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Which Super Bowl Ads Won the Fans?; Outrage in Britain Over Cartoon Protests
Aired February 06, 2006 - 15:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Otis, my incredible man of audio. He not only picks the music but he knows how to pick the teams. Aren't we going to pick the t-shirt, Otis? You think it's a little too racy? Aww, you guys. No guts, no glory. All right. Otis called it. He said the Steelers were going to win. They won. But the big question today is which ads won The Super Bowl fans? Ali Velshi here.
ALI VELSHI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Want to see my t-shirt?
PHILLIPS: Let me see it, Ali.
VELSHI: That got the viewers.
PHILLIPS: Way more tame than Otis's t-shirt. Trust me.
VELSHI: Now a few more people were watching those commercials.
PHILLIPS: We got it.
VELSHI: Look at that. That'll be the last challenge I ever issue Otis. He's a little bigger than me.
PHILLIPS: You are talking about how big Otis is. I'm talking about what's on his t-shirt. And we completely missed each other on that point. Did you see his t-shirt?
VELSHI: I saw something about the Steelers.
PHILLIPS: OK. You didn't see what was below that.
VELSHI: No, was that the racy part?
PHILLIPS: Well. I'm going to let it go.
VELSHI: Let me tell you about them Super Bowl ads.
Okay so people watched this, I didn't know this. But people who use DVRs like I do apparently race through 90 percent of commercials when they normally watch TV. One of the things about The Super Bowl that advertisers love is that people actually watch the whole thing. So 90 million Americans sit down. Some proportion of those people just watch for the ads.
It's a great place for product launches and getting your name out there. There are two informal polls we are looking at today. The first one is USA Today which covered the ads quite extensively on Friday. The winner of the USA Today poll of the ad that was most successful or best was the magic fridge. The Bud Light ad. This is really funny. Take a look at this one.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, guys are coming over to watch the game. Aren't you worried about them drinking all the Bud Light?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not to worry. Look what I had installed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A secret revolving wall. Dude, you're a genius.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Guys, hurry up, the magic fridge is back.
ANNOUNCER: Refreshingly smooth Bud Light. Always worth it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALES: Magic fridge. Magic fridge.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELSHI: Now that was a good one. We don't have to watch it twice. But that was a pretty good ad. And in The Wall Street Journal I don't know whether it has anything to do with who the readers are. But the one that came out on top was a Fedex ad. We are going to show you a portion of this one. It's pretty long.
(VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: Oh. That was just wrong.
VELSHI: Poor little dinosaur thingy. So those are some. I mean generally they did well. The question is, Kyra, at $2.5 million or thereabouts for 30 seconds.
PHILLIPS: How do you know you are getting your money's worth?
VELSHI: You don't really. Here's the thing. You want those memorable ads so people continue to talk about them and maybe they keep on running in this case the Internet. The companies that advertised got a big Internet bump last year 2005 on this very day, the Monday after The Super Bowl.
Theoretically people are going to these sites a lot more of these are available on the Internet. In a smaller company you can see more of what the reaction and the response is to an ad.
Diamond Companies which has Emerald Nuts. They last year ran an ad in the fourth quarter for the first time and they got a 56 percent increase in sales as a result of that. But with the bigger companies it's hard to tell because you don't really know what the reaction is. It's up to the ad companies and the public relations companies to determine. See how --
PHILLIPS: Name recognition. More name recognition? VELSHI: It's mainly name recognition. So, hard to know whether people -- it's hard to measure whether there's actually return on it. But if you go out there and do an ad people really like. You know, they'll talk about it and your name will be known like me.
PHILLIPS: Well did you have a favorite? Like you.
VELSHI: I liked the beer fridge ad. I liked that Dove ad we were talking about.
PHILLIPS: Self-image for young girls.
VELSHI: It wasn't typical. A lot of these ads are about laughs. But I thought that was a good signal. See what that means? I'm thinking about Dove and thinking they're a warm and fuzzy company.
PHILLIPS: I thought you were thinking about children maybe.
VELSHI: I was thinking about Dove doing nice things. That's a nice message to send out.
PHILLIPS: I meant having children. Being a father.
VELSHI: Maybe subliminally I was.
PHILLIPS: That's interesting. We did talk to an ad rep. He said there's a lot of men watching The Super Bowl that have daughters. They were hoping that possibly this would make them stop, think and oh, wow.
VELSHI: Make sure you do that little extra bit to make sure your daughter is not having self-esteem issues. I think that's an interesting way for a company to go. The one thing to keep in mind is that in some ads they get so cute you forget the association with the company or forget to sell the product.
