A day later: abbreviated thoughts on the Super Bowl ads

I wanted to wait a while to write my review of last night's ads. Last year I did a diatribe on the ten commandments of Super Bowl ads - this year I figured I'd try to boil it down a little bit. I only have one commandment this time around, actually. Following will be my personal list of winners and losers and the ad agencies responsible, based on a variety of factors but mostly on:


11. Thou shalt get thine money's worth.

These spots cost about $100,000 per second (considering there were some 15 seconds and some 60). Great creative is a must. The ads don't just cost so much because you get 111,000,000 sets of eyeballs (a CPM of just $27!) - you have the only audience of the entire year that is captivated by commercials and is waiting eagerly for each one.

That means that you can't screw it up. Do something people will remember beyond the water cooler the next day. A chuckle from a slapstick joke is great until you get one-upped by Pepsi Max in the same commercial break. Then, all you've done is helped the ad guys at your agency pay their mortgages (or student loans) off.

Memorable doesn't always mean funny. A lot of times it does for the 1 or 2 funniest spots, but it doesn't work for everyone. Do something culturally relevant, cute, or God forbid controversial.

My winners and losers are based on this new addition to my commandments:
(Instead of linking to all the videos, here's one link to all of them.)



WINNERS:
 
Chrysler (Wieden + Kennedy)
Questioned it when it happened, but looking back it was extremely memorable and managed to "turn Detroit into a product benefit," according to Ed Russell. And it made Eminem look kinda classy. Love to see the American automakers put their game faces on.

Volkswagen (Deutsch)
Also one I questioned. Releasing the spots before the game was very bold. What it did was make the 12 million people who say it before the game say "EVERYONE SHUT UP THIS IS THE CUTE ONE!" Great move, also didn't require slapstick comedy. I actually thought the Beetle spot was better than Vader since it had something to do with the product. And they didn't have to pay George Lucas piles of money for that one.

Bridgestone (The Richards Group)
Anyone that didn't think "Reply All" was the funniest ad of the night has never sent an email. Limited product relevance loses some points, but the funniest spot has to make this list.

NFL (GREY)

They had the best possible value the could have gotten. They are guaranteed a certain number of ads during every broadcast, meaning aside from being a huge cash cow the spot they ran with the television characters more than likely didn't cost them a penny. In my circle (one that enjoys TV and football both very much) the NFL's spot was the best of the night. Cartman running in the final scene is gold.


Groupon (Crispin Porter + Bogusky)

WHAT?!? BUT THEY MADE FUN OF TIBET! I'M SO ANGRY I'LL NEVER GO ON THEIR WEBSITE...THINGY. Offensive or not, you're not going to forget Groupon's ads. They're extremely tongue-in-cheek as is (see my post here for more thoughts), so it wasn't out of character creative. And immediately after, half of Twitter was running around screaming with their heads cut off. One of the least known companies is now the most talked about. I'd call that pretty good value.


The creative advertising industry
The most heavily crowdsourced Super Bowl ever produced some stinkers. Pepsi Max and Doritos were mostly slapstick and predictable. Consider that thousands of entries were sifted through to get to these and all of a sudden it looks like crowdsourcing isn't worth the trouble. Crash the Super Bowl failed to crash the party for ad execs and creatives alike.


LOSERS:
 
Motorola
I love the ad. An obvious jab at Apple's 1984 (the "clones" are totally different now. very clever). Except it wasn't obvious to most people. A scant percentage of those watching know advertising history and recognize Apple stereotypes. Based on empirical evidence, may people "just didn't get it"

Salesforce.com (no agency - CEO Marc Benioff talks about it here)
Filed under "why are you advertising here?"

Stella Artois (Mother)
Filed under "managed to be bizarre and yet also totally boring"

Go Daddy (no agency - thank God)
Yes, more people want to create websites now, so it makes more sense than them advertising 5 years ago. But we're also smart enough to know that there's isn't any sultry unrated content online. And if there was, Joan Rivers wouldn't make me want to check it out.


Living Social (The Martin Agency)
Groupon's primary rival. Did you remember they had a spot? It wasn't controversial, so that's why you don't. That flushing sound you hear is the first $3,000,000 Living Social ever made.

