Esurance, Doritos Won #SB50 on Social, #PuppyMonkeyBaby Buzzed for Mountain Dew

Companies paid up to a record $5 million for 30 seconds during the championship game between the Denver Broncos and the Carolina Panthers on CBS Corp’s flagship network. Super Bowl watcher Raj Nijjer, from Scottsdale, Ariz., said the ad went over well at the bar where he was watching the game.

AUSTRALIAN film maker Peter Carstairs was thrilled when he learnt he was in the top three of the annual Doritos Crash the Super Bowl competition late a year ago.

“There’s relatively little going over the top”, said David Berkowitz, chief marketing officer at advertising agency MRY. Budweiser ran an ad featuring actress Helen Mirren warning Americans not to drive drunk.

Data from Brandwatch shows that #PuppyMonkeyBaby was far and away the most talked-about hashtag during the Super Bowl. The ad introduces a hybrid creature combining, as the title implies, a puppy, a monkey and a baby.

Amusing enough, the ads are not ending with the Super Bowl and hundreds of analysts have started to dissect them to learn one or two things that make them stand out and how the lessons can be applied to other related business ideals.

Q: What was the most memorable Super Bowl commercial of the evening?

But after last year’s Super Bowl featured some downright depressing commercials, most notably Nationwide’s infamous dead kid spot, many companies have shied away from the sadness.

Q: Is it better to have a bad or great Super Bowl commercial, just so people are talking about it? “I just wanted to hug him”, one of the bears says after the people are gone. Doritos “created a spot that surprised, amused and entertained viewers”, Prywes said, though the “Doritos Dogs” ad ultimately won the contest.

“Every guy in the bar had a smile on their face”, Raj Nijjer, from Scottsdale, Arizona, who watched the game at a New York City bar. For all we know it was in her contract that she wouldn’t have to touch the stuff. What America saw as a clever, humous ad, NARAL saw as a threat to its twisted worldview. It would have taken a lot of repetitions of “the Super Bowl has been around for 50 years” to achieve the same impact.

And if you missed an ad when you got up to refill your plate with queso dip, you can still join in on Monday’s water cooler conversation.