cover image THE SUPER BOWL OF ADVERTISING: How the Commercials Won the Game

THE SUPER BOWL OF ADVERTISING: How the Commercials Won the Game

Bernice Kanner, . . Bloomberg, $27.95 (214pp) ISBN 978-1-57660-131-0

This breezy and entertaining book provides a look at how advertising on America's most watched television program—the Super Bowl—has changed over the past 36 years. Kanner, former "On Madison Avenue" columnist for New York magazine, offers delightful tidbits about the commercials, the products and the executives responsible for choosing the ads. Who would believe that there were some 30,000 unsold seats at the first Super Bowl, in 1967, and 60-second spots sold for less than $100,000? Today, with more than 750 million viewers around the world, advertisers pay more than $2 million for 30-second spots. Presenting anecdotes about the ads along with illustrations, Kanner takes readers through time as she discusses such classic lines as "Schaefer is the one beer to have when you're having more than one" and "take it all off" in reference to Noxzema shaving cream. In an amusing piece, "Fossil Fuel," Kanner recounts a popular animated commercial that occurs inside a natural history museum at night: "The bones of a giant tyrannosaurus stir to life, awakened by the intoxicating smell of McDonald's fries. The T-rex sets off to find them. When a dozing guard realizes that Dino wants his dinner, he playfully makes it do tricks, doling out fries as training bait." Particularly insightful is "the dot-com bowl" chapter about the 2000 game. Several Internet companies spent millions of their IPO money on their ads—in vain, as the corporations were out of business by the end of the year. General business readers as well as industry insiders will appreciate the behind-the-scenes look at their world. (Nov.)