Why USA Today Ad Meter Sucks

The best commercials of the Super Bowl, according to respondents using USA Today's Ad Meter, were as follows:

1. Mars’ Snickers — Guy plays football like Betty White
2. Doritos — Dog puts shock collar on owner
3. Bud Light — Man builds house out of beer cans
4. Budweiser — Fences don’t come in between friends
5. Coca-Cola — African sleepwalker finally gets Coke

The problems with the system are several:

A) The winning commercials all ran during the first quarter, if not the first commercial break. People are expecting funny and will choke on their Doritos laughing at the first amusing thing that happens in a commercial because they are waiting with baited breath for Betty White to get trucked. By the time a lot of the best (in my opinion) commercials ran (like Google's, which many many people thought was the best), people were already bored and were just comparing every spot to the last silly Bud Light ad they saw.

B) The "best" ads reward humor in the opening of the spots, because they'll score highly at the beginning, whereas a good ad does not necessarily need to be funny in the first 5 seconds to be successful. Betty White getting tackled probably got the Snickers spot scoring 10s on the Ad Meter right away, whereas ads like Google's took some time to develop and only would have scored highly at the end (and by people who paid attention).

C) The ads deemed the "best" just means that a room of 250 people thought they were the most entertaining. Good ads aren't always the most entertaining - David Ogilvy started his agency around the idea that the primary purpose of ads was to sell products (or ideas). While branding and entertainment is great, it needs to work toward the purpose of generating sales, which is how the success of advertising is actually measured, whether USA Today likes it or not.

Quite frankly, while I did chuckle at the Bud Light house and I thought it was a decent piece of advertising, it doesn't compel me to buy Bud Light, and therefore I don't think it's among the best ads on the industry's biggest stage.

The Ten Commandments of Super Bowl Advertising (and 2010 violations)

So, here we lay in the wake of Super Bowl XLIV; New Orleans Saints fans are inevitably just waking up (around 6pm on the East Coast) in the gutters of Bourbon Street and my apartment now reeks of wounded chicken wings and skunked light beer:



I have to apologize for not previewing the Super Bowl ads this year, I haven’t been able to get around to writing anything worthwhile since going back to school, and maybe some of that has to do with having learned nothing about advertising this semester. It has more to do with the fact that I’m probably lazy (ergo the filthy apartment).

This entry will act as a guideline for judging this year’s ads, which on the whole I felt were very sub-par. Even as a lowly undergraduate studying advertising, I know there are several cardinal rules one shouldn’t violate when producing a TV spot, rules that should be held in especially high regard when the spots cost almost $100,000 per second.

I have taken this opportunity to put together what I believe should, from here on out, be the Ten Commandments of Super Bowl Advertising. I will list each of my Commandments, followed by the spot and advertiser that either heeded or violated it in 2010.

I. Thou shalt not save the big reveal for the end



Aside from reaching the “aw, that’s cute” segment of the population (which may be a lot, estimates say up to 60 million people who watch the Super Bowl don’t care about the football part), this spot was rather baffling. Almost 45 seconds of random toys prancing around, and the Kia Sorrento name is not used until the 54 second mark of the ad. By this time, Kia has wasted more than $5,000,000 with nonsense, only to have probably lost you by now. The “big reveal,” as a professor of mine calls it, needs to come early and often so that people know what they’re watching and why it’s important in context, otherwise you might show them an unrelated sponsored short film for a minute.

II. Thou shalt not pursue comedy at the expense of your commercial message



Brett Favre humor is great with NFL fans, you know, the other portion of people that watch the NFL’s championship game. Anyone that has watched SportsCenter (or FavreWatch, as I called it) each of the last two summers probably found this spot charming. The problem is that it probably created so much laughter and/or discussion after the first twenty seconds, that everyone missed the correlation with the 10-year warranty and the soothing Hyundai narrator voice. This also violates the 1st Commandment, albeit less severely because it may have actually amused people enough to have them watch it again later.

III. Thou shalt not rehash the same idea from Super Bowl ads of the past



Budweiser Clydesdales get a pass here because they have become a fixture of the Super Bowl, and without simple branding advertising this industry would suck. Teleflora used the exact same concept last year, but the flowers were noticeably less sassy this time around, so not only was the idea recycled, it was actually less funny:



Cars.com also used the same punchline, different story formula: boy-genius knows all and fears nothing, except buying cars. It was cute last year, it smelled stale this year (much like my kitchen, hardy har!).



Godaddy’s sleaze is getting really old, and it’s a shame that Danica Patrick still sinks to this level to endorse the web hosting/domain name giant year after year. They used to create buzz with their “banned” ads before the big game, but now everyone knows that it isn’t even worth it to log onto the site to see the “unrated” web content. Did you really think you’d see NASCAR’s next big thing nude? You have a better chance of seeing Dale Earnhardt pose for a centerfold…Too soon?

