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SUPER BOWL LOSES LUSTER FOR MADISON AVENUE

The Super Bowl is typically the biggest event of the year for Madison
Avenue as well as for football fans. This year, though, the National
Football League championship game will be more "adequate" than "super,"
losing its usual hyperbolic luster as a result of a triple whammy: the
sluggish economy, the uncertain national mood and the intense competition
for advertising dollars with the Winter Olympic Games, which begin just
five days after Super Sunday.

It took Fox, which is broadcasting the Super Bowl this year, until
yesterday to sell out the estimated 30 minutes of national commercial time
planned during Super Bowl XXXVI. That poky pace is not unusual in a
downturn, when many advertisers find it hard to pay eye-popping prices for
commercials during big events when they may be taking belt-tightening steps
like layoffs.

The average estimated price Fox is charging for each 30-second commercial,
$1.9 million, means that for the first time, ad rates for the Super Bowl --
traditionally the most-watched television program of the year, with an
estimated 120 million to 130 million viewers -- have declined two
consecutive years. The lagging demand is a far cry from the frenzy
surrounding sales in 2000, when some sponsors paid ABC as much as $2.5
million for each 30-second spot.

For the first time, Levi Strauss is advertising its Dockers pants on the
Super Bowl. The average price for a spot is $1.9 million for 30 seconds.

"Obviously, in this environment, advertisers are watching their money
carefully," said Jon Nesvig, president for sales at the Fox Broadcasting
Company in New York, part of the News Corporation , "and there's some
pressure against some of the higher-ticket items."

"But it's still going to be strong," he added, "if you look at historic
growth rates rather than expecting that the rapid escalation would continue
straight upward."

Advertising rates this year are 18.8 percent above the $1.6 million
estimated average that Fox charged for each commercial the last time it
carried the game, in 1999. Even with the recession, Super Bowl ad rates
have climbed about 67 percent since 1997, compared with an estimated 18
percent increase in that period for commercials during prime-time
entertainment programs.

Industry analysts estimate that Fox will take in more than $200 million in
revenue on Sunday, including pre- and postgame commercial time as well as
spots on local stations owned by the network. While many Super Bowl
mainstay advertisers like the Frito-Lay division of PepsiCo and McDonald's
are passing on the game, they are buying commercials before or after.

"The product line we're introducing this year, 3-D's, has 13- and 14-
year-olds as the main target," said John Compton, senior vice president for
Frito-Lay North America in Plano, Tex., "so a better way to deliver the
message was to be on in a special episode of 'Malcolm in the Middle' that
Fox picked to run after the Super Bowl."

There will be commercials for 3- D's featuring the star of the series,
Frankie Muniz, and packages of the new product -- a line of three-sided
snacks in flavors like Nacho Cheesier -- will appear in a scene of the
episode as part of a promotional sweepstakes. The campaign is a
collaboration of two Omnicom Group agencies, the New York office of BBDO
Worldwide and Ketchum Entertainment Marketing.

There are also new sources of revenue for Fox to replace absentee Super
Bowl advertisers like MasterCard. The newcomers include the Dockers pants
brand sold by Levi Strauss & Company, H&R Block , the Universal Orlando
Resort operated by Vivendi Universal and the White House Office of National
Drug Control Policy.

"The Super Bowl makes a ton of sense for us," said Bill Stewart, vice
president for Dockers marketing at Levi Strauss in San Francisco. "Dockers
has always been an optimistic American brand, and sports programming is
'appointment TV' for the guy who loves our brand." The Dockers commercial,
by the San Francisco office of Foote, Cone & Belding, part of the FCB Group
division of the Interpublic Group of Companies , is to run in the second
quarter, along with a spot for a sibling, Levi's jeans.

Several regular Super Bowl advertisers are back, including Anheuser- Busch,
with five minutes of commercials for its Budweiser and Bud Light beer
brands; FedEx ; the Pepsi-Cola division of PepsiCo, with two extravagant
musical spots by BBDO New York featuring Britney Spears performing Pepsi
jingles of the past and present; the General Motors Corporation , promoting
Cadillac; and seven movie and entertainment companies, including AOL Time
Warner , MGM and Viacom .

