The Super Bowl is by the far the most expensive time to air a commercial on television [estimated at $3 million per 30 seconds] and therefore is typically a place where advertisers put forth their best creative effort. From the funny to visually stunning, this gives us football fans something else to look forward to during the big game. This year felt like one of the more bland years in Super Bowl advertising. Here are a few worth comment:
LMAO
Doritos Crystal Ball
Pepsuber
In-Sight-Full
The Coke Heist
Bud Light Lime Is Summertime
Train wreck
Gold4Cash, Heeeer's Money
As for the worst, I have to say the GoDaddy spots were my least favorite and watching them in their entirety online, even though I went to their website which was the main idea of the ads, didn't make them any better.
Today at lunch I am going to eat some Doritos with a Coke and a Pepsi and today I'm going to sell some gold online drinking a Bud Light Lime in hopes that next year will be a better day for super advertising.
I'm not sure why the folks behind Super Bowl XLIII would want to reject advertising from an organization such as PETA. I mean this is a group which sole purpose to create greater awareness of how animals are treated around the world. Let's take a look:
Oh never mind. I guess CBS is still be overly caution since Super Bowl XXXVIII's whole nipple gate scandal.
Prince was the halftime entertainment and he did not disappoint – especially to the Prince fans around the world. They lead into his performance with a We will rock you sort of remix or something. Thought that was an odd choice to lead into Prince but ok. Prince opened with his classic rock anthem Let’s go crazy. One question, when they did a stadium wide shot, was that lightning? Maybe it was just added as an effect for the at-home audience. Anyway, it was nice to hear Prince rock a solid guitar solo before sliding into Baby I'm A Star, a more pop centric and lesser known track from the Purple Rain Soundtrack. Next he got into what I would call an easy to consume pop/rock medley including Proud Mary, All Along The Watchtower, and The Best of You while being backed by the Florida A & M band. Prince final song was, of course, Purple Rain which was ironic given the weather and really brought down the house. The only thing that seemed off was the end of his performance where his guitar seemed it was no longer electric. Since the sound is lost or muted it maybe the [purple] rain actually shorted his Artist Formerly Known As axe. You can watch the whole performance here and here is the promo which has some pretty funny play-on-the-title-of-your-song ideas.
Advertising during the Super Bowl has become, to some, more exciting and entertaining then the game itself. When slapping down a minimum of $2.6 million for 30 seconds of airtime and a very attentive audience of 90.7 million viewers, you better put your best effort into marketing. Here are my picks from SBXLI:
Winners - or the best of the best:
Budweiser/Bud Light bring it home [again]! Rock, Paper, Scissors game for beer, Immigrants learn to ask for Bud Light, Slapping replaces fist bumping, Wedding shortened by auctioneer and Crabs worship Bud ice chest were all really good.
Coca-Cola produced a couple high-end cgi spots. Inside a Coke vending machine and Video game guy does good deeds were visually stimulating.
Toyota gave us one super realistic view of the Tacoma's capabilities in Tundra accelerates, stops at cliff. I never thought for a moment that it would fall off the cliff but ti was very cleverly designed and filmed.
Fan Driven - Something new this year, web 2.0 or users driven advertising, made it's debut and we got a couple good ads:
Doritos top submitted ad called Guy in car, girl show Doritos qualities was a clever use of their "chip slogans" in a 30 second ad. It's really not bad for amateurs.
NFL showed the Fans mourn end of season developed by a "local" boy out of New Hampshire. Again this was a good spot and was heart felt by many football cities this fall/winter.
Losers - this is just the list of ads I have no interest in seeing again:
Salesgenie.com - Salesgenie.com helps sales success, Garmin - GPS navigator vs. paper map monster, GoDaddy.com - GoDaddy marketing department parties, Chevrolet - Bare-chested guys wash HHR, CareerBuilder.com - Fight for promotion in office jungle and King Pharma. - Guy in heart suit attacked by risks. These lacked imagination and laughs. Hope they got 2.6 million worth of sales from their investment. [Also I find it amazing the film industry would also buy advertising time during the big game especially for films such as Wild Hogs, Meet the Robinsons, Pride and Hannibal Rising.]
Well there you have it and if you want to watch any of the ad's from yesterday's game again, slide on over to USA Today which has each ad posted as well as their annual ad meter which results on likeability of each ad.
Congratulations to former Patriot's Dan Kleco and Adam Vinatieri who now have 3 and 4 Super Bowl rings respectively. Everyone knows about how clutch Vinatieri was here in New England and all of the records he has set but here's one more odd stat to add to his growing list: the first kicker ever to play in five Super Bowls and win four Super Bowl rings. Other suberbowl facts and oddities:
Both the Colts and Bears scored exactly the same amount of points this season: 427 This was the first time # 18 was worn by a starting quarterback. First Super Bowl to start with a kick return for a touchdown. It was the first Super Bowl won by an African American head coach, Tony Dungy, and the first to have both teams head coached by African Americans. The first Super Bowl to have rain. The first time a team which finished the regular season ranked last in the NFL in rushing yards allowed won.
