Brand: Ameriquest Mortgage
Execution: TV
Link: Click Here To View
Target: Stretched Home-Buyers
Reviewer: David
Rating: **

Description:
Two different spots (both aired during the Super Bowl XL) showing funny circumstances leading to misunderstandings. In the first, a doctor standing over a patient kills a fly with a resuscitation paddle. As the doctor peers down at the dead fly on the sleeping patient’s chest and says ‘That Killed Him’ to a second doctor, the patient’s wife and daughter walk in. They clearly believe that the patient is dead. The tagline “Don’t Judge Too Quickly. We won’t.” shows in text without a voiceover and then the Ameriquest logo.

The second spot has a woman trying to escape her window seat on an airplane by climbing over two mail passengers. Her blouse snags on a tray table just as the plane hits turbulence and the overhead lights come on as she is thrown onto the lap of one of the male passengers who wakes up suddenly. In view of the entire flight it looks as if she was having sex. The same tagline “Don’t Judge Too Quickly. We Won’t,” flashes by and then the Ameriquest logo.

What Works:
These were possibly the funniest two spots on the Super Bowl, rivalled only by the Bud Light spot with a disappearing refrigerator and a Sprint spot. They were also highly memorable, placing near the top of most of the ranking poles for SuperBowl ads. They may be the closest to achieving the breakout that Emerald Nuts enjoyed last year (and squandered this year).

What Doesn’t:
This Advertising Blog asks just two questions in rating an ad: Did it sell the product and Did it build the brand. We do not generally have access to sales data when we review ads, so we have to make our best judgement of whether the ad will be memorable and link strongly to the brand in a way that sells the product.

Your reviewer had the opportunity to discuss this spot in a seminar with over 200 attendees yesterday. (Normally we don’t like to use AdAge-style ‘Jane, a dentist in Seattle loved this spot’ anecdotes, but this group almost approached statistical projectability) Over half remembered seeing the spot. Only two remembered the name of the brand connected with it - and one of those people thought it was AmeriTrade, not Ameriquest.

These results are largely confirmed by the IAG National Consumer Survey which showed both spots on the top 10 list for ‘Most Liked’ but neither on the Top 10 list for ‘Most-Recalled,’ for which the measure is recall of the brand name.

This reaffirms our belief that humor is almost as dangerous as small animals in distracting consumers from the real brand message. The point here - that a good mortgage company will take a long close look at you before turning you down - is incredibly obscure and easy to miss here. It is still possible that Ameriquest could build a cult following around these spots, but short of that it is hard to see this building the brand beyond a short-term sales bump that will not justify the $5 million in media dollars.

Branding Bottom Line:
Emily’s Reason’s Why Not could have used this copywriter. Not so good for Ameriquest, though.

Here is our first take on the hits and misses of the game, by category:

CELEBRITY

Hit - Desperate Housewives (ABC) - Shaquille O’Neal, Hugh Hefner etc.
Instant Analysis - A nice job of using celebrity to show that absolutely everyone is watching Desperate Housewives. Turns celebrity on its head. ABC does a nice job of using its own time to build one of its own brands.

Hit - Debit MasterCard - MacGyver
Instant Analysis - We reviewed this spot before the game (click here to read review and watch video). It does a great job of bringing the God of Small Things - MacGyver - to the card for small things - Debit Mastercard. A good balance of big-game production value and solid marketing.

Miss - Pizza Hut Cheesy Bites - Jessica Simpson
Replace Carls and Paris Hilton with Pizza Hut and Jessica Simpson and you have this equally irrelevant spot which uses sex in a puzzling way. It not only fails to support the brand - it does not even make sense in context. Click Here to view.

HUMOR

Hit - Sprint Phones - Two spots do a nice job of showing the benefits of high speed phones with TV and downloads for Sprint. The first has the phone with the extra benefit of “Crime Deterrent.” The second is about the music and ends up with a Benny Hill romp around the room. What makes these work is that the humor connects to the product and the brand and the phone is very visible in both. Click Here to view.

Miss - AmeriQuest Mortgage - The ‘Don’t be too quick to judge’ spots are both very funny, but even professionals will have a hard time remembering the brand - which shows up only at the end of each spot. Click Here to view.

CAUSE MARKETING

Hit - Campaign for Real Beauty (Dove) - We have been critical of Dove using the Campaign to sell Dove Moisturizing lotion (click here) but for the Super Bowl Dove used its marketing dollars to promote the campaign instead. In the end, this will do more for Dove than the earlier spots. (Click Here to view)

Miss - The Beer Institute - The Beer Institute? Beer needs an industry group? It was nice to learn all of those foreign words for ‘cheers’ but with Budweiser spending nearly $20 million on the Super Bowl, nobody was going to forget Beer. (Click Here to view anyway.)

NEW PRODUCT INTRODUCTION

Hit - Hummer H3 (General Motors) - This is an older spot we have previously reviewed (click here) but one that worked well for the big game. Even though we would like more face time for the Hummer, this spot reinforces the ruggedness of the brand very well. (Click Here and turn of your pop-up blocker to view the spot).

Miss - Full Throttle (Coca-Cola) - This pre-game epic spot pulls out all the stops to convince you that you’ll be meaner and badder with Full Throttle Energy drink - including running a Red Bull car off the road. At the end we’re confused and Coke is a bit poorer.

Miss - Gillette Fusion (Procter & Gamble) - Not as bad as we had expected from the preview spot, but a flop nonetheless. Gillette does try to give us a plausible reason for adding two blades and draining our wallet further (more contact points equals less pressure equals less skin irritation) but it seems weak and irrelevant. We’re still more interested in real fusion - or maybe cold fusion. (Click Here to view - 2nd Quarter spot.)

OTHER NOTABLES

Hit - Budweiser Clydsdales (Anheuser-Busch) - Anheuser-Busch wasted a lot of money during the big game with spots that were all over, many of which were just forgettable beer commercials. This one, however, connected at an emotional level. Fortunately, the Clydsdales are so closely tied to Budweiser that there is no question which beer the spot is pushing. And the value of authenticity seems like it is Bud’s best brand proposition. (Click Here to view - 3rd Quarter)

Miss - Emerald Nuts - In the early 1990’s in Los Angeles, we learned that random success (like buying some beach property in L.A. in the 1970’s) makes people think they are geniuses. But sooner or later this random-ness fails. After spectacular luck last year with a quirky little spot, these random geniuses failed spectacularly. But perhaps the real nut fans will love it. (Click Here to view)