Nintendo aired its first holiday ad last week, highlighting Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U. While the product was well featured in the ad, its real success was achieved through a mixture of a much-loved product and a strong storyline and characters. Nintendo’s family-oriented spot earns the title of Category Overachiever this week for outperforming all other ads in their respective categories by the greatest percentage. Meanwhile, Olive Garden wins the title of highest Ace Score this week for its ad, featuring its specialty dishes straight from Italy.
Consumers awarded Nintendo’s “Dad Loses” an Ace Score of 630, which is 24.2% above the 12-month Video Games category norm. This likeable ad features a dad challenging his kids on Christmas Day to several rounds of Mario Kart 8, only to lose every round and suffer the consequences.
Even non-video game lovers appreciated the fun spirit of this ad, awarding it an Ace Score of 547, still 8% above the 12-month norm for Video Games. Obviously, though, consumers who frequently purchase video games (purchasing or receiving 12+ games in a year) loved this ad the most, awarding it an Ace Score of 684.
“Dad Loses” was able to triumph over other Video Game ads for its ability to be likeable, relevant and instill desire. The cute storyline drove the Likeability score to be 16% above the 90-day norm. Meanwhile, the strong seasonal ties and the fun, family-friendly product helped consumers score the ad’s Relevance and Desire scores to be 26% and 25%, respectively, above norm.
The ad’s word cloud, below, shows fun-loving, family-togetherness of the ad. Twenty-seven percent of the ad’s comments mentioned “family” while 11% even said the ad was “funny.”
“Dad Loses” is the highest rated Nintendo ad we’ve tested in several years. It looks like Nintendo’s fun, family-friendly approach and storyline paid off for the popular video game brand.
Watch this year’s winning Ads of the Week by Category Overachievers.
Olive Garden’s new Culinary Tour of Italy cuisine tops our chart with its ad “Tours Of Italy.” The delicious ad achieved an Ace Score of 653, the highest of any ads to debut last week. While the spot is only 0:15 long, consumers don’t need anymore than that to get a taste for Olive Garden’s new dishes.
Every age and gender demographic awarded the ad an Ace Score above the Restaurants 90-day norm of 613. Women 36-49 were especially ready for a tour of Italian cuisine, giving the ad an Ace Score of 668, the highest of any age/gender demographic.
Consumers were entranced by the ad’s tasty visuals of the food, with 23% of consumers saying the visuals were the best part of the ad and 25% indicating the food was the best thing.
Many of the ad’s 324 optional verbatims detail how mouthwatering the ad’s visuals are. In fact, 7% of consumers found the ad made them “hungry” and 6% said the ad looked “delicious.”
No doubt, Olive Garden is an expert at making us crave savory pasta dishes, soft breadsticks and fresh salad.