And the other ad that I thought would be interesting. Remember you and I talked about those shaving. Those razors that have more and more blades every year. Gillette came out with a five blade fusion. Apparently that didn't work so well.
PHILLIPS: That didn't? We were all taking dibs on what's this commercial about? You are back for "The Closing Bell," right?
VELSHI: See you in a little while.
PHILLIPS: A global search for 13 al Qaeda terrorists. The government of Yemen, where the group broke out of prison, calls them a clear and present danger to all countries. LIVE FROM has the latest after the break.
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PHILLIPS: Interpol on alert for 23 dangerous prisoners who broke out of prison in Yemen. Among them is Jamal Ahmed Badawi, the mastermind of the deadly attack on the USS Cole. A dozen others are fellow al Qaeda terrorists. The inmates supposedly tunneled their way to freedom. Interpol says they pose a clear and present danger to all countries. While the man hunt continues, here's a look back at the USS Cole's day of infamy.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): On October 12th, 2000, the USS Cole with almost 300 people aboard was attacked after it pulled into Aden, Yemen, to refuel. A small boat packed with explosives pulled alongside the destroyer and blew up, leaving a 40-by-40 hole in the side of the ship.
Seventeen U.S. sailors were killed, 39 others wounded. The FBI sent agents to Yemen to assist in the investigation. Those agents were withdrawn eight months later because of security concerns. Shortly thereafter Yemeni authorities arrested at least 10 suspects.
It wasn't until nearly four years after the attack that Jamal Ahmed Badawi and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri were sentenced to death for plotting, preparing and being involved in the attack. Four others were sentenced to five to 10 years in prison. Last February, Badawi's death sentence was commuted to 15 years in prison. It is worth noting the latest prison escape is not Badawi's first. He and nine other al Qaeda members escaped from a similar prison in 2003.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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PHILLIPS: Failure to communicate, no doubt. Whose fault? No consensus. How to make sure it never happens again? That's the big question at the Senate hearing on law enforcement and communications response to Hurricane Katrina.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOE LIEBERMAN (D), CONNECTICUT: This inability to communicate after Katrina serves as a grim reminder that four years after 9/11, our nation was still nowhere near as prepared as it should have been for a major disaster.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: By the way, thousands of evacuees will have to start picking up their own tabs tomorrow or find somewhere else to stay. FEMA will stop paying for housing at hotels and motels unless evacuees registered for a few more weeks of federal funds. Social agencies say they are bracing for a wave of people who missed the deadline and haven't found new places to live.
Blasphemy or free speech? The controversy over cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed is creating a different kind of backlash in London. Robin Oakley has the story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ROBIN OAKLEY, CNN EUROPEAN POLITICAL EDITOR (voice-over): First it was Muslim outrage over Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed. Now in Britain when no newspapers yet published the cartoons, it's stage two: outrage over the protests.
It's less than a year since 52 people died in the London bombings. But without any police intervention, 300 protesters outside the Danish embassy in Britain's capital brandished banners over the weekend, declaring "Europe, you will pay. Your 9/11 is on its way."
Some threatened extermination. Others demanded behead those that insult Islam. One protester even wore a suicide bomber's kit to make his point. The slogans and the lack of immediate arrests provoked fury across the political spectrum.
DAVID WINNICK, LABOR PARTY: It was quite disgraceful. An open incitement to murder and this simply cannot be and should not be allowed.
OAKLEY: It was, Mr. Winnick insisted...
WINNICK: ... massacre that took place in London (inaudible) last year. I mean, this people were saying "It's marvelous, wasn't it? Let's do it again."
OAKLEY: There was equally fierce condemnation of the protests from the conservative opposition with a wider worry.
DOMINIC GRIEVE, CONSERVATIVE SPOKESMAN: If that's the sort of society we're going to degenerate into with the police standing on the sidelines and saying "Oh well, it's all but too complicated, too dangerous, we can't do anything about this until much later, then public confidence in the maintenance of law and order on the streets will be substantially diminished."
OAKLEY: The police responding to criticism said Monday that detectives were studying video pictures to see if anyone should be charged with incitement to murder. In parliament, Britain's interior minister insisted that any prosecutions were for the police and the prosecuting authority to determine. But he left little doubt about what he wanted to see.
CHARLES CLARKE, BRITISH HOME MINISTER: If the police conclude that there have been breaches of the law and decide to take any action, we would, of course, support them.
OAKLEY: The Muslim protester who dressed as a suicide bomber has now apologized for causing distress to British bomb victims. And moderate Muslim organizations have joined in the cause for prosecutions.
