ONFIELD THRILLER OVERSHADOWS SUPER BOWL ADS

NEW YORK - A nail-biting finish to Super Bowl XXXVI gave advertisers their
money's worth on Sunday night as the onfield action -- which has often
taken a back seat to the commercials -- kept viewers watching right to the
final seconds.

But although the New England Patriots' last-minute victory over the heavily
favored St. Louis Rams was immediately hailed as a gridiron classic, the
lackluster ads, industry analysts said, did not measure up to the caliber
of the game.

"For the first time in a long time, the conversation is much more about the
game than the ads," said David Blum of Eisner Communications.

A study by Eisner last week found that more than 10 percent of Super Bowl
viewers -- the highest percentage in the study's 11-year history -- tuned
in just to see the game's high-profile commercials.

Bud Bowl

Leading the pack in visibility and popularity was brewer Anheuser-Busch ,
whose 10 ads ran the gamut from humor, in the form of slapstick mishaps
featuring slippery satin sheets, to patriotic sentiment, as the celebrated
Budweiser Clydesdale horses paid an unexpected tribute to New York City and
the Sept. 11 attacks.

Four Anheuser-Busch ads -- the satin sheet debacle, a pet falcon trained to
"fetch" Bud Light, an attempt to play a bar-room Cyrano de Bergerac gone
awry, and a seemingly mismatched battle of robots -- were among the top
five most popular, according to USA Today, which polled 118 viewers during
the game.

"Humor and animals always sell," said Andrew Bergstein, an instructor of
marketing at Penn State's Smeal College of Business.

Other well-received ads included a spot for brokerage firm Charles Schwab
featuring baseball greats, slugger Barry Bonds and all-time homerun champ
Hank Aaron; an off-beat "crazy legs" commercial for Levi Strauss jeans from
"Being John Malkovich" director Spike Jonze and a commercial for video
chain Blockbuster showing an animated guinea pig and bunny sharing a pet
store cage and "shaking what their mamas gave them."

This year's advertisers spent up to $2 million each to air their
commercials. Broadcaster Fox, however, was forced to make discounts in the
days leading up to the game itself, hurt by a soft advertising climate and
competition from the Winter Olympic Games, which begin Feb. 8.

For the huge amounts of money spent on ads, not much new ground was broken,
said Mark DiMassimo of DiMassimo Brand Advertising.

"Advertising has got 30 to 60 seconds to surprise the hell out of you, to
truly rivet your attention," he said. "The Budweiser commercials were
funny, but on the average featured warmed-over sitcom gags -- certainly not
a breakthrough."

Britney A Flop?

Among the losers for the evening, many singled out PepsiCo's retro spots
with teen diva Britney Spears revisiting Pepsi advertising through the years.

"Pepsi made their relationship with Britney the center of their advertising
rather than an idea," said DiMassimo. "It was probably better for Britney
than for Pepsi."

AT&T Wireless' teaser ads for its "mLife" campaign also received criticism
for their opaque, if rather clever, approach on cutting cords -- both phone
and umbilical.

"If you want to tease people, you'd better pay off," Bergstein said.

Perhaps the most contentious Super Bowl commercials were those that made
overt or implicit connections to the events of Sept. 11: Budweiser's
Clydesdales, Monster.com's spotlighting former New York City Mayor Rudy
Giuliani, and two thought-provoking ads from the White House Office of
National Drug Control Policy that linked terrorism with drug use.

"I've heard of some people who loved the Clydesdales, but I thought it was
completely inappropriate," said Don Pettit of the Sterling Group, a New
York-based branding group. "If you're going to do something like that, it
has to be a public service, not a promotion of your corporate icon."

Linking Drugs To Terror

The anti-terror, anti-drug ads constituted a significant portion of the
Office of National Drug Control Policy's $180 million annual ad budget, and
represented the largest one-time government advertising spend ever.

Drug Control office spokesman Tom Riley said the Super Bowl was the perfect
event to launch the new campaign, which suggested that since "terrorists
need money to do what they want to do, and if you buy illegal drugs, some
of it might come from you."

"Of 28 groups listed as terrorists by the State Department, almost half
raise their money through drug trafficking," Riley said. "It's not like
every dollar you spend on pot goes to Osama Bin Laden, but the Taliban
raised $50 million a year on heroin sales."

Some questioned whether the Super Bowl was a good forum for such
hard-hitting ads, which referenced previous ads from Mastercard and
Monster.com.

"Tying drugs to terrorism was a little out in left field," said Bergstein.
"I understand terrorism is a hot-button issue, but it's an awful lot to ask
television viewers to draw the line from the Taliban warehoused poppy ...
to the World Trade Center -- that's too oblique."

"I thought they were effective and thought provoking," said Eisner
Communications' Blum. "The question is whether the topic is too serious for
America's national holiday."