• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, March 4, 2011

On the surface, the latest ad recall findings from last weekend's Oscar telecast come as no great surprise. Creative executions for M&M's ("candy hostages") and AT&T's depiction of husband flash-planning his anniversary in the background on his iPhone while talking to his wife, earned the highest consumer recall index ratings, according to Nielsen. While the Academy Awards are sometimes (mis) characterized "the Super Bowl for women," many of the ads featured in the telecast were in fact Super Bowl retreads or existing spots. There wasn't a whole lot to ponder in this collection of generally forgettable ads. Which is a bit of a shame as Nielsen reports that ad recall generally was up 9% over last year. Of course the program itself was so historically awful, that the commercial breaks were no doubt an entertaining respite for the Franco/Hathaway-weary audience. The advertisers came from a range of segments: auto (Hyundai), telecom (Sprint and AT&T), retail (JC Penney) and financial (JP Morgan Chase).

Nielsen observes that the one trend clear in this hodgepodge was the connection between celebrity and ad recall. Four of the top ten best remembered ads in the three hour show involved stars. The Super Bowl retread of Best Buy's Ozzy Osbourne/Justin Bieber Buy Back Program" ad was the fourth best recalled. Of course that ad has been in rotation since the Super bowl itself. Likewise the now-familiar Adrien Brody ode to a beer glass for Stella Artois came is as the seventh most recalled ad. A slightly less familiar Venus ad from Jennifer Lopez and Celine Dion's American Cancer Society "Happy Birthday" song also made the list however.  But generally Nielsen found only one Oscar premiere ad (from Livingsocial) made the top ten best recalled spots. Obviously it is a no-brainer that celeb endorsements will drive recall, but the more interesting tidbit is how the Super Bowl repeats of the Best Buy and Stella Artois spots "performed significantly better with the Oscars crowd than they did at the Super Bowl," Nielsen says at its blog.

Let this be just another gentle reminder of what advertiser should and on some level already do know: context matters. Within the star-watching gestalt of Oscars, it seems natural that celebrity-driven advertising would register best. The only mystery here is why there wasn't more advertising with more pop-cultural references in this primo window for advertising. Perhaps then we would have had something better to talk about at the Monday morning coffee break than whether Franco was or wasn't stoned.