THE GREAT PUPPY BOWL -- Budweiser-6; Go Daddy-0

Courtesy of Anheuser-Busch.com

By Anne Zeiser, founder of Azure Media and author of Transmedia Marketing: From Film and TV to Games and Digital Media



In the great American advertising faceoff at this year's Super Bowl, two adorable Golden Retriever puppies serving as proxies for two mega brands - Budweiser and GoDaddy - almost went head-to-head.

The best advertising captures audiences' imaginations. It tells a story, produces emotion, and fulfills deep-seated needs. Humans love to laugh, feel smart, affirm their lives, and be part of a community. Good creative does all that. So, despite knowing they're being sold to, audiences love great ads. That's why a huge part of Super Bowl viewing is attributable to the promise of seeing some of the most creative or compelling ads of the year.


Here's how each brand suited up their pups for the big kickoff:

• Budweiser pulls at our heart strings with its warm and fuzzy sequel to last year's "Puppy Love" spot, chronicling the inseparable bond between a Golden puppy and a Clydesdale horse. In the Super Bowl IV, "Lost Dog" installment, the puppy is inadvertently lost and we follow his quest - braving harsh elements and miles fraught with nefarious threats - to get home safely. No spoiler here, with a little help from his friends, the #BestBuds are united. This heartwarming and life-affirming ad plumbs our emotional depths, and by association makes beer family-friendly (no mean feat within the alcohol category). This spot was directed by Jake Scott (Ridley Scott's son) of RSA Films.

• GoDaddy reaches beyond its limited ad portfolio of the inexplicably raunchy or anything with Danica Patrick to parody this saccharine canine saga of lost puppy "Buddy's" treacherous "Journey Home." But upon the pup's victorious return, he is promptly sold online (thanks to GoDaddy technology) and coldly shipped out to places unknown. This sarcastic and mean-spirited ad gives more homage to the Budweiser brand than its own and reveals the creators' huge blind spot for what is and isn't funny. This ad was created by agency Barton F. Graf 9000.

@Pet360/Twitter

Budweiser's ad scores a touchdown of big love before the big game and GoDaddy's gets an incomplete pass, with its ad yanked from the Super Bowl just hours after its debut on "The Today Show" due to a hue and cry from offended fans and animal rights advocates. Why does the beer company's more predictable and syrupy ad achieve a giant win and GoDaddy's riskier and potentially more creative spot score an epic fail?

There are three key reasons that Budweiser's campaign connects and GoDaddy's fumbles - all rooted in key tenets of sound marketing and promotion. These marketing principles and other fundamentals of entertainment and media marketing are covered in my upcoming book Transmedia Marketing: From Film and TV to Games and Digital Media.

#1: Know Your Story 

Since the days of cavemen, humans have been impelled to tell stories, spinning a good yarn enhanced by the special effects of the flickering campfire. Ancient storytelling is documented in France's Chauvet Cave walls from almost 30,000 years ago. There are seminal stories that we all relate to that are retold millions of times in many forms - from oral storytelling traditions and ballads to films and multi-player games. According to Christopher Booker's The Seven Basic Plots, there are seven archetypal stories that appeal to universal emotions: Slaying the Beast, Rags to Riches, The Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, and Rebirth.

• Budweiser's "Lost Puppy" ad is The Quest - the protagonist's journey toward a major goal. Some key examples from literature include Homer's The Odyssey, Jason and the Argonaut's recovery of the Golden Fleece, and A Midsummer Night's Dream, and from modern entertainment, The Wizard of Oz, Lord of the Rings, and Finding Nemo. In The Quest stories, we want our heroes to make it "home" almost as much as we want to breathe. When they do, it is profoundly comforting and satisfying.

• GoDaddy's "Journey Home' parody was aiming for Comedy. This plot needs a light and funny hero who triumphs over an adverse situation or unteases misunderstandings, resulting in a happy ending. Some key examples from literature include Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, and Twelfth Night, and from modern entertainment The Importance of Being Earnest, Four Weddings and a Funeral, and Lizzie Bennet's Diaries. In "Journey Home," if there had been several humorous happenstances (perhaps all powered by GoDaddy) along the puppy's journey that ironically landed the puppy home, the ad might have worked brilliantly. But our canine hero made it home on his own steam, only to be callously sold. Hence, the ad became a heinous abomination of the Tragedy, a storyline in which the protagonist is a villain, (not an innocent puppy) who falls from grace (not a speeding truck) and whose demise is a happy ending. Some key examples from literature include Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and Les Misérables, and from modern entertainment, The Great Gatsby, Chinatown, and Crash. But since this puppy is not a villain, the unhappy ending is a massive emotional assault. The spot delivers on neither Comedy nor Tragedy.

Courtesy Daily Mail.com January 27, 2015

#2: Don't Mess With Babies and Puppies

Another key tenet of effective marketing and promotion is that celebrities, sex, babies and puppies sell. Celebrities have endorsed products to make them "cool" since the '20s when Chesterfield and Lucky Strike cigarettes used actors, comedians, and opera singers to create a whole new generation of smokers. Beyoncé endorses Pepsi and LeBron James endorses Nike. Selling with sex appeal is one of the oldest saws in the advertising industry, predicated on Boy Gets Girl and visa versa. Clairol's "Does she . . . or doesn't she?" signature 1957 campaign was about the lengths women go to look beautiful. The car industry has adorned cars with beautiful women to make men take notice. David Beckham's almost-nude 2012 Super Bowl ad for H & M clothes garnered almost 110,000 social media mentions within 45 minutes. 

