Super Bowl Ads--Super Waste of Money

I can't remember having to endure a lamer series of ads than yesterday's pathetic collection of super Bowl ads. I hardly know where to begin in criticizing them. Virtually all of them shared some elements of dumb, offensive, lame, pointless and generally just garbage. Even GoDaddy managed to screw up. If your whole ad budget is devoted to a girl with big shoulders and humongous boobs, at least show her to us.

I would say the worst was that heart ad. Never mentioned a product, as near as i can recall, and it was really just uncomfortable. Chevy ads were silly, to be charitable. Certainly wouldn't make me want to buy anything they're selling. ETrade ad was trying way too hard. The ad made no sense unless you already fully understood the point they were trying to make, ie that they pay more interest than banks.

Advertisers, feel free to contact me via PM. I have a couple of hours free time, which will be more than enough to come up with something better for next year.

 

I loved the bud light commercials...especially the " fist bump is out" one....but I agree, they seemed to be trying too hard this year....

 

I was with a couple of women and they absolutely hated that ad. Actually, I thought it was kind of funny.

Was it just me or did a lot of the ads seem to be heavy on violence?

I forgot to say that I thought the "Survivor meets Dilbert" ad was colossally stupid. No idea what they were advertising. Was it Career Builder or Staples? Who cares?

The Chevy ad where the guys took their clothes off was designed by some college girl who won a contest. Personally, I found it revolting.

 

The slapping as for Bud was a classic...and yes, all the women at our party thought it was stupid, but all the men were cracking up and rewinding it....its the same way with the 3 stooges.

 

Uh oh, the NYT agrees with me.





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February 5, 2007
Advertising
Super Bowl Ads of Cartoonish Violence, Perhaps Reflecting Toll of War
By STUART ELLIOTT
No commercial that appeared last night during Super Bowl XLI directly addressed Iraq, unlike a patriotic spot for Budweiser beer that ran during the game two years ago. But the ongoing war seemed to linger just below the surface of many of this year’s commercials.

More than a dozen spots celebrated violence in an exaggerated, cartoonlike vein that was intended to be humorous, but often came across as cruel or callous.

For instance, in a commercial for Bud Light beer, sold by Anheuser-Busch, one man beat the other at a game of rock, paper, scissors by throwing a rock at his opponent’s head.

In another Bud Light spot, face-slapping replaced fist-bumping as the cool way for people to show affection for one another. In a FedEx commercial, set on the moon, an astronaut was wiped out by a meteor. In a spot for Snickers candy, sold by Mars, two co-workers sought to prove their masculinity by tearing off patches of chest hair.

There was also a bank robbery (E*Trade Financial), fierce battles among office workers trapped in a jungle (CareerBuilder), menacing hitchhikers (Bud Light again) and a clash between a monster and a superhero reminiscent of a horror movie (Garmin).

It was as if Madison Avenue were channeling Doc in “West Side Story,” the gentle owner of the candy store in the neighborhood that the two street gangs, the Jets and Sharks, fight over. “Why do you kids live like there’s a war on?” Doc asks plaintively. (Well, Doc, this time, there is.)

During other wars, Madison Avenue has appealed to a yearning for peace. That was expressed in several Super Bowl spots evocative of “Hilltop,” the classic Coca-Cola commercial from 1971, when the Vietnam War divided a world that needed to be taught to sing in perfect harmony.

Coca-Cola borrowed pages from its own playbook with two whimsical spots for Coca-Cola Classic, “Happiness Factory” and “Video Game,” that were as sweet as they were upbeat. The commercials, by Wieden & Kennedy, provided a welcome counterpoint to the martial tone of the evening.

Those who wish the last four years of history had never happened could find solace in several commercials that used the device of ending an awful tale by revealing it was only a dream.

The best of the batch was a commercial for General Motors by Deutsch, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, in which a factory robot “obsessed about quality” imagined the dire outcome of making a mistake.

