Media Coverage

Most of the 46 commercials that ran nationally on CBS during the game can fit into one of those camps, and it was those spots that seem to have generated the most responses, positive and negative, in the many polls and surveys that were taken during and after the game.

“If you really want to read into it, it’s the two sides of our country,” said Tim Calkins, clinical professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

“The emotional side is traditional, harkening back to deep values” like patriotism and love of family, he added, “and the humorous side is irreverent and slightly cynical,” mocking conventional wisdom and questioning authority.

One sponsor, the Chrysler Group, stood out for a decision to run two commercials in the game, each two minutes long, that were both emotional. The ad for the Jeep brand, which was created by the GlobalHue agency, featured Oprah Winfrey saluting members of the armed forces as they returned home. The spot also promoted donations to the USO and Operation Safe Return.

The other Chrysler Group commercial, which was created by the Richards Group for the Ram truck brand, was inspired by video tributes to American farmers byFarms.com. That spot is to become part of a fund-raising effort for the National FFA Organization, formerly known as Future Farmers of America.

“Chrysler has clearly committed to building its brands on an emotional level,” Mr. Calkins said, cultivating an image for Ram as a “rural, traditional brand” and for Jeep as a “tough brand with a military heritage.”

Mr. Calkins contrasted the Chrysler Group approach to “the traditional, more product-attribute focus” favored by other auto brands that advertised in the game like Hyundaiand Mercedes-Benz, which centered their spots on features like performance, space and price.

The Jeep commercial was one of only six during the game to receive an “A” in the Kellogg School’s annual Super Bowl Advertising Review survey, conducted among a panel of students. The Ram spot received a “C,” Mr. Calkins said, because the panel believed “the linkage was not as strong with the brand as ‘the farmer’s friend,’ and you didn’t see much of the trucks.”

That opinion seemed an outlier, however, compared with the outcomes of several other polls. For instance, the Ram commercial finished first in the 10th annual Spotbowl surveyby the Pavone agency. The ad critic Bob Garfield, writing for Mediapost.com, declared the Ram commercial “simply magnificent.”

And according to Bluefin Labs, which specializes in analytics for social television — the comments in social media like Facebook and Twitter about TV shows — the Ram spot was “the most social commercial” of the game, generating 402,000 comments. By comparison, the most social commercial in last year’s Super Bowl, an ad for H&M featuring David Beckham, generated 114,000 comments, Bluefin reported.

Some humorous commercials seemed to comment on some emotional ones. The Jeep commercial’s use of scores of American flags and stirring music had a counterpoint in a humorous spot by the Taxi New York agency for MiO Fit liquid water enhancer, sold by the Kraft Foods Group. The MiO Fit spot presented the comedian Tracy Morgan standing in front of a gigantic American flag and exhorting the nation to “change” as stirring music played in the background.

Mr. Morgan was one of several comedians who infused Super Bowl spots with sardonic, slightly skewed styles of contemporary comedy. A commercial for Best Buy by Crispin Porter & Bogusky featured Amy Poehler, who made a sly reference to the adult novel “Fifty Shades of Grey.” A commercial by Saatchi & Saatchi Los Angeles for the Toyota RAV4 presented Kaley Cuoco of the sitcom “The Big Bang Theory” as a genie with a modern attitude.

And a commercial for Samsung Mobile by the 72andSunny agency brought together the comedians Bob Odenkirk, Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd to mock the formula for making successful Super Bowl spots and take potshots at ads for other advertisers like E*Trade and Wonderful pistachios.

Some sponsors, like the Anheuser-Busch division of Anheuser-Busch InBev, pursued both approaches in separate commercials. The company ran an emotional commercial by the Anomaly agency for Budweiser beer that told a heartwarming tale about a Clydesdale’s reunion with its trainer. The spot brought to mind comparisons to “War Horse” and a reunion watched many times on YouTube that involved another animal, a lion named Christian.

In addition to finishing first in the 25th annual USA Today Ad Meter survey, conducted online with a panel of 7,619 people around the country, the Budweiser commercial wasdeclared No. 1 in a “Super Bowl Poll of Polls” compiled by the trade publication Advertising Age on its Web site, adage.com. (The Ram commercial came in second.)

The Budweiser spot led the annual Super Bowl survey conducted by Ace Metrix, which measures the creative effectiveness of commercials based on criteria like persuasion. The Budweiser commercial, which received an Ace score of 665 from 500 consumers who scored each ad as they watched the game, “used its beloved Clydesdale to tell a compelling story,” said Peter Daboll, chief executive at Ace Metrix. The Budweiser spot was also deemed the “most memorable” by readers responding to a poll during the game onnytimes.com.

On the humorous side of the ledger for Anheuser-Busch, there were two spots by the Translation agency for Bud Light beer. They featured light-hearted looks at die-hard football fans in New Orleans who sought out the singer Stevie Wonder, playing a voodoo king, to cast Super Bowl spells for them.

To read the original article, visit New York TImes.