Oscar Award commercials fail to entice eager crowds

It is rare to see an actress on the Oscar red carpet wearing her gown from the previous year.

Why, then, were there so many retreads among the commercials that appeared on Sunday during the ABC coverage of the 82nd annual Academy Awards?

The reruns were an aberration given that for many years the Oscars broadcast had been a showcase for new commercials, much like the Super Bowl.

For instance, both commercials from McDonald’s on Sunday had run before.

One, a spot for Chicken McNuggets about a girls’ hockey team, appeared dozens of times last month during the NBC coverage of the Winter Olympics.

Other examples of what in the parlance of car dealers might be called pre-watched commercials included a spot for Intel, which first appeared on February 7 during the Super Bowl XLIV postgame show; a spot for Windows 7 from Microsoft; and a spot for Zyrtec Liquid Gels, sold by a unit of Johnson & Johnson.

Some advertisers mixed new and old spots.

Of five commercials from Coca-Cola Co. for Coca-Cola and Diet Coke, one was new.

Of the eight commercials for Hyundai Motor America, three were new.

It was no coincidence that one of the previously seen commercials from Coca-Cola was on the subject of recycling.

The reason for the reuse, it appears, is the weak economy.

Although ABC was able to charge more for commercial time during the show than it charged during the 2009 broadcast, advertisers seemed in a frugal mood.

The broadcast was the second year in a row that Academy Awards advertisers thriftily reused previous work.

Last year, sponsors like MasterCard also reran commercials.

Of the commercials on Sunday that were new, perhaps the most surprising was a spot from Apple to promote the introduction of the iPad, scheduled April 3.

Apple had not indicated before Sunday that it intended to be an Oscar sponsor.

That said, however, after the iPad commercial ran, it was shown twice again.

Samsung followed the same pattern, showing a commercial for its new 3-D TV sets and then running it three additional times.

What follows is an assessment of some of the Oscar commercials during the show, out of the total of almost 50 that ran nationally on ABC.

Best Costume Design: New commercials from J.C. Penney showed off to good advantage a closet’s worth of colorful, kicky women’s clothes bearing labels like Olsenboye and Bisou Bisou.

For the first time since Penney became the exclusive national retail sponsor of the broadcast, there was also a spot devoted to men’s apparel.

Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi, part of the Publicis Groupe.

Best Makeup: After a year without a sponsor in the important beauty category, ABC ran a commercial from Estee Lauder during the show. It was a single spot, but it was a start.

Best Score: In a humorous promotional spot for “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” the ABC late-night comedy show, Kimmel was shown in bed with his former faux paramour, Ben Affleck, and Affleck’s wife, the actress Jennifer Garner. The commercial was created internally at ABC.

Best Song: It was a tie between “Sweet Disposition” by the Temper Trap, heard in a new Diet Coke commercial, and “There Goes My Love” by the Blue Van, heard in the new iPad commercial.

The agency that created the Diet Coke spot is Wieden & Kennedy and the agency that created the iPad spot is the TBWA Media Arts Lab, part of the TBWA Worldwide unit of the Omnicom Group.

Best Sound Editing: Hyundai Motor America replaced the voice of Jeff Bridges, the longtime announcer for its commercials, with the voices of other stars because of rules limiting the ability of participants in the Oscar broadcast to take part in commercials that run during the show.

(Bridges was up for, and subsequently won, the Oscar for best actor, giving him a nice consolation prize for ceding his pitchman’s duties.)

Two pinch-hitters for Bridges were former Oscar winners: Richard Dreyfuss, who supplied the narration for two commercials, and Kim Basinger. The others were David Duchovny, Catherine Keener, Michael Madsen, Mandy Patinkin and Martin Sheen.

NEW YORK TIMES