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Super Bowl ads not as bad as Gupta hoped(Omaha World-Herald (NE) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Feb. 6--Vin Gupta missed one goal, and the results aren't in yet on the other he sought by running more than $6 million in Super Bowl ads for Salesgenie. Salesgenie is one of the sales tools that InfoUSA Inc. of Omaha, of which Gupta is chief executive, sells to businesses. Gupta said he wanted to repeat the "worst ad" ranking he received in 2007 for a commercial that was panned by industry watchers as "low-rent" and possibly the product of a college marketing-class project. He fell short on that goal, and the company wasn't saying late Tuesday whether the ads achieved the real prize he was after: more customers for Salesgenie.com. It's not that Salesgenie's three commercials on Sunday got rave reviews. They were panned, but as Adweek's Barbara Lippert wrote after ripping them: "But worst? Hardly." She put Salesgenie above an "insanely bad" Sunsilk spot and a "plain ugly" one by Planter's that had men panting after a comically unattractive woman who rubbed herself with cashews rather than perfume. Gupta issued press releases leading up to the Super Bowl saying he wanted to win the race to be the "baddest of the bad." But the worst he could do was 50th best on USA Today's Ad Meter ranking of the 55 commercials. His other ad got 45th place. USA Today measured reactions of 238 volunteers as they watched the commercials. (The volunteers ranked the Planter's ad that Lippert slammed as ninth best and the Sunsilk spot 39th.) The judgment of a group at Bailey Lauerman, an Omaha-Lincoln ad agency that rates the Super Bowl ads, was that the Salesgenie ads were the worst shown Sunday. Gupta -- who also is founder, chairman and the biggest shareholder of InfoUSA -- maintains that no matter how bad the commercials are, the real question is whether they draw customers. Last year's $4 million spent to finish last in the critics' listings brought enough business to Salesgenie, based in San Carlos, Calif., to pay for the ad "many times over," Gupta said last week in an investors' conference call. Last February, the company said, more than 25,000 people went to the Salesgenie Web site the day after the game in response to the single spot InfoUSA ran. "It's about results," Gupta said in a press release, the "no-frills ads speak directly" to salespeople. The Super Bowl ads were part of an effort to boost Salesgenie, which Stormy Dean, InfoUSA chief financial officer, has called a "mature" business. Mark Israelson, whose hiring as president of Salesgenie was announced last month, will re-examine Salesgenie, Dean said in the conference call. Israelson's job, Dean said Tuesday, is to devise an approach to make Salesgenie, so far aimed at small businesses, a marketing tool for large businesses. Israelson has experience in doing that, Dean said. "Salesgenie grew substantially during 2007 to approximately a $40 million business," Dean said. He would not say how many of its customers were attributed to last year's Super Bowl ads nor how many of them have remained customers. Bad ratings or good, effective or not, the Salesgenie ads were criticized by some in the advertising business as offensive. In one commercial, an animated panda-bear couple bemoan, in Chinese accents, their failing business. In the other criticized ad, a white boss threatens an Indian salesman named Ramesh that he'll be fired if he doesn't double his sales. Lippert said the characters were Chinese and Indian stereotypes. An online blog featured an exchange in which charges of racism were leveled and denied. Gupta did not return phone calls seeking comment. According to InfoUSA, Gupta wrote the scripts for the commercials. He was born in India and came to this country as a graduate student in the 1960s. Gupta has the panda couple solving their business problem by using Salesgenie to get sales leads for their bamboo furniture store. They end up rich. The Indian salesman also finds success through Salesgenie.com and winds up winning a sales award from the boss. "We did this in-house and saved a lot of money," Gupta said earlier. Besides his doing the writing, the company's in-house advertising service handled the placement and other details. A San Francisco ad agency, Creative Mint, did the animation. Other advertisers spend millions of dollars hiring advertising firms and production companies just to produce an ad, he said. That's in addition to what Fox charged, an average of $2.7 million per spot. To see more of the Omaha World-Herald, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.omaha.com. Copyright (c) 2008, Omaha World-Herald, Neb. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |