Private parts take center stage in battle of Super Bowl ads

By Justin Bachman
Associated Press

NEW YORK — Even before the football teams came close to scoring, some of the high-priced commercials were racking up points yesterday. But some of the hits were a little cheap.

Pepsi and Apple Computer teamed up to take a shot at the music industry with ads featuring teens sued over illegal downloads. Associated Press

In a telecast that featured commercials for two of the three drugs to treat erectile dysfunction, Bud Light scored early with two amusing ads. Both focused on men suffering painful experiences of a different sort down there.

One spot featured two guys at a hunting camp comparing their canines' talents. One has a dog that fetches a Bud Light from a cooler. "What can your dog do?" asks the pleased owner. "Bud Light," commands the man wanting a beer, prompting his scroungy pooch to lunge for the pants of the other guy, who squeals and flings his bottle.

In the other ad, comedian Cedric the Entertainer wanders into the wrong room at a spa while waiting for his massage, distracted on his way by a refrigerator loaded with Bud Light. The puzzled attendant gives him the treatment — a bikini wax.

"Is there a breeze in here?" Cedric asks afterward, sitting in a bathrobe.

Sierra Mist soda explored the same territory. And one can only hope Wallace, the kilt-wearing bagpiper in their ad, is wearing a certain piece of football gear as he gets relief from the heat by exposing himself to blasts of frigid air from a subway grate. A boy looking on says, "That's just wrong, Dad."

Wallace may soon be a candidate for the dysfunction drugs.

CBS charged $2.3 million this year for each 30-second spot, up from $2.2 million last year. The commercials command such steep prices because the broadcast commands a unique audience: more than 100 million viewers who don't channel surf for four-plus hours.

Moreover, in numerous surveys each January, more than a quarter of Americans say they tune in solely for the commercials.

The American Legacy Foundation offered an elaborate anti-smoking spot featuring Shards O' Glass Freeze Pops, a treat with glass frozen inside. "What if all companies sold products like tobacco," the close-out line asks.

Pharmaceutical giants Bayer AG and GlaxoSmithKline hired former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka to tout their new anti-impotence drug, Levitra, by noting some differences between football and baseball. One is played in all sorts of weather, with a markedly different pace, Ditka notes, taking a swipe at the summer sport.

"Baseball could use Levitra," Ditka concludes.

The newest entrant in that prescription drug category, Cialis, offers romantic scenes of couples in a commercial that asks: "If a relaxing moment turns into the right moment, will you be ready?"

Apple Computer and PepsiCo used the game to kick off their iTunes music store promotion — and to tweak the recording industry's legal assault on Internet song-swapping by featuring 16 teens the industry sued last year over their illegal downloading. The companies are awarding 100 million song downloads from the Apple retail site through bottle tops.

Keeping to its musical theme this Super Bowl, Pepsi imagined the day an 11-year-old James Marshall Hendrix contemplates an electric guitar in the window of a Seattle shop located near a Pepsi vending machine. Nearby, a Coke machine sits outside a store selling an accordion.

"Whew ... that was a close one," reads the ending graphic, after the soundtrack offers a taste of how an accordion can mangle "Purple Haze."

Super Bowl ratings have risen over the past few years, reaching 88.6 million last year, according to Nielsen Media Research, up from 84.3 million in 2001, the last time CBS had the game. The broadcast rotates among ABC, Fox and CBS as part of the NFL's $17.6 billion, eight-year TV deal announced in 1998.

In one of the program's quirkier ads, an elderly couple battles over new crispier chips from Frito Lay. Tripping her, the older gentleman then shuffles past and stabs his cane in her back. But reaching the chip, he finds himself thwarted as he turns to see her holding his artificial teeth.

Rival shaving product companies Gillette and Schick-Wilkinson Sword came razor-thin to horrible with their respective ads.

Schick informed viewers in pedestrian fashion that its new Quattro system with four blades is superior to those with only three. Gillette answered with a flashy collection of black and white images and purple prose about the joys of its own three-blade razor: "It's like having an angel by your side."