Snickers' Super Bowl ad wins The Creative Bowl's first Super Clio Award

Sunday night's Super Bowl broadcast had everything -- drama, pathos, comedy, even a memorable conclusion.

Yes, we’re talking about the Super Bowl commercials.

While the Patriots and Seahawks were dueling Sunday night on the turf of the University of Phoenix Stadium, a group of advertising executives were determining the Super Bowl winner of their field.

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As part of a new advertising industry competition (dubbed “The Creative Bowl”) to determine the top commercial aired during the Super Bowl, Snickers, featuring a Brady Bunch-themed commercial starring Danny Trejo (as Marcia Brady) and Steve Buscemi (as Jan Brady), won the inaugural Super Clio award. The candy bar’s “Hungry?” campaign has been around for five years but this spot (created by BBDO New York) might have been its best yet.

“For those of us in the business, the Super Bowl is our holiday, our time to shine,” said Rob Reilly, the global creative chairman of McCann World Group and the head of this year’s 10-person Creative Bowl jury. “Our parents are watching, our friends our watching. Yes, we are a competitive business but this is where we are a community.”

The commercials up for consideration were anything that ran from the opening kickoff to the game’s final play, including halftime (The winning Snickers ad ran in the first quarter), and pregame and postgame commercials were not eligible. Reilly said he came up with the idea for the Creative Bowl because he believed their was an opportunity for the advertising industry to offer its collective opinion on the quality of Super Bowl ads.

Snickers ended up with the top spot but Reilly cited three other commercials that were finalists, including the popular #LikeAGirl spot from Always created by Leo Burnett of Chicago; an ad from NoMore.org centering around ending domestic violence and sexual assault, created by Grey Advertising of New York; and the little-known glue company, Loctite Glue, which made a splashy Super Bowl debut, created by Fallon of Minneapolis.

The 10-person jury for the Creative Bowl included chief creative officers at some of the biggest advertising firms in the country as well as the creative editor of AdWeek. The judges watched the spots during the game as well as those commercials released prior to the game. After the game, each judge submitted a top three to create a short list of finalists. On Monday morning, the group held a conference call to review the work one last time and voting. Both BBDO New York and Snickers will be awarded a Super CLIO statue. The statute, at 22 inches and 15 pounds matches the height and look of the NFL’s Lombardi Trophy.  A trophy presentation took place Monday afternoon and the winning spot can be viewed here.

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NBC said there were 15 new advertisers this year (including Loctite) and inventory for the game sold at a record $4.4 to $4.5 million for a 30-second spot. USA Today’s Ad Meter, one of the standard-bearers on how the public viewed the commercials, awarded Anheuser-Busch the top spot for the 13th time in 15 years. The Always ad finished second in the Ad Meter rankings, which consists of nearly 7,000 men and women viewers.

Reilly said that he had been thinking of creating such an award for the last three years and was always bothered by how low the 2011 "Born of Fire" commercial featuring Eminem for Chrysler had scored on the USA Today Ad Meter.

“That’s the moment when I thought that maybe there should be an industry-judged award for the Super Bowl,” Reilly said. “That ad went on to be famous and had the impact on the culture but I wish Super Clio had been invented that year because it certainly wins the retro award for me.”