Despite new entrants, marketing experts say Super Bowl ads disappointed

Budweiser and Bud Light once again dominated the Super Bowl ads, but it was the entry of amateurs that caught the eye of several marketing experts asked about the annual advertising showdown, which some said didn't pack the punch of previous years.

A group of advertising faculty at Michigan State University voted as their favorite a spot featuring the comic Carlos Mencia teaching a class of immigrants how to ask for Anheuser-Busch Cos.'s Bud Light, saying it cleverly mixed humor with repetitions of the brand name.

Overall, however, Michigan State advertising instructor Dave Regan said he was "truly not that impressed" with this year's crop.

"There was nothing that gave me the big 'wow' factor," said Regan, who worked in TV advertising for 20 years before taking up teaching.

Of particular interest, he said, was a pair of amateur-produced ads for Doritos, one of which aired early in the game showing a chip-munching driver distracted by a passing woman.

"Giving amateurs a shot at producing this stuff is great," Regan said, adding that it was healthy to open up the playing field to "unjaded minds."

Other experts also welcomed the YouTube-inspired infusion of new ideas into Super Bowl advertising, but some were skeptical about whether this was the beginning of a new wave of ads generated by users or more of a one-time event.

"As a marketing professor it was interesting, but as a consumer I'm not so sure," said Ambar Rao, head of the marketing faculty at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis. ...

•	Despite new entrants, marketing experts say Super Bowl ads disappointed Associated Press, Monday, Feb. 5, 2007 Byline: Seth Sutel, AP Business Writer

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