NVRC’S 2008 SUPER BOWL CAPTIONED AD RESULTS

NVRC’S 2008 SUPER BOWL CAPTIONED AD RESULTS

By Cheryl Heppner, 2/4/08

What an exciting Super Bowl game! But what a complete bummer to see
the dismal results of our captioned ad survey.

Sometimes there were long stretches of ads with no captions. Far too
many companies still do not understand what a big audience they are
missing and how many of us like to do business with companies that
reach out to us. With an average 30-second spot price tag of $2.7
million, a couple hundred more for captions is trivial.

It’s nice to have a husband with a quick finger on the digital video
recorder to help with reporting about the captions. You can thank
Fred for his handiwork the next time you see him. Among his favorite
ads were the speeding car/screamin’ critters, the Clydesdale tutored
by the Dalmation, and the Godfather parody. Reader Pat Beech, who
doesn’t normally watch the Super Bowl, sat with Jim this year and
kept ad notes while Jim focused the game. Pat’s notes were a great
help in checking my accuracy.

Between the pre-kickoff show after 4 pm and the end of the Super Bowl
broadcast, I counted 109 commercials. That doesn’t include the dozens
of small advertiser plugs. Some of the ads I saw may have been
regional placements that were not viewed by a national audience.

——————————————————————————–

By the Numbers

Of 109 ads viewed:

– 21 were captioned

– 5 more weren’t captioned but had no speaking or singing

– 1 wasn’t captioned but largely had the sound of a dog lapping water

– 3 weren’t captioned and had no speaking but had singing

– 78 were not captioned

– 1 (Geico) just had a captioned “UHHHH” at the end

We’re not even close to approaching the 50% mark for captioning of
Super Bowl ads!

I suppose it sounds silly to some other people, but even if there’s
no speaking or singing, I like to have captions of sound cues that
give meaning to what I’m watching. I also like to have captions of
the singing, or at the very least some cue about the music, such as
whether it’s suspenseful or soft. Without those cues, it’s like
watching something without texture and color.

——————————————————————————–

Honor Roll

Bud Light (4 of 6 ads)

Budweiser

Cars.com (1 of 2 ads)

Chase

Coca Cola (2 of 2 ads)

FedEx

Ford (1 of 2 ads)

GMC

GoDaddy.com

IceBreakers

McDonalds (1 of 2 ads)

Sprint

Tide to Go

Toyota Corolla (2 ads)

White House – Office of National Drug Control Policy

Honorable Mention

Amp, Dell, Doritos, Gatorade and SoBe did not caption their ads, but
had ads with no speaking or singing.

Raspberry Roll

The top honor was won hands down by Fox network, with an honorable
mention to all the studios advertising their movies.

