Budweiser Blows Up the Beer Category With Puppies and Microsoft Wows With High Scores

February 11th, 2014

Budweiser Blows Up the Beer Category With Puppies and Microsoft Wows With High Scores

Author

Ace Metrix

The Super Bowl may seem like a distant memory from yesteryear; but it was only last week! Many brands showed an astounding level of quality creative during the big game. Specifically, Microsoft and Budweiser, both of which didn’t just use excellent creative for the game but had superb creative given the landscape of ads in our database and ads airing over the last twelve months. Both of these brands won Ad of the Week; Budweiser as the Category Overachiever and Microsoft as the Highest Ace Score.

Ad of the Week: Category Overachiever

Budweiser’s “Puppy Love” has garnered an overwhelming amount of media attention since its online debut less than a week before the Super Bowl. “Puppy Love” has an Ace Score of 681, which is 41% above the twelve-month Beer category norm.

As we have noted in previous Super Bowl blog posts and articles, this painfully adorable spot, featuring puppies and Clydesdales, has a very high Emotional Sentiment Index (ESI) at 83. This is nearly 46% higher than the ESI for the average Budweiser ad.

From watching the ad, it is likely obvious why it was so emotionally compelling. The story of a farm puppy, whose only wish is to be friends with a Clydesdale, who was nearly adopted by a city-dweller until a heard of Clydesdales rescued him. Sixteen percent of optional verbatim responses to the ad mention how much they “love” the puppy, horse, story and, of course, Budweiser. Another 12% said they “loved” it.

For a more complete insights into the cuteness of this ad, download our Post-Game Huddle Presentation and listen to the webinar.

After seeing that 189 ads debuted last week, we asked: What if the Super Bowl hadn’t happened this last week? Then, which brand would have won Ad of the Week? Well, it still would have been puppies! Petco’s :30 ad “Qualities” has an Ace Score of 634, which is 28% above the twelve-month Pets category norm.

Watch this year’s winning Ads of the Week by Category Overachievers.

Want to look back at 2013? Watch the winning Ad of the Week Category Overachievers from 2013.

Ad of the Week: Top Ace Score

As with Budweiser’s “Puppy Love”, Microsoft’s “Empowering” has also been flowing through the media’s circuits. If you have been watching the Olympics, then it is very likely that you have also already seen the :30 version of “Empowering”. However, it is the :60 cut that has made our headlines for the last week. It entered our database with a score of 710, which is also now the second highest Ace Score we have on record.

Microsoft’s touching ad used multiple elements to support one thing—its brands. It incorporates the Surface, Skype, Windows 8, Microsoft Hardware and Kinect, all of which work to empower people to accomplish things that were never thought possible. This single-focused and well-executed spot brought towering scores across multiple components, especially for Likeability, Information, Attention, Change and Desire.

This is reaffirmed in the optional free responses consumers wrote after watching the ad. Twenty-four percent of responders mentioned the word “technology”.

And, interestingly enough, after delving deeper into what else consumers mentioned when they talked about technology, it was “people”, which is really what this ad is all about—how technology helps people be better and do more.