The Dot Com Super Bowl

An anonymous reader writes "Remember Epidemic.com and Lifeminders.com? Me neither. But Forbes has a funny story looking back on these dot-bombs and a bunch of other internet startups which advertised during the 2000 Super Bowl. They call the game The Bubble Bowl since over a dozen internet companies blew $40 million on ads, and then most of them went out of business. It's cool to see the ads (I miss the pets.com sock puppet!) and remember some of these crackheaded business ideas."

Comments

dizzy refresh rate

[mortonda]

Can anyone here actually read the entire slide before it reloads a new slide?

Re:dizzy refresh rate

[Igottapoop]

Add this to the end of the first link ?thisSpeed=6000000000 Or once you get directed to the second one just throw a bunch of 000's on and hit enter. That'll slow it down a bit. :-)

sock puppet lives on

[bigbigbison]

The pets'com sock puppet lives on in commercials for insurance company 1-800-Bar-None.

Re:sock puppet lives on

[EnronHaliburton2004]

And if you want to have a good laugh, here's the video with Insult and The Sock Puppet:

http://www.milkandcookies.com/keywords/triumphdog/

Reminder...

[grub]

To check out Fucked Company for the latest dot-bomb companies.

In the summer of 2000....

[Snowbeam]

...we also had Adcritic as a free and enterprising service to see all our Ads for free. Now see what it has becomes :-(

You guys CAN slow down the slide show

[L0phtpDK]

Look up top... see the blue bar with large Forbes log... ahh what is this next to it? "Previous... Slower... ah ha!" I am no medical genious, but I beleive that this button may make the slide show move slower.

Unfortunately, Spot's not dead yet...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the PetsMart sock puppet dog (Spot, iirc) is now doing spots for 1-800-BAR-NONE.

Advertising perspective

[Lord_Dweomer]

Let me explain something to slashdotters about buying time in the Superbowl from an advertising perspective (yes, I'm in the industry). The Superbowl is expensive as hell, I believe current 30 sec. slots go for 2.4 mil. Unless you are a BIG company with that kind of money to toss around, you should NOT be in the Superbowl unless you are ready to risk it all.

Reading AdAge (industry publication) it is interesting to see that most of the spots that the companies are going to be airing are not product related spots, but rather branding spots. These are designed to increase your awareness of the brand, and to make you remember the company more. Branding of that scale is usually only best for companies that have an established foot print in the market place, and that have a customerbase who is already aware of their products.

Once you think about that for a bit, it is pretty obvious how foolish it was of the dotcoms to advertise during the Superbowl. Although I'm sure the media buyers and sellers that took part were MORE than happy to collect those commissions.

Re:Advertising perspective

[Kiryat Malachi]

Read "No Logo" (Naomi Klein), then understand exactly why you aren't the target audience for branding.

Re:Advertising perspective

[nine-times]

So you are pretty much saying the goal of marketing is to separate consumers from rational thought regarding your product.

Yes, That's the goal that ad agencies set for themselves these days. Take a look at a coffee ad from the 50's. They'll show you a cup of coffee and tell you "Our brand has a deeper, richer flavor than our competitors."

Now look at a coffee commercial today. It'll show a couple sipping coffee, having a charming little romantic conversation. You won't see the coffee, you'll just see that the couple's drinking out of coffee cups. Nowhere in the commercial will it say anything about the coffee tasting good.

Around 20 years ago (I guess), advertisers started studying what inspired "brand loyalty" of the kind Apple enjoys today. They compared this brand loyalty to methods used by popular religions and successful cults (successful in creating devout followers, but including suicide cults). A pattern emerged.

The trick, apparently, is to try to get your marketing to do several things at once. Among them:

1. Make people familiar with your product and brand. Make an impression, and make it memorable. It's not so important that they know anything *specific* about your product, though-- knowing it's name is almost enough.
2. Create the impression of an appealing subculture. Present yourself as part of an oppressed minority, filled with misunderstood individuals who are cool or interesting or moral, or generally in some way "better" than the "masses".
3. Present your group (brand/religion/cult) as exclusive gate-keepers into this subculture. Basically, you're not "one of us" unless you own a Mac, or run Linux, or shop at the GAP, or drink Starbucks' coffee, or kill yourself drinking poisoned Kool-Aid (depending on the group).

If you can get people hooked on an appealing subculture, large numbers of those people will do some silly things to enter into that subculture, or even just to maintain their status as a "real" member. People will exhibit a general tendency to wear/eat/buy whatever is dictated by that subculture. Advertisers can then tap into this subculture whenever they want to tell you what to wear or where to hang out or what to eat (or whatever).

Oh brave new world with such people in it!

I really think all you guys should be lined up against a wall and shot.

What did I do? I'm just a helpdesk manager.

I could make a decent arguement that a lot of the things that are wrong with America are due to this philosophy of advertising.

I'd like to place at least some of the blame on the people who fall for it. This method wouldn't exist if it weren't so effective. And don't be too quick to think that you're so immune. You just might be so integrated into your advertisement prescribed subculture that you think your subculture is "normal".

Re:Forgotten?

[greechneb]

You mean the one that Mike Jones, the linebacker, made to stop the outstretched Kevin Dyson, at about the half yard line, since St. Louis had screwed up and let Tennessee have too much time on. The one that everyone at work talked about for weeks afterwords, the one that half the people at work had a background with that picture on it? - Nope, don't remember that one at all, now you tell me there were commercials during that game... interesting.

Re:Sports Guy on ESPN.com Page 2

[cp4]

Don't know why you posted AC... love the Sports Guy and I'm sure a lot of other slashdotters do as well.... the site looks cool, if a bit bare bones.

If any mods are fans as well, mod parent up. If you aren't, well start reading the Sports Guy!

Sports Guy's World

Re:let's not single out the people with ideas...

[Tablizer]

let's not single out the people with "crackheaded" ideas for scrutny and remember the VCs that believed those ideas were worth their money.

The smarter VC's used *stock investor* money, not their own money. Many of them made out reasonably well because they sold some of their shares on the way up. In other words, the smarter VC's took advantage of stupid stock buyers and most of the dot-com money came from them.

Re:so whats in the 2005 superbowl?

[Ahnteis]

Or watch it on budweiser's site.

Re:What a Horrid Site

[DrDebug]

I was merrily following the link to the slideshow, when I discovered that I needed to install the RealPlayer plugin. That ended that quest.

Realplayer is known for it's spyware and other system pollution. I will never put Realplayer product on a system ever again.