——————————————————————————–

The Breakdown

Pre-Kickoff Show

1 Ford – NO

2 Verizon – NO

3 Overstock.com – NO

4 Apple on Macbook Air – NO

5 Fox (American Idol) – NO

6 Columbia Pictures (Vantage Point) – NO

7 McDonald’s – YES

8 Sprint (Blackberry Pearl) – YES

9 Ford (Sync) – YES

10 Fox (Terminator) – NO

11 Fox (House) – NO**but only guitar music

12 NFL (Matt Hasselback) – NO

After National Anthem

13 Paramount (Drillbit Taylor) – NO

14 Chase (secret agent) – YES

15 AT&T (monkey) – NO

16 Dell – NO

17 Fox (Prison Break) – NO

18 Fox (Pro Bowl) – NO

19 Ford – NO

20 Fox (postgame shows) – NO

21 Troy Aikman – NO

22 Ford – NO

23 Bud Light (fire breathing man) – NO

24 Diet Pepsi Max – NO

25 Salesgenie (Indian salesman) – NO

26 Fox (Terminator) – NO

27 Bud Light (wine tasting) – YES

28 Under Armour – NO

29 Fox (House) – NO

30 Bridgestone (critters screaming) – NO

31 Doritos (music video) – NO

32 Fox (Unhitched) – NO

33 Maryland Lottery – NO

34 Universal Pictures (Wanted) – NO

35 Dell (Red) – NO**no speaking

36 Gatorade G2 – NO

37 GoDaddy.com – YES

38 FedEx – YES

39 Cars.com (extreme fighter) – YES

40 Tide to Go – YES

41 Budweiser – YES

42 Paramount (Iron Man) – NO

43 Toyota Corolla – YES

44 Universal Pictures (Leatherheads) – NO

45 Garmin GPS – NO**no speaking, but singing to music

46 Career Builder (follow your heart) – NO

47 SoBe Life Water – NO** no speaking

48 GMC Yukon – YES

49 White House Office of National Drug Control Policy – YES

50 Bud Light (Carlos Mencia) – YES

51 Fox (American Idol) – NO

52 Disney (Narnia) – NO

53 Planters.com – NO**no speaking, but singing to music

54 T-Mobile (Wade/Barkley) – NO

55 Pepsi (Justin Timberlake) – NO

56 Doritos (mouse trap) – NO**but no speaking

57 Fox (Kitchen Kickoff) – NO

58 Ford (F-Series) – NO

59 Geico – NO**except for captioning “UHHHH”

60 Acura (Advance) – NO

61 Comcast – NO

62 Constellation Energy – NO

63 NFL Network – NO

64 Fox (American Idol) – NO

65 Fox (New Amsterdam) – NO

66 Chevron – NO

67 Lexus (GS) – NO

68 McDonald’s – NO

69 Barackobama.com – NO

70 Fox (Simpsons/King of the Hill) – NO

71 Fox Sports (Daytona) – NO

72 NFL – NO

73 Zantac – NO

74 NewLine (Semi Pro) – NO

75 Claritin – NO

76 Cars.com (medicine man) – NO

77 Salesgenie (bamboo furniture store) – NO

78 Glacau Vitaminwater – NO

79 Fox (Daytona) – NO

80 Bud Light (cave man) – YES

81 IceBreakers – YES

82 Bridgestone (Alice Cooper/Richard Simmons) – NO

83 CareerBuilder (wishing on star) – NO

84 Fox (Terminator) – NO

85 Hyundai – NO

86 Disney (Wall) – NO

87 Fox movie (Jumper) – NO

88 E-Trade (baby) – NO

689 Bud Light (man flying too high) – YES

90 NFL (Chester Pitts) – NO

91 Nissan (Murano) – NO

92 Nationwide – NO

93 Wachovia – NO

94 Sunsilk – YES

95 Coca Cola (dueling balloons) – YES

96 Coca Cola (Frist/Carville) – YES (some out of sync)

97 Toyota (Sequoia) – YES

98 Sony (Don’t Mess with Zohan) – NO

99 Fox (Terminator) – NO

100 E-Trade – NO

101 Taco Bell – NO

102 Gatorade – NO**only sound of dog lapping water

103 Fox (House) – NO

104 Bud Light (Will Ferrell) – NO

105 Hyundai (Genesis) – NO

106 Fox (Moment of Truth) – NO

107 Victoria’s Secret – NO**no speaking, but singing

108 Amp – NO**no speaking, no singing

109 Fox (American Idol/Ben Roethlisberger) – NO

——————————————————————————–

Miscellaneous Information and Ramblings

– “Bob’s House” appeared here at approximately 4:09 eastern time,
prior to the time I started keeping count.

– It was disappointing to see that neither of Pepsi’s ads during the
game was captioned.

– Though not counted here, there were numerous ads for the Pro Bowl,
none of which were captioned.

– Fred and I thought it was ironic that an NFL “all rights reserved”
ad was not captioned – people could be crooks and not know it!

– Budweiser and its Bud Light accounted for more than 20% of the
captioned ads, yet two Bud Light ads had no captions.

– Was it just me, or were the captions in the Coke ad with Bill Frist
and James Carville really out of sync at first?

Anybody who wants to volunteer to find contact information for these
companies, to thank them or express disappointment, we need you!
We’ve got too many other projects at NVRC right now to do it!

——————————————————————————–

©2008 by Northern Virginia Resource Center for Deaf and Hard of
Hearing Persons (NVRC), 3951 Pender Drive, Suite 130, Fairfax, VA
22030; www.nvrc.org; 703-352-9055 V, 703-352-9056 TTY, 703-352-9058
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Note from Deaf Network Team:

You can watch re-run Super Bowl 2008 advertising with captioning.

Go to http://deafnetwork.com/list/lt.php?id=ZUtVBFUCUlkdCVNVVh8BB1AE

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