Who liked the 9/11 ads? You did

The viewers' favorite was Anheuser-Busch's Clydesdale tribute spot for Budweiser.

By MSN Money Partner Sep 14, 2011 3:14PM

This post comes from James R. Hood at partner site ConsumerAffairs.com.

The airwaves were full of 9/11 tribute ads over the weekend, and critics were quick to label them mawkish, exploitative, crassly commercial and syrupy, just to name a few.

But guess what? Somebody liked them. Lots of somebodies, in fact.

A survey by Ace Metrix, which measures ad effectiveness, finds that the ads were very well received by the consumers they were aimed at. "American consumers, by and large, rated the ads very favorably," the company said after polling 500 adults.

Anheuser-Busch's Clydesdale tribute spot for Budweiser beat out the others in the genre, with State Farm's "Thanks" ad second, and a series of Chevrolet ads that aired during Discovery Channel's "Rising: Rebuilding Ground Zero" coming in third.

Bing: History of Budweiser Clydesdales

Ace Metrix found it significant that the tribute ads did better than the usual product ads in terms of effectiveness. The Bud spot -- admittedly a thing of beauty -- scored a 655 on the Ace Metrix effectiveness scale of 0 to 950, Advertising Age reported, far ahead of the average beer ad score of 478.

A ConsumerAffairs.com analysis of about 280,000 consumer comments on Facebook, Twitter and other social media and blogs supported Ace Metrix's findings, showing a clear upswing in positive comments in recent days.

Nearly 3,000 consumers posted comments our computerized sentiment analysis classified as positive about Bud so far this month, compared with about 1,700 one year ago. Among the most frequently used words and phrases used to describe Budweiser were: "Budweiser commercial," "advert," "horse" and "best commercial."

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2Comments

Best

Sep 15, 2011 7:14AM

I would be happy to never hear another 911 lamentation for the rest of my life. It was a great tragedy, but we should all just give it a rest.

The world has seen many tragedies that resulted in much greater losses, yet we don't mark those tragedies with the same fervor and reverence. Is it because the lives of people who worked in the twin towers, the Pentagon, and on those aircraft are somehow more valuable than the lives of people from New Orleans, Thailand, Africa, Japan, India or the Middle East?

Is because the perpetrators were so sinister in their intentions? They intended to spawn as much dramatic impact as possible; we should remember that the people who hate us honor that day, as well.

Let's quietly remember the loss and get on with life.

Previous replies

Mike Cleeland

Sep 15, 2011 2:08PM

I agree with the previous poster completely...I can't remember if it was Dish network or Direct TV, but this reminds me of the satelitte tv provider that was offering discounts to the victims of I think it was Katrina. Discounts mind you, not free services. "People are dead and dying...they need to be able to watch their favorite television programs!!!!!!!!" American capitalism at it's best.

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