Then there's the adverting cliché of babies and puppies. The mere sight of them elicits an emotional reaction, which is why animal and kid photos and videos are the most shared on social media. We are evolutionarily wired to feel compassion and a sense of protection toward young creatures. That's why we think babies - and by extension puppies and kittens - are cute. It ensures our species' survival. These scientific and psychological truths haven't escaped advertisers. For more than 60 years, Coppertone has used "Little Miss Coppertone," an energetic little girl whose fun-loving cocker spaniel grabs her skivvies to reveal her tan line. This still vibrant brand offers a two-for-one special - a cute little girl and her dog.

By Alexf; licensed under creative commons via Wikipedia Commons

• No surprise, Budweiser's huggable little Golden Retriever Puppy (the most popular dog breed in the U.S.) juxtaposed against the grandeur of the beloved massive Clydesdale draft horse makes for an irresistible strange bedfellows animal love story. This original story and its sequel leverage the equity of the Clydesdales, which have captured Americans' hearts for almost three decades, and adds another huggable character. Twice the lovability.

• The moral of this story for GoDaddy is you can't add an evil twist that jeopardizes the heartwarming appeal of babies and puppies. It's a simple, straight-forward emotion. You can add some humor to hit another emotional note like Geico's "Camel Hump Day" does - the obnoxious camel crashing offices to celebrate Wednesdays and therefore him. But it still must be a happy, uplifting resolution. So when Buddy's owner says, "I'm so glad you made it home! Because I just sold you on this website I made with GoDaddy. Ship him out!," GoDaddy messed with the requisite happy ending, thereby breaking the rules of story plot and of how to treat cuddly babies.

#3: Don't Underestimate the Power of Digitally-Engaged Audiences

Sound marketing, like all good storytelling, engages audiences by reaching the limbic part of the brain. It creates opportunities for audiences to find meaning in and authentically participate with a brand on various media platforms. This translates into audience loyalty for and ambassadorship of a project - the Holy Grail of branding, marketing, and engagement. When fans use, love, and tell others about your media content or project, that's a smash hit.

Social media enables audience ambassadorship of a product. That's because the social universe is about self-expression through personalized social storytelling - audiences sharing what they deem interesting, important, or funny; telegraphing who they are and what they believe in; and recommending products or supporting causes. The trick is to get social audiences to become co-protagonists, connecting their personal stories to your brand's narrative. 

To harness its immense power, social media is used as the vital connective tissue to various elements of a brand or its marketing. Hence, most Super Bowl TV spots are launched online before the big game and promoted leading up to and after the event.

• Budweiser's "Puppy Love" spot from last year's Super Bowl was the most shared and beloved ad in Facebook history. This year's "Lost Dog" promises even more audience engagement. First, the Super Bowl spot was treated like a feature film with its own online teaser campaign of images and animated GIFs of the pup's journey home, created by Anomaly. In addition, Budweiser developed an online campaign for audiences to find the pup, launching on Twitter on January 7th with a photo of the rancher and his Clydesdale hanging "Lost Dog" signs. It was followed by a January 21st tweet, "Help our rancher find his puppy and you could win tickets to the Super Bowl. Watch to learn how. #BestBuds #sweeps" with a video explaining the contest. Daily tweets entreated fans to be on the lookout for the lost dog and participate in the sweepstakes. Fans nationwide have posted pics of the "Lost Dog" and other brands - from @USATODAYmoney to @lenovoUS - have lodged support for the pup, all using the campaign's hashtag, #BestBuds. The online "Lost Dog" spot has garnered 55 million views before the Super Bowl.

@Budweiser/Twitter

• Because GoDaddy's spot features a puppy that is sold online, animal rights advocates felt it implied endorsement of illegal puppy farming. The animal protection charity, The SPCA posted tweets using hashtag #GoDaddyPuppy, condemning the spot and explaining why buying a puppy online may be irresponsible. As a result, the animal anti-cruelty crowd erupted online. Animal rights advocate Helena Yurcho launched a Change.org petition to pull the ad, securing more than 42,000 signatures in a day. GoDaddy capitulated quickly with CEO, Blake Irving saying on a January 27th statement, "....we underestimated the emotional response. And we heard that loud and clear. The net result? We are pulling the ad from the Super Bowl. You'll still see us in the Big Game this year, and we hope it makes you laugh." Cynics think it was all on purpose. Most likely, it was a big gaffe, because "all publicity is good publicity" simply isn't true. "The Journey" satire reveals the dangerous flip side of the power of engaged social audiences who critique with as much fervor as they support.

@animalrescuers/Twitter

This puppy saga demonstrates that ads are short stories and that there are some key storytelling principles that good ads most follow. What is says about the Patriots' and Seahawks' face-off is hard to divine, but surely there was a narrative to the big game. It may fall into one of the seven archetypal stories: Slaying the Beast, Rags to Riches, The Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, and Rebirth. Of course, who's the protagonist and who's the antagonist depends on your football team allegiance.

Which of the seven seminal storylines you think the Super Bowl followed and why? Follow Anne Zeiser on Twitter @azuremedia