While Budweiser has been (rightly) criticised for their Super Bowl ad taking a series of cheap shots at craft beer drinkers, another of their ads did what the Seattle Seahawks (sadly) could not – win back-to-back Super Bowls. The 2015 Budweiser puppy ad won over the USA TODAY Ad Meter consumer panel for the second year in a row. Anheuser-Busch has taken the best ranked ad award for 13 of the past 15 years.
USA TODAY’S Ad Meter’s consumer panel saw 6,703 voters rate the Super Bowl ads – 61 commercials that cost advertisers up to a record US$4.5 million per 30-seconds of airtime. In the Budweiser “Lost Dog” ad, a puppy gets lost, but makes it back home after being saved from a wolf by his pals, the iconic Budweiser Clydesdales.
It was blatantly a sequel to the Budweiser “Puppy Love” commercial that won last year’s Ad Meter and Bud used the same strategy this year. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” said Brian Perkins, the vice president at Budweiser.
Web company GoDaddy attempted to spoof the beloved ad by having a similar looking dog make it all the way home only to find their owner say “Look! It’s Buddy! I’m so glad you made it home because I just sold you on this website I built with GoDaddy.” The dog is then bundled into a truck.
This ill-judged ad was pulled within days because of a massive consumer backlash. TheShout certainly will not be linking to it even though it still exists on the dark corners of the internet. GoDaddy then went with a rushed together Super Bowl ad which did not trivialise animal cruelty, but it received at best a lukewarm response.
It turns out you cannot sell web domains by being mean to cute animals.
Source: Budweiser’s Lost Dog Ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAsjRRMMg_Q (Warning: may cause some tears)