SIR IQBAL SACRANIE, CHAIRMAN, MUSLIM CO. OF BRITAIN: These elements are not representative of the Muslim community. They are simply free elements, mischievous elements, who want to bring the good name of Islam into disrepute. OAKLEY (on camera): Politicians are insisting that their right to protest like freedom of expression, must be maintained though exercised with discretion. But with the cartoons affair now sparking a backlash against the backlash, nobody's quite sure whether it's all going to end.
Robin Oakley, CNN, London.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIPS: News keeps coming, we'll keep bringing it to you. More LIVE FROM after a break.
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AL LEWIS, ACTOR: Igor, please, not now!
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PHILLIPS: He was a circus performer, a restaurant owner, a radio host, a basketball scout, and a politician. But mostly, he was Grandpa. Al Lewis sported fangs and a cape in the 1960s sitcom "The Munsters," Grandpa Munster to Fred Gwynne's Herman. Both men also starred in another TV comedy, "Car 54, Where Are You?" Lewis also starred in several movies and tried any other profession that looked like it might be a hoot. His health began failing in 2003 and Friday night, with his wife at his side, he passed away. Al Lewis was 82 years old.
Time now to check in with CNN's Wolf Blitzer. He's standing by in Washington to tell us what's coming up at the top of the hour in "THE SITUATION ROOM."
Hi, Wolf.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, Kyra, thanks very much.
Spying on Americans. Senators squaring off with the attorney general over the controversial program. Was he mincing words, misleading the committee or simply telling the truth? We're covering all sides.
Plus, guns and butter. A big chunk of your money goes to guns. More of it than ever, perhaps, in the president's new $2.77 trillion budget. Find out what's getting cut, what the government plans to do, how it's going to go into debt to pay for it all.
Also, more riots and outrage. Violence and threats over a religious cartoon. We're watching this story.
And behind the mask. The woman who received the world's first face transplant goes public. All that, lots more, Kyra, coming up right here in "THE SITUATION ROOM."
PHILLIPS: Wolf, thanks.
Well, you're paying for it all, so we figured you want to know what it is. Ali Velshi breaks down the president's 2007 budget as we head towards the closing bell. He's actually still trying to figure it out right now. He's reading every single page of it, aren't you, Ali?
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PHILLIPS: Well, as we reported, President Bush is proposing a $2.8 trillion budget for 2007. Most of us can't even begin to comprehend a number that huge. But most of us, well, we're not Ali Velshi. He's back with the closing bell. I guess...
VELSHI: That's a lot of money.
PHILLIPS: Yes. And we could have guessed the winners and the losers. Definitely the winners. Military, homeland security, Katrina victims.
VELSHI: You know, half of the U.S. budget now, more than half of the U.S. budget, goes toward military. And what's happening is as that's been going up, things have to be paired off to the side. The problem, of course, is that the budget's still not balanced. And President Bush wants to reduce the deficit. That's the shortfall between what we spend and what we collect.
This year, the budget will hit an estimated $423 billion. That's the biggest in history. And under the budget that the president is proposing, the shortfall -- this is for 2007 -- will be $354 billion. Now, there's no way we can even conceive $2.7 trillion. But just the shortfall is $354 billion.
We looked for the most expensive thing we could find, and what we could come up with a B-2 bomber, coming in at $2.2 billion. Probably one of the most expensive single things you can buy. Well, that shortfalled. Just the budget deficit that's being proposed would be 161 of those B-2 bombers, those stealth bombers. If that can give people some idea of what kind of money we're talking about.
Now, this budget is far from being over. Obviously, the president proposes it, it goes through a loot of negotiations and a lot of discussions. It will be some months. But this is for the budget that begins in October of this year. There will be a lot of discussion about it and the things that are getting cut from it and put into it -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Who are the big losers?
VELSHI: Well a lot of, you know -- Wolf was just talking about guns and butter. A lot of the butter, the domestic programs, are losers in this. Agriculture, there's some money to health care that's going missing in favor of homeland security and defense.
So it's the typical things you would expect from a country at war. Those things that support the war effort get more money, those things that support the home front effort get less money. Again, we'll see if that turns out to be the case when it gets finalized. But at the moment, it's more of a guns budget than a butter budget.
PHILLIPS: Ali, want to get quick plug-in for our special coverage tomorrow. Noon to 4:00 Eastern time, Coretta Scott King's funeral. Won't want to miss it. It's going to be pretty special.
VELSHI: We will all be here for it, Kyra. Thank you so much. You have a great afternoon.
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