Viewers of Sunday's Super Bowl saw plenty of fumbles. Most of them were during the commercial breaks.
The game was far more entertaining than most of the $2.6-million spots. The humor and warmth of previous Super Bowl ads disappeared this year as America's corporate big spenders opted for boring, high-tech and frequently trite efforts.
As a long-time follower of this annual extravaganza in advertising, I've never seen such divergent after-game reviews. Anheuser-Busch and Careerbuilder.com scored high with some, very low with others. As you would expect, only advertising agency executives gave this year's ads a passing grade.
My uniform disappointment was shared by a couple of other observers, but at least there were three of us who saw no real winners in the ad sweepstakes. Advertisers who presented memorable spots in past years created bathroom breaks in 2007. Surveys showed a segment of the audience liked Anheuser-Busch's slapping and rock throwing spots, but they seemed like slapstick efforts to compete with Miller Brewing's "man laws." Careerbuilder.com moved from amusing chimps of the past to truly mindless humans. Godaddy.com, which seems to get more attention before its commercials run, couldn't have spent much on Sunday's effort that seemed to use out-takes from the last two years.
As usual, I failed to see the point of my "favorite" commercial. Blockbuster's rabbit and guinea pig, using a real mouse to go online, were appealing to the end when the pair decided to plug in the mouse's tail. Commentators on Monday told me the ad demonstrated that Blockbuster had discovered the Internet, but the message wasn't easy to decipher.
For perhaps the first time in Super Bowl history, spots for the National Football League were more effective than those of the paying sponsors. Brightening the first half was a short spot of Bears-backing Oprah Winfrey and Colts' fan David Letterman enjoying the game together on the couch. In the second half as the commercials moved from bad to worse, the league aired a longer spot describing fan how disappointed fans are to see the season end, culminating with a cameo by Green Bay's Brett Favre.
We all know that Brett will be back next season, pursuing another appearance in the championship game. Let's hope some of the agencies that produced this year's Super Bowl ads will replace their creative teams before they produce commercials for the big game in 2008.
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1 comment:
I thought the FedEx ad I saw was really funny and effective -- well, funny, anyway.
I liked the Coke "grand Theft Auto" takeoff pretty well, too.
Generally, though I agree: This is one Superbowl where the game actually was more entertaining than the ads.
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