Robinsons fail to score at Superbowl
Ok you though the Super Bowl craze was over? Afterall the traditional winner’s ”I’m Going to Disneyland” / “I’m going to Walt Disney World” spot has aired, Head Coach Dungy and Running Back Rhodes from the NFL Superbowl Champion Indianapolis Colts have visited Walt Disney World and the regular tv prgramming is back on? Well, not so fast … we can’t let you go without coming back to the one reason many viewers actually tune in: the unique tv ads!
As mentioned in a recent post Disney had entered the fiercy ad-battle that wages around the Superbowl with a 30 second trailer for the upcoming animated ”Meet the Robinsons” feature. With 30 second ads costing up to 2.6 million US-$ (not to produce, just for the airtime!) and roughly 90 millions in front of their TVs in the US every advertiser tries to come up with its best. So how did Disney fare with its spot for “Meet the Robinsons”, which aired as 36th spot of the evening (out of a total of 65)?
While the spot surely wasn’t the worst I personally had the impression it was rather uninspired. At no time did the spot feel special. While advertisers such as Budweiser come up with new, fresh ideas year by year that one can actually look forward too, Disney’s ad for “Meet the Robinsons” to me just looked like any other tv-ad they might do for the movie. While it had its funny moments (the poor dinosaur!) “regular” is just not good enough under these circumstances.
And it seems I am not the only one who felt like this. Take for example James Poniewozik who rated all 65 spots for Time.com and gave it a grade of B- stating:
“Mildly promising trailer for an animated Disney movie set in 2037, in which frogs will play music and animals will talk. In other words, life will be like a Super Bowl commercial, circa 1996.“
This is, if you would ask me, a rather good observation, since there used to be quite a few spots with talking animals in the past but this fad seems to have passed. But while Poniewozik seems to have mostly clang to the tag lines pushed by the spot the one thing I really remembered was the dinosaur… hmm … just remembering, weren’t dinosaurs also one of the big trends of the 90s … wasn’t there that (now by management conveniently forgotten) first full length computer animated feature of Disney “Dinosaur” (yes I know, the backgrounds were not copmputer animated - cut me a slack here) … but I digress.
Back on topic: on other ratings the spot scored similar - average, not outstanding (neither good nor bad). Take for example the USA Today Ad Meter for which 238 adult volunteers used handheld meters to register how much they liked each ad second-by-second during the superbowl, resulting in scores that represent the highest average for each ad. According to the USA Today Ad Meter Budweise had the best spot for the 9th consecutive year with a rating of 8.56. Disney’s “Meet the Robinsons” spot registered only a rating of 6.10 taking it to the 37th position in the charts (click here for the full result list of the USA Today Ad Meter).
And then there is the YouTube Supervote: here YOU can watch 51 of the 65 tv spots from Superbowl again (or if you did miss them for some reason, e.g. because you watched the superbowl outside the US) and rate them yourself. Luckily for us Disney fans the “Meet the Robinsons” trailer is included - and while the rating is still on-going, at the time I write this post Disney’s “Meet the Robinsons” only made it to the 40th place.
USA Today is offering a similar service as part of the USA Today Ad Meter which allows users to watch 60 of the 65 tv spots (9 more) and rate them online. While no chart is displayed for the rating of the spots, once a user has rated an ad he gets displayed the average rating so far for that spot. The “Meet the Robinsons” ad at the time I post this has scored 2 out of 4 stars by 784 users.
However you turn it - in none of these ratings the ad scored as high as marketing must have hoped for. So let’s hope they still have an ass hidden away…
Before I forget it: Disney aired a second ad in the Superbowl - for its upcoming live action movie “Wild Hogs”, which aired as 28th spot of the evening. James Poniewozik rated it worse than the “Meet the Robinsons” spot on Time.com with a C grade, while in the USA Today Superbowl Ad Meter it moved on top of “Meet the Robinson” getting to the 24th place with a rating of 6.74 (0.64 points better than Disney’s animated attempt). On YouTube’s Supervote on the other hand the “Wild Hogs” are (right now as I write this) five spots below the Robinsons on the 45th place. The 804 users who have rated the spot (up till the moment of this posting) on USA Today’s online rating page gave it a 2 star voting, so the same as the Robinson’s spot.
