — an average $2.7 million per 30 seconds — for the privilege of sharing the stage with the New England Patriots and New York Giants. A estimated 90 million Super Bowl viewers were shown 54 commercials.

Even as the Super Bowl is the stage for the National Football League's championship, it also has evolved into the unofficial setting for the national ad title.

Many of the ads were filled with bizarre acts of violence, totally gross endings and perhaps the strangest collection of creepy critters to ever crawl their way onto the Super Bowl commercial stage.

When new, knockout Super Bowl commercial concepts are few, it's common for marketers to look in one direction for help: Hollywood.

That might explain why it seems the biggest gathering of celebrities this side of the Academy Awards showed up in Super Bowl spots, from Justin Timberlake for Pepsi to Carmen Electra for Ice Breakers to Shaquille O'Neal for Coke's Glacéau Vitaminwater.

But not one ad with a celebrity so much as cracked Ad Meter's Top Five.

More than 20 celebrities — from movie stars to sports heroes to top singers — showed up in this year's Super Bowl spots. In most cases, the sole purpose of some celebrities seemed to be to show how much humiliation they could endure.

In the Pepsi spot, Timberlake has his crotch painfully walloped on a post not once, not twice, but three times. In a Vitaminwater spot, giant O'Neal finds himself competing with pint-size jockeys in a horse race. And in T-Mobile's ad, NBA All-Star Dwyane Wade can't get Charles Barkley off the phone.

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By Bruce Horovitz, USA TODAY