Hugely expensive and often more memorable than the game, watch some of the best ads to debut during the Super Bowl
1) Super Bowl XVIII: Apple ? 1984
This high concept ad by Apple regularly tops polls of most memorable and most effective TV ads, so much so that it's sometimes forgotten that it debuted during the otherwise unmemorable 1984 demolition of the Washington Redskins by the (then) Los Angeles Raiders.
Directed by Blade Runner director Ridley Scott, it remains quite unlike the majority of Super Bowl ads, which tend towards the jokey and informal. Marrying the year 1984 with an Orwellian theme, it implicated IBM as Big Brother challenged by the individuality of the Apple Macintosh personal computer. (IBM's advertising slogan was the more sinister "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM".) Most recently it was the subject of a mash-up by a supporter of Barack Obama's bid to win the Democratic nomination in 2008, brutally summing up fears of Hillary Clinton's candidacy.
2) Super Bowl III: Mott's ? Clamato
The archetype of the Super Bowl ad dates back to 1969 ? the year that Joe Namath and the New York Jets injected some glamour into the Super Bowl by beating the Baltimore Colts (as it was then).
Here Mott's uses mildly off-beat humour to promote its combination of tomato juice and clam broth, in a style repeated endlessly by Super Bowl ads ever since. Today, though, the images shown of laboratory-grown "Frankenfood" would hardly be seen as a selling point. Mott's is still in business ? but it is still best known for its apple sauce.
3) Super Bowl XXIX: Budweiser ? Frogs
Another member of the Super Bowl advertising hall of fame, Budweiser's croaking frogs rescued America from the tedium of the Miller Lite ads of the 1980s. Debuting during the 49ers versus Chargers pointsfest of 1995, won by Steve Young's arm for San Francisco, this was funny, clever and instantly memorable. The frogs also helped rehabilitate Budweiser's image from being a drink for old men. It didn't make the beer taste any better, though. And it did eventually give birth to Budweiser's "Wassup?" commercials, possibly the most annoying ads in the history of the US advertising ? a title for which there is substantial competition.
4) Super Bowl XLIII: Hulu ? Alec in Huluwood
Among the best ads in recent years, this spot for online TV library Hulu has Alec Baldwin perfectly reprising his 30 Rock character as a demented television executive. It's hard to imagine anyone other than Baldwin making it work, but he carries it off with panache. As Jack Donaghy would say: "The Italians have a saying, 'Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.' And, although they've never won a war or mass-produced a decent car, in this area they are correct."
The game itself was a low-key thriller won by the Steelers over the Cardinals, lacking the excitement of the previous year's underdog triumph by the Giants.
5) Super Bowl X: Xerox ? Monks
A little slow-moving for modern tastes, this 1976 ad cut the template for narrative-style ads and has been frequently imitated down the years. More importantly it set the scene for using the Super Bowl to launch an unfamiliar high tech product on a mass audience ? in this case the revolutionary Xerox 9200 duplicator. Contrasting the modern efficiency of the Xerox copier with the ancient technology of the Dark Ages was cute, as is the "It's a miracle!" ending. In 1976 it really was a miracle.
The game itself was a classic: the Pittsburg Steelers, led by Lynn Swann, holding off the Cowboys quarterbacked by the great Roger Staubach ? thanks to a dramatic last-minute interception in the Steelers' endzone.
6) Super Bowl XXXIV: Pets.com - If you leave me now
Proof that a great ad and Super Bowl exposure isn't enough to save a flailing concept, this spot for Pets.com was the end result of the excesses of the dotcom bubble. Pets.com was an online start-up supplying pet products online ? those where the days ? and had cash to burn as investors clambered onboard. And burn it they did, with Pets.com just one of many dotcoms fighting for exposure in 2000.
The dotcom bubble deflated a few months later, Pets.com collapsed with it ? and this is about all that is left. Indeed, that backstory is more memorable than the actual game, in which the Tennessee Titans ineptly lost to a less-than-stellar St Louis Rams.
7) Super Bowl XLII: Etrade ? Baby
A cracker of a game and a cracker of a commercial: quirky, arresting and funny while making exactly the point its client wants it to make, that using its product is easy. Probably one of the most effective Super Bowl-debuting ads of all time, it has proved hard for rivals to imitate.
As mentioned above, in the 2008 Super Bowl the New York Giants caused an upset against the unbeaten New England Patriots in a classic Super Bowl shocker. Somehow, Etrade's smart baby and Eli Manning's quick thinking complimented each other neatly.
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