But after all these stats … why don’t you take a few minutes and enjoy some of the hilarious spots that aired this year during the superbowl … and maybe rate them 
I, in the meantime, will ponder why I still can’t forget that dinosaur from the “Meet the Robinsons” … man, this dinosaur is bugging me … now I do feel as if I need to see the movie - if only for him … so maybe the spot was better than I originally thought?? What do you think??
February 9th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
Is there a similarity in the dinosaur in the MTR trailer and the one from Toy Story? I have a vague memory of an ‘I’ve only got small arms’ gag from Toy Story, and that may be what is triggering the touch of deja vu!
On a separate note, there were some superb ads during the Super Bowl (which I only managed to catch online as I was actually covering the game at the time!), and the one for Blockbuster made me howl with laughter. The Bud Light gorillas were also a scream, as was the animated Coke commercial. Some very inventive stuff, as usual (albeit with a few duds along the way). With MTR, it’s hard to know how to make a movie trailer any different just because it’s the Super Bowl, so I guess it just looked a bit ordinary by the other ads it was grouped with. I certainly didn’t see anything wrong with it; it’s just that movie ads are more run-of-the-mill compared to the made-for-Super-Bowl commercials.
February 9th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
Hi Simon,
I doubt that it was the deja vu regarding Toy Story - somehow it was just an outstanding moment of the trailer as it seemed way more “unusual” than the rest of it. I mean the rest of the scenes had either been part of regular MTR-trailers or just fitted what I expected from MTR. The dinosaur on the other hand was something unexpected for me. I think that was what made it for me.
When you say about the movie-spots “I certainly didn’t see anything wrong with it; it’s just that movie ads are more run-of-the-mill compared to the made-for-Super-Bowl commercials.” I think you pin-point the problem: how to stand out against these special ads if you do a regular ad. There, planly, is no way. So maybe one should ask different questions:
1. If you do want to do a super bowl ad for a movie: does it really have to be a regular spot? Can’t you come up with a dedicated spot? I mean: why not animate a special spot with scenes not from the movie? If you invest the money to buy the expensive ad spot, why go cheap on the material you use in that time? Afterall it is a unique opportunity. What about the cast of MTR watching the super bowl in 2037 or playing football or …
2. If you don’t want to or can’t come up with a special spot: is it really worth spending the insane amounts for airtime for a spot? Yes you have a giant potential audience in front of the tv screens. But: if you have a regular spot, how many are actually going to notice your spot among all the flashy, outstanding spots surrounding it. How many of these are going to remember your spot?? Wouldn’t it be better to pay with the money for the air time for one super bowl spot to air the same spot several times during regular tv programming, when air time is a lot cheaper?? This question can only be answered by the specialists who track the spots and their influence on the audience but it seems to me worth pondering. That is if you actually see the spot as part of your regular advertising. You could just as well decide that the answer doesn’t matter since you just want to advertise on the super bowl to show the world how much money you invest … which on the other hand could be seen as a desperate step to “save” a movie.
Hmmm … however I more and more think that if you go for such a spot you need to go all the way out … including making a really special spot.
February 10th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
I agree that MtR’s trailer was poorly done for the Super Bowl. The regular trailer would have been a much better option. If I were Disney, I would have made a teaser with some combination of the regular theatrical trailer and something similar to the Monsters Inc commercials (you know, the ones that featured Mike & Sully with the hula hoop).
February 10th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
[...] Dirk at the always excellent Mousekingdom Blog takes a look at the distinctly American sport of Super Bowl commercials. Disney had two commercials during the big game, a 30 second spot for “Meet The Robinsons” and a shorter spot for “Wild Hogs”. The four comedians of the hog-opolypse got the largest reaction at my Super Bowl party. Read Dirk’s post to find out what the experts thought. [...]
February 13th, 2007 at 12:03 am
Great idea on 1. Dirk. Something special using the movie characters in a Super Bowl setting would have been far more effective. Perhaps Disney need to consult you on future commercials!
April 4th, 2007 at 10:05 am
Why does the normal world continue to pursue the Disney Studios to bow down to other people’s formats and ideas. Lets face it, if it were up to you to construct Disneyland, Disney World, California Adventures, and the other multitude of theme parks spreading throughout the planet, they’d have extreme rollar coasters just like everybody else. Let Disney do what it wants, although constructive feedbacks are always welcome for Disney to go the other direction. Which it does!