IV. Thou shalt not use a divisive figure for a divisive message



I’m going to set aside all of my disdain for Tim Tebow as an athlete and my distaste for pro-life messages when I say this: this ad was done as well and tastefully as possible. Yes, it did get booed at my Super Bowl party. But upon further review, this could have been way worse with all the hype it was getting as some extreme anti-abortion spot that would make liberals shut off their televisions in anger.

That all being said, it still was not a good idea for the NGO to run this during the Super Bowl, because you have the most general pool of an audience included in your 106 million impressions, and many of them will react as my friends did and end up missing your call to action, no matter how gently you put your message. This spot could open the floodgates for political or other particularly divisive advertising, which is typically much, much worse to look at.

V. Thou shalt not waste a celebrity endorsement/appearance



Production costs for Super Bowl ads are often overlooked when people talk about the price tag. It costs a lot of money to produce special effects and CGI and to pay celebrity endorsers to spread your message. I hope this spot is part of a larger campaign for Flo TV where they will feature will.i.am for more than 1 second, and also where they will use less of the Who. I’ve had my fill of My Generation and of Pete Townshend windmills for years to come.

VI. Thou shall use cute children with adult personalities





eTrade does not get in trouble for reusing the same idea because generally they are all still funny. They made the mistake, I thought, of saving the funniest for the post game show, but I assume most gluttonous Americans weren’t willing to rouse themselves and change the channel when the clock hit 0:00, so they probably got a good chunk of the full ratings points anyway. The kid in the Doritos spot was excellent, and this ad to me stood out amidst a sea of Doritos endorsement.

VII. Thou shalt not remind people how much money you spent on the Super Bowl



Stoners everywhere rejoiced at the success of their stereotypical favorite brand, or at least one must assume the Frito-Lay brand is doing well, given the fact that they probably spent close to $10,000,000 (yes, ten million dollars) on Super Bowl ads and sponsorship combined. They ran four 30-second spots and had their name elsewhere during the game. The casual buzz stopped being about how funny the ads were (mildly funny, in my opinion) to how much freakin’ money they spent on all the spots. Recession be damned!

VIII. Thou shalt not depict unattractive people in their underpants






This would not have made the list if not for multiple infractions this particular year. Since when did showing Joey and Janie Baggadonuts in their respective underpants become funny? Also, who still wears tighty-whiteys? The sumo diapers are not much better. At least the Dockers ad had a good jingle…

IX. Thou shalt not use a catchy jingle that doesn’t rhyme



There was a lot of buildup for this spot, in which Sir Charles Barkley channels his inner Shakespeare to explain the NBA $5 Box from Taco Bell in verse. The humorous value of the commercial lies in the awful poem, but it is clear that Chuck has fought to maintain his alias as “The Round Mound of Rebound,” and it hasn’t been by eating off the Fresco Menu.



X. By all means, thou shalt do something completely ridiculous



No comment.

RIP: Pepsi Super Bowl Presence

Blame it on the changing advertising landscape, the poor economy, or whatever variable you please, but Pepsi, the second largest Super Bowl advertiser in the last 10 years, will not be advertising its drinks during 2010's game.

The company says it wants to focus the would-be Super Bowl budget on online work and a more "refreshing" campaign.

"In 2010, each of our beverage brands has a strategy and marketing platform that will be less about a singular event and more about a movement," said a Pepsi Co spokeswoman, Nicole Bradley.

This is really a two-fold shame, one because it is a big blow to the world's biggest advertising platform (it has always been thought, "gee, where else can I plan on a guaranteed 40+ Nielsen rating?") and also because Pepsi's spots during the big game are often damn good.

A recent retrospective of some of the best:

2009:


2008:


2007:


2004:


Not to say that online/viral is a bad idea, because it isn't (John is always there to call me on these things). Everyone can benefit from online and new media efforts. My beef is that this is a blow to one of the only platforms where people actively seek out advertising, which is almost a priceless added value (actually not priceless, 30 seconds is going to run about $2.5 million this year).

Is the Super Bowl in trouble? No. They've sold about 90% of available time to this point. They'll sell it out in 2010. It'll be interesting to see how much, if at all, the astronomical cost for these ads drops in coming years because of a waning economy or just because of lack of interest.