Twenty-Five Years Ago, Tech Startups Blew Fortunes on the Worst Super Bowl Ads in History

You had to see it to believe it, and 84 million people did.

There, in the middle of Super Bowl 34 back at the turn of the new millennium—and in the company of the world’s biggest advertisers—was a spot that proclaimed: “This is the worst commercial in the Super Bowl.”

Few could argue. Set to the tune of chopsticks (played with mistakes), the 30-second ad for a startup called Lifeminders.com was little more than a smattering of ad copy on a yellow screen.

“We’re information experts,” declared the email-based information service. “But we don’t know diddly about making ads.”

Lifeminders’ spot would be a standout were it not for the fact that there were some 20 others that were equally prosaic, vapid, and clichéd in what’s since become known as the Dot-Com Super Bowl.

Lousy ads air in every year’s game, of course, but it’s hard to imagine companies today burning ad dollars so flagrantly. That same year, E*Trade (one of few dot-commers to survive and prosper) wound up its dancing chimpanzee ad with the kicker: “Well, we just wasted 2 million bucks.”

By one estimate, the tech startups burned through a total of $44 million for the time they bought. Did it help them? Er, no. In a few short years, nearly all the startups saw themselves devoured by larger companies or just plain bankrupt.

Tech brands that bet the farm—and then lost it—included:

• Netpliance.com. A TV spot starring a posse of geeks with taped-up glasses was supposed to sell this easy-to-use device for internet newbies, but after a 1-to-15 reverse stock split and a failed attempt to change its business model, it was gone by 2002.

• Computer.com. It explained computing to non-computer people with an ad starring the founders’ ostensible family members. Office Depot ate it before the year was out.

• Epidemic.com. Somehow, a spot featuring a washroom attendant tipping peeing men was supposed to sell this email-link-kickback-type idea. It didn’t.

• E-Stamp.com. “Buy and print postage whenever you want!” promised the ad. Viewers didn’t share the fantasy, and Stamps.com scooped it up in 2001.

• Pets.com.  Its spot featured a sock puppet singing Chicago’s 1976 soft-rock ballad “Baby, Please Don’t Go.” It wasn’t enough to stem the competition and Pets.com was gone by year’s end.

What—if anything—can these marketing crackups teach us now? A couple of things, actually.

“The Dot-Com Super Bowl is a cautionary tale about the dangers of prioritizing visibility over sustainable business strategy,” said media executive Michelle-Marie Heinemann, founder and publisher of Old Fashioned Mom magazine.

“These startups assumed that massive exposure would translate to lasting success,” she continued, “but their failure highlights that marketing—no matter how high-profile—cannot substitute for a solid value proposition, a viable business model, or the understanding of your customer.”

The dot-commers also learned that arrogance can be even more expensive than 30 seconds in the Big Game.

“The dot-com era was chock full of overconfidence and hype,” said filmmaker and entertainment industry veteran Scott Hamm Duenas. “Which translated to [startups] throwing caution to the wind and blowing big bucks on Super Bowl ads without any experience in the promotional or TV world.”

An audience as big as the Super Bowl remains an enticement to this day. But, Duenas added, size isn’t all that matters.

“These companies operated under the assumption that visibility was the key to success and that the Super Bowl with its massive viewership was the perfect platform to strike it big,” he said. “Unfortunately, terrible commercials combined with massive overspending was a recipe for disaster.”