"For the last several years, we've been pursuing what we call big, bold
properties in addition to our regular media schedule," said Kim Kosak,
director for advertising and sales promotion at the Cadillac division of
G.M. in Detroit, "and the Super Bowl is perfect to get the message out to a
broad audience." Cadillac will run two spots during the game by the Troy,
Mich., office of D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, part of the Bcom3 Group,
carrying a new theme, "Break through."

There are even more dot-com advertisers this year (four) than last (three),
as Yahoo buys its first spot during the game and joins returnees the
E*Trade Group, Hotjobs.com and the Monster.com division of TMP Worldwide .
Dot-com mania was the principal reason for the feverish demand for spots in
2000, when 17 online marketers bought one-shot Super Bowl commercials.

"That's no way to build a brand," said Tom McGovern, director for sports
marketing at OMD in New York, a media services division of Omnicom. "They
came in with one-time-only commercials instead of incorporating the Super
Bowl into an annual advertising and marketing plan. That goes against every
educated media strategy."

The frenzy was, as Cole Porter would say, too hot not to cool down. Now, a
network's big chill can be an advertiser's hot opportunity.

For instance, the Taco Bell fast-food chain, part of Tricon Global
Restaurants , took advantage of the lower prices by buying on Wednesday a
commercial in the fourth quarter, to go with one it had previously bought
in the third quarter. Both are by Foote, Cone San Francisco.

Two other companies that are perennial Super Bowl sponsors, Charles Schwab
and the Masterfoods USA division of Mars, had initially decided against
being in the game. The lower prices, however, led them to buy some of the
final spots Fox had left on Wednesday.

"It was a great opportunity for us," said Scott Hudler, a spokesman for
Masterfoods USA in Hackettstown, N.J. He said the commercial, by BBDO New
York, would promote the company's M&M's candy brand and run during the
fourth quarter. Schwab is also to appear then.

Because of the short notice, the M&M's and Schwab commercials are not being
created specifically for the game. The M&M's spot will be adapted from a
commercial running in movie theaters that are part of the Screenvision
Cinema Network and Schwab will repeat a spot that is to appear just before
the game starts.

However, advertisers who had planned for some time to buy commercials
during the game are producing special spots. Those elaborate, glitzy
pitches, filled with humor, special effects and surprise endings, have made
the Super Bowl the one day a year when viewers pay almost as much attention
to the advertising as to the program -- and sometimes more. A survey by
Eisner Communications in Baltimore found that 10.6 percent of respondents
said they would watch the Super Bowl just to see the commercials.

AT&T Wireless will use the occasion to introduce a big brand-image campaign
by Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide in New York, a division of the WPP Group . The
goal of the blitz, which includes five commercials during the game, is to
popularize the phrase "m life" as a synonym for modern-day mobility, much
as Ogilvy seeded the term "e-business" in the vernacular for another
client, I.B.M.

"We have a big thought, and we needed to introduce it in an impactful way,"
said Shelly Lazarus, chairwoman and chief executive at Ogilvy, "so we're
holding it for an event all America participates in."

The campaign, "Welcome to m life," will continue into the Winter Olympics,
she added, with more than 30 commercials during the NBC coverage of the
Games, which begin next Friday.

AT&T Wireless is not alone in buying commercial time during both big
events. Others include Anheuser- Busch, General Motors and Visa. Among
those bypassing the Super Bowl to take part in the Winter Games instead are
Electronic Data Systems and Volkswagen .

The NBC division of General Electric , which will cover the Winter Olympics
through Feb. 24, has sold about 98 percent of the commercial time that will
be available during the Games. The total revenue the network expects is
more than $720 million, some of which would have probably been spent on the
Super Bowl had they both not been in February.

But add the Olympics figure to the Fox take for the Super Bowl, diminished
as it may be, and the total approaches $1 billion.

The ad revenue that CBS will enjoy from the Grammy Awards broadcast on Feb.
27 will further fatten that one-month advertising total.

If February had more than 28 days, it might have single-handedly brought
the recovery the advertising industry has been waiting for.