Was M&M’s Ms. Brown Super Bowl ad MVP?

By Chris Reidy, Globe Staff

A Super Bowl M&M’s ad that featured an M&M character called Ms. Brown scored high in at least two surveys that rated ads that aired during the Big Game.

Ms. Brown. Image from M&M’s website.

The M&M ad earned top marks in the Super Bowl advertising review conducted by the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. And the ad also did well in Brand Bowl 2012, a review led by a group that includes Boston ad agency Mullen and Boston.com.

According to the folks at Northwestern, its Kellogg School Super Bowl Advertising Review seeks to look beyond an ad’s popularity. In judging an ad, this review also looks at an ad’s execution and effectiveness.

“At Kellogg, our Review evaluates the ads based on strategic execution and the potential to build brands, and M&M’s did this well,” Tim Calkins, a clinical professor of marketing, said in a statement.

Commenting on the ads in general, he added: “What’s notable about this year versus others is that advertisers played it safe. As a result, we saw fewer standouts, but we also didn’t see as many costly mistakes.”

Brand Bowl 2012, meanwhile, monitored 400,000 tweets to determine which ads were most popular, its organizers said. In examining ads, Brand Bowl looked both at the number of tweets an generated and whether those tweets were positive or negative.

While Doritos ranked first by a measure that combined both volume and sentiment, M&M’s scored highest in the category for “most liked brands,” Brand Bowl 2012 said.