Sponsored Content WEBINAR: ELECTION 2008: E-mail Tips from a Political Insider   WEBINAR: Becoming the Illusionist: The Magic of Using "Brand" to Drive Response without Results Disappearing in the Process   WEBINAR: Score and Win Through Cooperation   TOOLS OF THE TRADE: Holiday's are prime-time for email marketing - maximize your ROI by getting to the inbox   ON DEMAND WEBINAR--MASTER CLASS: High Performance Online and Off-line Strategies for Large Scale Customer Acquisition   FREE WHITE PAPER - Direct Mail and the Internet Find any supplier you need - agencies, CRM, fulfillment, lists, e-commerce, paper, printers, telemarketing, and more. Featured Categories Lists and Data Telemarketing Database Marketing E-commerce Web Marketing Agency & Creative Services Print, Production & Paper Lists and Data Processing :: view all categories Get free access to more than 50,000 list data cards - one of the most comprehensive databases in the industry. >> Search Now DIRECT Buzz Blog Webinars Buyer's Guide Calculators JobZone ListFinder Promo Calendar Research Store E-Newsletters Print Magazine This Month in Direct Magazine Deal With It Direct had a full house for this year's list roundtable. Considering all the additional responsibilities on brokers' plates, that's impressive... See Full July Issue

True direct marketing ads were in short supply during this year’s Super Bowl. Yes, a number of spots featured all-too-fleeting URLs without offering any good reason to log onto the Web sites. And yes, some dot-coms (CareerBuilders.com; Cars.com; E*Trade.com; and Overstock.com, to name a few) attempted to be edgy. And the effort showed. Often, so did the strain.

The upshot was that these interactive companies produced little more than branding ads. The commercials, along with others that ran nationally, can be seen here: http://www.myspace.com/superbowlads.

Among the more successful direct response spots, the Ontario Tourism Marketing Partnership produced a pretty commercial with, if not a dedicated Super Bowl-specific URL, at least (in the version that played in the New York area) a tailored one: http://www.ontariotravel.net/usa. It also featured a vanity toll-free number (800-ontario), albeit one that flashed on the screen very quickly.

But the spot’s URL was more a tracking mechanism than anything else, since all it did was bring visitors to the site’s main page. Granted, there is a link to information for visitors from the U.S., but for the price Ontario Tourism paid to be seen during the Super Bowl, going the extra yard and setting up a dedicated landing page would seem a natural action.

At least one consumer packaged goods firm produced a solid direct response commercial. Tide featured its portable stain-removal product, Tide to Go, in an ad that featured a URL, and a reason to log onto it.

I’m not sure the voiceover call to action (“Get famous. At mytalkingstain.com”) was the strongest possible line they could have used, but give them credit for setting up a (pardon the expression – or don’t) spot-specific Web site.

Once there, viewers have a chance to enter a contest or download a variety of stain-related content. They may also submit their own version of the talking stain commercial, many of which will doubtless not only push the boundary of taste, but stomp that boundary into the asphalt and then drive a steamroller over it.

If there was a miss in Tide to Go’s campaign, it was the lack of a printable coupon, which would have spurred a trial purchase.

Similarly, GoDaddy.com’s site referenced the current Super Bowl. But then, GoDaddy.com has a cottage industry in commercials rejected by the Super Bowl-hosting network. It perennially generates Web site hits by urging viewers to log on and view its too-racy-for-general-consumption advertisements.

During Super Bowl XLII, the company chose to forsake selling anything at all, instead using its ad buy to showcase the banned ads on its Web site. This year’s censored effort featured racecar driver Danica Patrick and a not-as-clever-as-GoDaddy-thought play on the animal kingdom’s castoridae castor.

The commercial was moderately amusing, but not as effective as a third spot (also unaired), called “White Light,” which actually stresses GoDaddy’s domain registration services. All three commercials — two of which are not suitable for conservative workplace viewing — are on GoDaddy’s Web site.

A good chunk of Monday-morning conversations about this year’s Super Bowl commercials focused on two spots from infoUSA. I’m somewhat torn about infoUSA’s Sales Genie ads – but being somewhat torn is a far cry from the near-universal condemnation the spots have received.

Before I buck most pundits’ views, I need to make a boatload of disclosures. InfoUSA is a major advertiser within Direct magazine and its various ancillary products. And Direct and its sister marketing publications are infoUSA clients – the company coordinates list services for us.

Based on all this, those wanting to call me a paid apologist for offering anything other than unmitigated condemnation certainly have ammunition for doing so. But hear me out first.

Yes, the ads featured a level of racial sensitivity somewhere between Mickey Rooney’s turn as Mr. Yunioshi, the Japanese landlord in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and former New York senator Alfonse D’Amato’s mockery of the judge in the O.J. Simpson murder trial (“Judge Ito rike the rimeright!”) If there is a saving grace to the plot of these commercials, it is that the ethnic protagonists do come out on top at the end of each spot. It’s not much of a saving grace, but it’s what the ads offered.

But leave aside the cheesy accents (a tall order, but play along), and the commercials got some things right, from a direct response point of view. A good handful of spots from other marketers were more concerned with showing how much the creative directors missed being in film school. InfoUSA’s commercials recognized (or attempted to create) a need, offered a product that remedied that need, and provided a direct response channel or two for obtaining that product.

Additionally, in a year when many ads were so non-narrative that they left viewers scratching their heads until the final seconds (and sometimes beyond), infoUSA’s had plot and narrative that hinged on using the product offered. You may not have liked what was being said, but you knew what was going on.

The ads featured a semi-dedicated URL (http://www.salesgenie.com/tv), an utterly unmemorable toll-free number, and a reward for contacting the company (100 free leads for every salesperson).

Finally, in a year that featured a multitude of Super Bowl commercials filmed with similar palettes of muddy grays and browns, infoUSA’s ads were brightly, eye-catchingly colored. Visually, they stood out from the rest of the spots.

InfoUSA claims both last year’s and this year’s ads have pulled well for it. And CEO Vinod Gupta has, in published accounts, made tongue-in-cheek boasts about deliberately trying to produce the worst commercials featured during the game. And – fair’s fair – chances are the only list source the majority of Super Bowl viewers can name is Sales Genie.

The question is whether the controversy each set of ads has generated – the deliberately poor production values of a year ago, the insensitive accents in this year’s crop – hurt potential customers’ ability to take the company seriously, regardless of the quality of its product.

There’s a very simple test for this: Google the neutral terms Super Bowl Sales Genie and see what comes up. Listings may change, but as of a week after the big game the top 10 results include a lot of criticism of the ads and links to the ads on YouTube, with nary a link back to the company.

To respond to the opinions in this column, please contact richard.levey@penton.com