Ad Naseam: The Super Bowl of Advertising

Super Bowl Sunday saw two unexpected results–a Giants championship and a game which vastly outperformed an unimaginative crop of commercials

After large events happen, sometimes it’s good to sit back, reflect, and ask the question, “what have we learned?” Last night was the most watched Super Bowl ever and we learned quite a bit actually. Those 97 million who gathered around the tube to view the game learned the Patriots aren’t the greatest team of all time, we learned Eli Manning is ready for prime time, and we learned that even Tom Brady can look human in the face of unrelenting pressure. But hell, that’s not the important stuff, what did we learn from those commercials is the more important question. After all, this is the advertising industry’s Super Bowl as much as it is the NFL’s.

Well, at first blush we learned that Under Armour is morphing into a fascist organization bent on world domination, Sunsilk absolutely wasted their money by paying Madonna $10 million for a lifeless twirling performance, Sales Genie and Bud Light still feel poorly drawn racial stereotypes are advertising gold, Audi showed The Godfather remains resonant, not many people entered the Doritos song commercial because the winner was a dirt-poor man’s mix of Vanessa Carlton and Michelle Branch, Adam Sandler movies will continue to be made for the braindead amongst us, Will Ferrell can pretty much play only one character, Cars.com can be quite clever, massive stains can be distracting, for some reason ad execs think dancing animals can sell products other than kibble, and by god, beware of giant men in rat suits, because they’ll kick your ass.

However, as we bask in our own edification, the most important thing we learned last night from the collection of Super Bowl commercials is that if they represented the best in the Advertising industry, then the leading lights of that group are growing increasingly dim. The reliance on hackneyed clichés such as dancing animals, unimaginative beer ads and shots to the groin mired the crop of ads in mediocrity. Increasingly the commercials create no discerning link between the product it’s pitching and the pitch itself, but that usually doesn’t faze me, however, in the dearth of creativity offered last night the crappiness of their marketing efforts was all the more apparent. In the end, we could view Super Bowl XLII as the year the ads finally “Jumped the Shark.”

Many years the Super Bowl Ads outperform the game itself, which admittedly, says more about the low quality of the game as opposed to the greatness of the ads, but we still expect solid commercials on Super Bowl Sunday. They’re so good some years that sometimes the commercials are the only thing keeping you tuned-in when, say, Tampa Bay and the Raiders engage in a supreme crapfest of a game. Last year, during the Colts-Bears debacle there were times when my assembled friends talked over the game and quieted down to see if we could catch a decent commercial. This year the absolute reverse was true, the game was one for the ages while the best of the advertising industry choked, offering up an uninspiring and bland crop of Super Bowl ads.

Although the ads were underwhelming, a few stood out as quality spots which I’ll describe below in no particular order:

Audi R8

Audi bucked the trend of boring car commercials with an homage to The Godfather as a way to old cars on notice that the R8 was there. Not only was the Godfather nod effective, but the footage they used of the car and how they shot it accelerating away from the mansion was a fantastic use of imagery and a powerful assertion of their brand which is so important in the automobile market.

Cars.com

Cars.com had two quality ads which entertained while clearly stating what their product was all about. There was something admirable in the delivery of their simple message of the services cars.com offers, punctuated by funny punch lines which included a ring of fire which would serve the salesman well for him to step out of.

Tide to Go

Tide to Go offered what was probably the best ad in terms of connecting their product creatively to the problem it solves. Going into an interview with a big coffee stain can be embarrassing and distracting. For those moments when you need emergency stain relief, their product is there for you. When we saw so many commercials with so little to do with their product-like the terrible Sobe ad which had lizards dancing to thriller-Tide was able to really make the sell on their product instead of falling prey to becoming too clever and blowing a huge ad campaign on over-the-top crap which doesn’t really help the marketing anyway.

T-Mobile Fave Five

Combine two of my favorite athletes of all time, Charles Barkley and Dwyane Wade and you’ve got one of the best ads of this year’s Super Bowl. Dwyane finally reaches a coveted spot in Sir Charles’ T-Mobile Fave5, however, as we all know those who the gods seek to punish are given exactly what they ask for. For D-Wade, giving the Round Mound of Sound the ability to call you for free with impunity is not something you should seek out and he learns that as Sir Charles constantly dials Dwyane. T-Mobile uses Chuck’s great comedic timing and gregarious demeanor to perfection as he shines in this ad and effectively markets T-Mobile.

Coca Cola

What the latest election cycle is showing us is that perhaps American politics is moving into a post-partisan age. Well, if that’s the case, then Coca Cola’s ad featuring Republican Bill Frist and Democratic Strategist James Carville captured the zeitgeist. Frist and Carville begin by arguing on a Sunday morning talk show before Frist “jinxing” Carville, thus he had to buy Frist a Coke. Well, that one act led to them hanging out for a day and bonding over their frosty colas. A Coke, a smile and political harmony is possible maybe, just maybe in a less cynical world.