The same gag, turned inside out, accounted for one of the funniest spots, a Nationwide Financial commercial by TM Advertising, also owned by Interpublic. The spot began with the singer Kevin Federline as the prosperous star of an elaborate rap video clip. But viewers learned at the end it was only the dream of a forlorn fry cook at a fast-food joint.

Then, too, there was the unfortunate homonym at the heart of a commercial from Prudential Financial, titled “What Can a Rock Do?”

The problem with the spot, created internally at Prudential, was that whenever the announcer said, “a rock” — invoking the Prudential logo, the rock of Gibraltar — it sounded as if he were saying, yes, “Iraq.”

To be sure, sometimes “a rock” is just “a rock,” and someone who has watched the Super Bowl XIX years in a row only for the commercials may be inferring things that Madison Avenue never meant to imply.

Take for instance a spot by Grey Worldwide, part of the WPP Group, for Flomax, a drug sold by Boehringer Ingelheim to help men treat enlarged prostates.

“Here’s to men,” the announcer intoned, “to guys who want to spend more time having fun and less time in the men’s room.”

It was not difficult to imagine guests at noisy Super Bowl parties asking one another, “Did he just say, ‘guys who want to spend more time having fun in the men’s room?’ ”

Another off-putting moment was provided by a stereotyped character in a commercial by Endeavor for a hair dye, Revlon Colorist. He was described as the stylist for the singer Sheryl Crow, and he was clearly miffed about her using the product.

“Revlon? Color?” he asked, pouting and rolling his eyes. “I am the colorist.”

What follows is an assessment of some of the other high and low points among the commercials shown nationally during the game on CBS. The spots are among 36 provided to a reporter before the game, out of the total of about 56 that were scheduled to run.

ANHEUSER-BUSCH Each year, Anheuser-Busch manages to offset the typically coarse commercials for Bud Light with a charmer or two for its Budweiser brand. Last night, the brewer went two-for-two with a pair of spots about animals. One commercial tugged at the heartstrings with a bedraggled mutt whose wish to jump on the Bud band wagon — literally and figuratively — came true. The other, sillier spot presented a beachful of anthropomorphic crabs starting a Bud-centric version of a cargo cult. Agency: DDB Worldwide, part of the Omnicom Group.

CADBURY SCHWEPPES A wry, low-key commercial showed an ardent fan of Snapple Green Tea, sold by Cadbury Schweppes, traveling all the way to China to learn the secret of its appeal. The punch line, that the answer was closer than he imagined, was not unexpected. Still, it was delivered deftly. Agency: Cliff Freeman & Partners, part of MDC Partners.

DIAMOND FOODS Mr. Federline was not the only celebrity to poke fun at his public persona. A wacky spot for the Emerald line of nuts sold by Diamond Foods presented the crooner Robert Goulet as a nefarious evil-doer. Perhaps he was auditioning for a role in the next Austin Powers movie — or to replace William Shatner in the Priceline campaign. Agency: Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, owned by Omnicom.

GODADDY Another Super Bowl, another cheesy commercial for GoDaddy, the Web site registrar operated by the GoDaddy Group. This time, there was a wild party in the office of the GoDaddy marketing department. “Everybody wants to work in marketing,” a character says with a smirk. Hey, GoDaddy, go get Mommy — maybe she knows how to make a halfway decent Super Bowl spot. Agency: created internally.

PEPSICO Two spots for Sierra Mist, sold by the Pepsi-Cola division of PepsiCo, were not as funny as those from the game last year. A third commercial, for Sierra Mist Free, hit the jackpot with a punch line that, well, came up short, as in the abbreviated shorts worn by the comedian Jim Gaffigan. Agency: BBDO Worldwide, part of Omnicom.

