Editor's note: Robin Hafitz is president of New York research company Open Mind Strategy. She can be reached at robin@openmindstrategy.com. This article appeared in the February 27, 2012, edition of Quirk's e-newsletter.

It's no secret that when it comes to the Super Bowl, it's about more than just football. Though XLVI was a terrific football game, marketing is also one of Americans' favorite spectator sports. In fact, research confirms that over half of us tune in to the Super Bowl as much or more for the ads as for the game1. As usual, the USA Today Ad Meter2 is a good source for advertising winners and losers and, no doubt, the champs and chumps are already savoring their victories (Doritos) or licking their wounds (Century 21).

At Open Mind Strategy we found ourselves wondering whether men and women shared the same top and bottom picks. After all, women make more than half of the purchase decisions in America (80 percent, according to some measures) and women were 46 percent of the Super Bowl viewing audience this year. Fifty-one million of the 111 million viewers were female; to put that in perspective, the Oscars, considered by many advertisers to be the female Super Bowl, had 38 million total viewers last year. Also, according to Hanon McKendry1, women are particularly likely to follow the marketing game as much as the football game (66 percent vs. 45 percent of men).

To satisfy our curiosity, Open Mind conducted its own informal poll among women. These are our results of the top- and bottom-ranked Super Bowl ads among women:

Winners

1. H&M Beckham
2. Doritos dog
3. Volkswagen dog
4. Skechers dog
5. Chrysler halftime Eastwood
6. Chevy Silverado
7. Budweiser prohibition

Losers

1. Go Daddy body paint
2. Go Daddy cloud
3. Fiat seduction
4. Bud Light Platinum ("Boring. And who are they kidding? It'll taste like Bud Light.")
5. Movie trailers ("They all ran together and none of us could remember any of them.")

The big standout was David Beckham's ad for his new H&M line, which ranked No. 1 among women. By comparison, it was close to the bottom in the USA Today Ad Meter. These responses were typical:
 
"Looove the fact that finally they want to sell us s--- using a very hot man!"

"Like the objectification of a male - as opposed to the gawd-awful Teleflora and Fiat spots - but not sure it's gonna move the 'bottom line' (no pun intended!)."

Of course, not every woman enjoyed this close look at Becks:

"He's getting a bit old. I was a little uncomfortable. There are younger players with fewer tattoos."

Most of women's other top picks fell in line with the favorites of viewers in general. In other words, this year women's and men's favor alike went to the dogs. They loved the Doritos dog, the Skechers dog, the Volkswagen dog and the Bud Light dog. Unfortunately, women weren't as kind to other animals, saying to Coke: "Enough with the polar bears," and to CareerBuilder, "Didn't you use chimps last year?" 

In USA Today's Super Bowl coverage for the past 20 years3, ads featuring animals have won the No. 1 slot half the time.

Women took note that Bud Light's 2012 dog, Wego, was a rescue, which registered positively:

"Thought the rescue dog spot was nice, liked the tie-in to a broader cause, and this was a big hit with the other women in the room as well."

In general, women seemed very attuned to the stories behind the ads. For Chevrolet's post-apocalyptic ad, women noted:

"This was in my top five in part because of the CMO's response to Ford's cease-and-desist order."

About Budweiser's post-prohibition ad they said:

"It got the room talking about what companies did during those 13 years to make money."

One Super Bowl ad went directly after women and generated a yawn. Dannon's ad featuring John Stamos being headbutted by his breakfast companion has taken industry flak for being a bit too similar to a 7Up ad that also featured a woman headbutting a teasing man. Our respondents didn't raise that issue but rated it in the middle of the pack. One woman noted:

"How would you feel if you were once famous and now doing yogurt commercials?!?!?"

As important as what women liked (dogs and good-looking men) was what they hated. They hated the Go Daddy spots ("So old, so formulaic, so horrible - and not in an ironic way"). They hated Fiat's "Seduction" spot and Teleflora's Adriana Lima spot. Super Bowl advertisers might seriously consider whether running such laddish fare in front of 51 million women was a good idea. Do women not register domain names? Buy cars? Notice which company their guy buys flowers from? These brands may have done themselves more harm than good.

References

1http://usdailyreview.com/super-bowl-is-it-the-ads-or-the-game
2http://www.usatoday.com/money/advertising/story/2012-02-06/how-our-ad-panel-rated-the-Super-Bowl-ads/52981300/1
3http://mediagallery.usatoday.com/Ad-Meter-winners/Ad-Meter-winners/G386,A1953