SUPER BOWL AD: Ameriquest and the Big Laugh
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.