• June 3, 2003

Old Navy's Love Boat campaign dominated Intermedia Advertising Group's bimonthly report on the effectiveness of television advertising. The report looks at new commercials released during the weeks of May 12-25.

Commercials featuring Morgan Fairchild captured two of the top four spots. Other celebrity-driven ads include Ball Park Frank's Singles commercial featuring Michael Jordan, and L'Oreal's Shine Extending Superior Preference ad starring spokeswoman Heather Locklear. The top 10 ads in terms of brand recall:

1. Old Navy, Love Boat Graphic Tees for the Whole Family.

2. Old Navy, Love Boat Graphic Tees for Men & Women.

3. Old Navy, Love Boat Swimwear for the Whole Family.

4. Old Navy, Love Boat Swimwear for Men & Women.

5. Propel Fitness Water, water drops turn into athletes (15 seconds).

6. Ball Park Franks Singles, Michael Jordan pops up at Lake Hottson, beach, back yard.

7. L'Oreal Shine-Extending Superior Preference, Heather Locklear talks about the "gold standard."

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8. Mountain Dew LiveWire, men stare at bug zapper.

9. Subway, Chipotle Southwest Steak & Cheese, Jim and sandwich maker in bank line.

10. AppleMusic.com, man raps to Sir Mix-A-Lot's Baby Got Back.

In a survey of commercial likeability, Johnson & Johnson captured the top spot, while Nike's commercial featuring basketball players Paul Pierce and Jermaine O'Neal came in second. Gateway won the third and seventh spots. The top 10 by likeability:

1. Johnson & Johnson, Branding, laughing baby wears silly hats; mom now spends "hours trying to look silly."

2. Nike, Paul Pierce and Jermaine O'Neal in shirts vs. skins game, other players begin to sit on sidelines.

3. Gateway, Plasma TV, Thompsons hang items on living room wall, finally end up with Plasma TV.

4. Sunny Delight, Sunny D, boy eats, puts on clothes, walks dog while playing video game.

5. Mountain Dew LiveWire, men stare at bug zapper.

6. Nestea Cool, snowman melts at drive-in while watching Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle.

7. Gateway Forget About Technology, barbershop, woman packs clothes and uses laptop outside.

8. Cheese, boy hits piñata, ignites, knocks magician off unicycle and explodes.

9. AppleMusic.com, map raps to Sir Mix-A-Lot's Baby Got Back.

10. Friskies Branding, cats play with yarn on stairs and eat, dry food, wet food and treats.

The brand recall is based on the percentage of TV viewers who can recall within 24 hours the brand of the ad they were exposed to during the normal course of TV viewing. The likeability measures how popular the ads are by monitoring while ads most frequently scored the highest among IAG panelists. These scores are then indexed against the mean score for all ads during the time period.