SPRINT NEXTEL By now, even the most spoof-loving consumer is probably tired of commercials that mock commercials for prescription drugs. But a spot from Sprint Nextel managed to elicit laughs. The parody was dead-on, down to the hushed-voice announcer promising that Sprint Mobile Broadband would help those who “can’t take care of business the way others do” by curing their “connectile dysfunction.” Agency: Publicis & Hal Riney, part of the Publicis Groupe.

 

I forgot the menacing hitchiker ad from Bud Light. Clearly stolen from the Hitchiker movie that was heavily advertised recently, but it was funny. I thought the Kevin Federline ad was pretty funny too.

 

Advertising is my forté...Or so I'd like to think, and if given the choice to pick my ultimate dream job, it's always been to be the Creative Director at an ad agency.

Now, first let me say that by far, this was THE worst year for commercials in years.

And second, AAA-you may not know where to start criticizing them but I'm gonna give it a shot as well as give some lessons learned:

salesgenie....honestly, I thought this ad was a joke...I was waiting for that moment, and it never happened and I honestly feel bad for the people who made the ad (which by the way was done INHOUSE). I was actually flabergasted and that doesn't happen a lot with things like this.

godaddy...completely retarded. I get that they think that if they throw in enough pseudo-celebs (OC choppers guys, Trischel from the Real World) then it's a shoe-in, but it couldn't have been farther from that. And by the way. This ad was also done INHOUSE.

***those two should take away a very important lesson from this years display...'your business isn't advertising so what makes you think you have any clue how to do it?'***

the tmobile one wasn't new. And while it might have been mildly amusing at some point in the past, it wasn't remotely amusing yesterday.

nationalwide with KFed....I suppose this commercial may have been amusing if A) It wasn't 'leaked' to the internet 2 weeks ago, and B) If Kfed wouldn't actually be in that position if it wasn't for his 'luck' with the 'ladies' (I use the word 'ladies' losely, no pun intended).

the GM commercial with the robot - I found this commercial, which was about a car factory robot dreaming about committing suicide, to be a tad disturbing. All I could think of was 'Johnny 5' from Short Circuit and it made me sad. I felt bad for the poor robot and I wasn't laughing at the end, I was almost holding back tears (ok, not quite THAT dramatic, but close)

garmin or whatever that gps thing was.....HUH? Yeah, waste.

the 'heart' commercial. Yeah, um, I tuned that out pretty quickly so I don't really know what it comprised of, nor do I care.

coca cola.... the only one that was ok was the one with the grandtheftauto take off....and had I never played GTA, I would have no clue what the hell that commercial was about. Furthermore the vending machine one was just stupid and pointless and I'm assuming that some CGI programmer got paid a lot of money for no reason.

Now those were the worst of what I can recall, there are others, but I don't feel like thinking about them right now cause I'm getting aggrivated.

The GOOD ones were, as usual, the bud/budlight ones... the best one IMO being the paper, sicssors, rock one and the Carlos Mencia ones. The one with the spotted dog was cute. The Blockbuster one with the rabbit/mouse made me laugh and that's about all I can say for the good ones that I saw.

All in all a very disappointing year and further proof that I should INDEED be a creative director.

 

I saw about half of them, and I've been scratching me head since. In years past, they were almost all universally good. This years bunch were universally embarrassing. Was that Chevy trying to sell cars by having a bunch of guys strip in the middle of the street to that putrid song?

it was eerie how poor they were...

although, it seems a stretch to blame Bush on them, as the NYC implied

 

Were there commercials during the game?

When a sports event comes on I pause my dvr at the beginning for an hour or so, then start her up and zip thru the ads.

I always thought the commercials were overrated, too cutesy by half. Haven't seen one in yrs.

H

 

I didn't even read that article until I saw your quote...and now I'm sorry I did because not only is it a 'stretch' it's utterly retarded. NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO DO WITH POLITICS STUART ELLIOTT AND THANKS FOR GIVING THOSE SHITTY AGENCIES AND EXCUSE YOU MORON