Ad Meter: Ads go to the dogs, 1,

Favorite so far is Doritos ad, but vote is still open

The Super Bowl is over, but there’s still plenty of time on the clock for folks who want to help pick the Big Game’s winning TV commercial.

Sunday night, for sure, ads with dogs had the most bark.

A partnership this year gives all consumers a vote in picking the winning Super Bowl commercial in the USA TODAY/ Facebook Ad Meter. Voting began during the game as ads aired and you can view the ads, vote, like and share the commercials at admeter.usatoday.com and on Facebook. The official voting will close at 6 p. m. ET Tuesday and the winner will be named that night online at usatoday.com and on Facebook and in Wednesday print editions of USA TODAY.

But a panel of consumers also was gathered Sunday, as in previous Ad Meters, to rate the ads electronically as they aired in the game, and gave a clear sign that dogs are still a Super Bowl advertiser’s best friend.

The panel’s top pick was a Dorito’s spot— made on a $ 20 budget — featuring a 120- pound Great Dane that casually buries the family cat, then bribes the owner to keepmumby supplying him with Doritos.

But this was to be a three- dog night. The runners- up also featured canines, including a Vwspot that had a pooch hitting the gym to be able to chase a Vwbeetle into a Star Wars- like adventure. It was followed by a Skechers spot with a sneaker- wearing, pudgy bulldog winning a race against greyhounds.

The key to the success of the spots: The pooches act like nice people. “Dogs seem to be more personable,” says William Kindred of Phoenix, Ariz. “People can relate to them. The love for animals is universal.”

So is the love for commercials with dogs, followed closely by cute kids. Perhaps this tweet, from Nathan Marting, best sums it up: “Doritos owning the Super Bowl ads tonight. Dogs and babies never fail.”

But for the first time in years, in a nation where unemployment still hovers above 8% and one still embroiled in two wars, a serious ad garnered serious attention on the Super Bowl. A powerful, two- minutelong Chrysler spot featuring actor Clint Eastwood likened the halftime plans of the two Super Bowl teams to America working to get back on its feet. The ad, however, could not be officially rated by the panel because it ran during halftime, not during the game.

There was strong social media buzz for the Chrysler spot. “Kudos to @chrysler for delivering a deeper message than selling cars and living the blinged out life,” tweeted @jacquichew,

In the early online Ad Meter voting at the end of the game the Doritos dog was running No. 2, while another dog— the Bud Light rescue dog Weego— was in the lead. Dogs had four of the top five slots.

Now, it’s up to you. Consumers coast to coast have a chance to pick the Ad Meter winner. Every vote counts. But you can only vote once per ad at admeter.usatoday.com and facebook.com .

Some 54 commercials that cost upwards of $ 3.5 million per 30- second slot were in the NBC broadcast watched by more than 100 million viewers.

And in the cat- and- mouse race for top pick, the panel’s favorite was the Doritos spot created by Jonathan Friedman, a freelance graphic designer and musican from Virginia Beach, Va.

He turned his $ 20 investment in the spot into a $ 1 million cash prize for being the panel’s top pick, after winning online voting in the chipmaker’s Crash the Super Bowl contest to be one of two amateur Doritos ads aired in the game. He also gets to work on a commercial project with the production company Lonely Planet. “I personally love my dog like he’s my child. So I can understand a person’s relationship with dogs,” says Friedman, who owns a Chihuahua named Philippe, and who borrowed Huff — the Great Dane — from a family friend. “With dogs, you have unconditional love for ( them) and vice versa.”

The whole creative idea came to Friedman while he was lying in bed, and he thought it would be humorous if the animal- human roles were reversed. The dog was untrained, and it took a few attempts to get him to dig in the dirt. At first, Friedman buried dog biscuits, but when that didn’t work, he had to pour chicken soup on the ground in order to get Huff digging.

Less- than- perfectly trained and stubborn, the dog added plenty of additional filming hours to the production — as they tried to position the Doritos bag in its mouth and have the dog stay still.

Doritos executives don’t think the formula to winning Super Bowl spots is putting dogs in the starring role. They think it’s in hiring real people to create ads — not ad agencies. “For us, this reinforces the fact that this is turning into bit of a franchise,” says Tony Matta, vice president, marketing, Frito- Lay North America. “You don’t have to be a professional filmmaker or a professional ad agency to compete with the best ( ad makers) in the world and take home the biggest prize ( a top spot on Admeter.)”

If many of the spots looked familiar before the game, that’s because of the increasingly complex multimedia strategy that most advertisers embraced this year. Many posted their ads — or at least portions of them — on their Web sites days before the game so that social media savvy consumers could view and share them in advance of the Big Game. For advertisers, it’s less about water cooler talk the day after the game and more about weeks of social media chat before and after the broadcast.

For those thinking that the ads seemed fewer — but longer — this year, it’s not your imagination. Beyond Chrysler’s two- minute spot, there was a plethora of 60- second commercials by marketers convinced that the extra time on- air would help boost online chatter.

But in the end, nothing had more bite than pooches, says Sandy Clark, a retiree living in San Tan Valley Ariz, who loves dogs. “They say something without saying something in words.”