Doritos Super Bowl Ad Improves Brand Most; GoDaddy’s Does Damage

TV commercials for Doritos during the big game helped PepsiCo’s tortilla-chip brand achieve the highest net improvement score of any Super Bowl advertiser, while GoDaddy.com’s ads did the most damage, according to surveys from comScore, Inc.

comScore’s annual Super Bowl research, which included both pre- and post-game surveys, measured various aspects of media use and ad preference during the big game.

Game Day Internet Usage

The internet played an important role in the Super Bowl Sunday festivities, with two-thirds of those who watched the game indicating that they went online at some point during game day. Approximately 41% of respondents say they used the internet during the actual game, while 33% logged online during halftime.

Additional internet-related activities on game day:

• 12% of respondents say they used the internet to view this year’s Super Bowl ads online; 8% said they viewed previous years’ ads.
• 15%  visited an advertiser’s website after viewing their Super Bowl ad. Of those, the top advertiser site destinations were GoDaddy.com (29%), Dennys.com (23%) and Coca-Cola.com (22%).
• 9% of respondents said they voted for the Super Bowl MVP via text messaging or online.

Beverage Companies Are Favorite Advertisers

One-quarter of respondents in comScore’s pre-Super Bowl survey indicated that watching the ads is their favorite part of the day’s festivities. When asked which three companies’ ads they were most looking forward to, respondents demonstrated a strong preference for beverage brands, comScore said. Specifically, the most anticipated brand’s ads were Bud/Bud Light with 76% of respondents, followed by Coca Cola (48%) and PepsiCo (43%). Controversial Super Bowl advertiser GoDaddy.com ranked fifth, scoring 15% of respondents.

In the post-Super Bowl survey, which asked what ads they would like to see again, respondents selected the same top five advertisers from the “most anticipated” list, though in a slightly different order of preference. Doritos proved even more popular than its high expectations, ranking second with 34% of respondents indicating they would like to see the brand’s ads again.

Brand Improvement/Brand Damage

comScore also asked respondents in the post-Super Bowl survey whether the various Super Bowl ads improved, damaged, or left unchanged their perception of the advertised brands.

Doritos topped the list of most improved brands, with a brand improvement score of 42 percentage points, followed by Bud/Bud Light (40 percentage points) and Denny’s (39 percentage points).

At the other end of the spectrum, GoDaddy.com had the highest brand damage score (15%), which resulted in the lowest net brand improvement score (13 percentage points), comScore said. GoDaddy.com also was the only advertiser with a brand damage score higher than six  percent. Nevertheless, GoDaddy.com registered the third highest ad recall (53% of respondents), trailing only Bud/Bud Light (72%) and Doritos (59%).

Americans Predict Steelers Victory, Miss on MVP

In the pre-game survey, respondents were asked to predict the outcome of the game, as well as who they thought would be the recipient of the MVP trophy. Nearly two-third of respondents (66%) accurately predicted that the Steelers would emerge victorious, compared with 23% who predicted the Cardinals to win. However, only two percent of respondents accurately predicted that Steelers wide receiver Santonio Holmes would be named the game’s most valuable player. They had instead favored Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger with 29% of the vote. Cardinals’ quarterback Kurt Warner was the second highest vote-getter at 19%.

About the surveys: comScore’s annual Super Bowl surveys included one poll conducted prior to the game (1,003 US internet users surveyed on Jan. 26-27, 2009) and one conducted after the game (1,042 US internet users surveyed on Feb. 3-4, 2009), to understand people’s expected and actual behaviors on game day, as well as their attitudes with respect to the Super Bowl ads.