Newsday
No Big Win For Ads

By Monty Phan

Unlike the game itself, there was no clear-cut winner among Madison Avenue's offerings that aired during Sunday's Super Bowl, if the polls are any indication.

In fact, advertisers' efforts seemed to be so ho-hum that even the students in Andrew Bergstein's marketing classes at Penn State University were unwilling to discuss them.

"It was like pulling teeth to get students to talk about their favorite Super Bowl ads, which was radically different from previous years," said Bergstein, an instructor at the university's Smeal College of Business.

Overall, Bergstein said he didn't think this year's crop was as inventive as even last year's, when advertisers faced economic turmoil and the dilemma of how to address the post-Sept. 11 audience. Still, his classes did have a few favorites, among them:

A Visa spot starring the Houston Rockets' 7-foot-5 center Yao Ming, who, when asks if he can write a check, is repeatedly rebuffed by a cashier who points to a sign saying, "Absolutely no checks." Each time she points, she says, "Yo," to which the basketball star replies, "Yao."

A Sierra Mist commercial where two sweltering monkeys at a zoo use a see-saw to catapult one of them over a wall and into a polar bear's pool, while the theme from "2001" plays in the background.

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REPORTERS & EDITORS: For more information, please contact Wyatt DuBois in the Smeal College of Business Media Relations Office at 814-863-3798 or wed112@psu.edu .

Penn State's Smeal College of Business offers highly ranked undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, Ph.D., and executive education opportunities to more than 5,500 students at all levels. Featuring academic departments of accounting, finance, marketing, insurance and real estate, management, and supply chain and information systems, the college is also home to major research centers such as the Center for Supply Chain Research, the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, the eBusiness Research Center, the Farrell Center for Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the Center for Global Business Studies, and the Center for the Management of Technological and Organizational Change.

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