Super Bowl's Finest Ad Moments - 44 Years of Commercial Touchdowns and Fumbles in Adweek Magazine

NEW YORK, Jan. 24, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Remember CareerBuilder's primates?  Cindy Crawford guzzling from a new Pepsi can?  The Bud Bowl?  Or two all beef patties special sauce lettuce cheese pickles onions on a sesame seed bun?  Adweek reflects on these commercials and others in a 12-page retrospective of memorable Super Bowl ads, both funny and sentimental, beginning with the first pro game in 1967.

"With the exception of a few recession-year discounts, the cost of a Super Bowl ad has soared like a field goal kick to its current average asking price of around $3 million," writes Robert Klara in this week's Adweek.  "It stands to reason, then, that if a company's going to drop that kind of cash, it's going to give America the best advertising it can possibly produce."

Adweek's 44-year timeline revisits Super Bowl ad moments that captured America's mood, economy, and pop culture of the time:  Super Bowl VII's pre-game tribute to Apollo 17, the sixth and last mission to land on the moon to date (Dolphins 14, Redskins 7); the introduction of Apple's Macintosh during Super Bowl XVIII (Raiders 38, Redskins 9); "The Dot-Com Super Bowl" XXXIV featuring ads from 17 dot-com advertisers (Rams 23, Titans 16); The Budweiser Clydesdales' bow in front of the New York skyline four months after 9/11 (Patriots 20, Rams 17); and this year, Mercedes-Benz arriving to the event's commercial break for the first time.

For those who tune in to the Super Bowl because of the commercials, expectations grow every year.  Of course, should a viewer miss a "wardrobe malfunction" (Super Bowl XXXVIII, Patriots 32, Panthers 29) there's always YouTube in order to keep up with water cooler chat.  Adweek's timeline documents the networks that have televised the big game each year, the overall rating (Super Bowl XVI being the highest rated with a 49.1), total viewership and the final score.

"The Adweek Super Bowl Ad Time Line is a look back at how agencies and brands have created a commercial event all it's own," said Adweek's Executive Editor Jim Cooper.

For more from Adweek's Ad Super Bowl Time Line visit www.adweek.com.

SOURCE Adweek

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