Random Culture

Best Ads: Super Bowl 2008

Kind of a lukewarm year for Super Bowl ads, but there were a few shining moments... As my previous post suggested, there are a couple places you can see all of them, including YouTube.com/adblitz and MySpace.com/superbowlads. Below, I've included a couple of my favorites.

2008 Super Bowl Ad: FedEx - "Carrier Pigeons"

2008 Super Bowl Ad: Bud Light - "Breathe Fire"

2008 Super Bowl Ad: Audi - "Truth in Engineering." Not the world's greatest ad, but the R8 is one good looking car. Find more at TruthInEngineering.com

2008 Super Bowl Ad: Bridgestone - "Scream." Yes, I'm a bit biased since this spot was created by my agency, The Richards Group, but this one stuck out as one of the better spots.

2008 Super Bowl Ad: Tide to Go - "Interview." Loved this commercial, and Tide had the foresight to create a nice website supporting the effort. Visit MyTalkingStain.com.

2008 Super Bowl Ad: eTrade - "Banking Baby." If you get past the whole draw of a "talking baby", I actually liked this one.

The worst ads? Well, Sales Genie has got to be at the top of the list... not only for some of the lowest budget ads of the bunch, but I thought the voice impersonations of Chinese and Indian characters were borderline at best. The Sobe "Thrillicious" ad also struck me as derivative, and should for anyone who's seen the Thriller dance video from a wedding that took the web by storm recently. Under Armour had a horrible ad that they spent way too much money on. It left me scratching my head wondering what the heck the commercial was all about. Cars.com had a few ads, which seemed to try way too hard to be funny, and wound up having the opposite affect on me. In general, I was also disappointed that almost no one really used websites to support these ads.

Super Bowl 2008: Ad Blitz

Want to view a comprehensive list of all the Super Bowl 2008 ads? Want to vote on them and see what people liked the most? YouTube has launched the "Ad Blitz" channel... a comprehensive channel with all the ads from the big game, where users can vote on what the best ads are.

Visit http://youtube.com/adblitz after the game to see them all.

Super Bowl XLI: Ad Deathwatch

Like many of you, I was wholly unimpressed by the ads at the Super Bowl this year. It wasn't the "consumer-generated" ad orgy I had expected. In fact, it wasn't much of anything at all. Sure, there were a couple slightly funny ads, but the advertisers were off their game this year. Or was it something else?

The suck factor of the ads this year, I think, points to something much larger. Advertisers are starting to care less about this event, and the reach it provides. Online advertising is growing in reach, and its "trackability" means that in the online world, ads are held accountable for results. Super Bowl ads, by their very nature, are terribly expensive... and oh yeah, not really held accountable.

Or maybe the thinking behind the ads this year was just bad. No one was really inventive, no one really tried anything new. Notice how many of the ads that aired weren't exclusive? I saw many of these online before they made it to Super Bowl Sunday, and that took some of the excitement out of it.

Regardless, I've still posted a few of the better ones below. Or, you can view all of them in YouTube's special Super Bowl commercial section. Enjoy!

Bud Light "Fist Bump"

Emerald Nuts "Bogeyman" (featuring Robert Goulet)

GM Robot Dream

NFL "Super Ad" Chosen... From a Marketer!

I was just griping about how the "consumer created" ads appearing at this year's Super Bowl aren't REALLY being created by real consumers... and it's just as I expected. The NFL has announced the winner of their "consumer created" NFL Superad competition. The pitch they are turning into an ad comes from Gino Bona, who coincidentally, works at a "sales and marketing" company. You can watch his ad pitch at NFL.com/superad. I'll say it once again... most of these companies don't want actual consumer created content... they just want parodies of ads their agencies are already creating that they can file under the consumer generated label.

What would be a REAL consumer generated campaign? How about this... CBS is actually embracing consumer generated content for the Super Bowl. They're asking people "if you had 15 seconds to say whatever you wanted, what would it be?" The "winner" will air on Super Bowl Sunday. CBS has created an official YouTube group, and people are uploading videos.

Kudos to CBS!

Superbowl XLI: Sort of Consumer Generated

The Super Bowl XLI ads this year will have more than a fair share of consumer generated campaigns. However, after looking at a few of the brands touting such endeavors, it appears to me that consumer generated content is far from what these advertisers want. Instead, they're looking for imitation.

In particular, take a look at the Doritos "Crash the Super Bowl" contest. They solicited "fan created" commercials, and are now allowing the general public to vote on 5 finalists, the winner of which will be aired during the Super Bowl. What becomes immediately apparent to me is that these 5 finalists aren't your "run-of-the-mill" consumer. No, these are people who are either already in the ad industry, or some related film/television profession. If you were to run any of these commercials on TV without telling people they were "fan created", no one would know the difference. Go back and look at other popular consumer generated video contests, and you'll see the same thing.

I don't know about you, but this seems to run counter to the whole idea of embracing consumer generated content. Is it that these advertisers are actually afraid to show real, homegrown content? Or is it possible that the average consumer just doesn't feel like making a video about Doritos?

Career Builder: Monk-e-Mail

I didn't see this the first time around, but Career Builder launched a great site in conjunction with their Superbowl campaign. The site, Monk-E-Mail, allows visitors to build a monkey and a message to send to a friend. Now, there's nothing particularly new about the idea, but the execution is great.

I particularly like the options they give visitors for building a message to accompany the monkey they've created. Instead of just using pre-fab messaging, visitors are allowed the option to phone in a recorded message! This was a great addition to what would be an otherwise "run of the mill" campaign.

View the Monk-E-Mail site here. [via The Spunker]

TiVo's Super Bowl Data!

TiVo has released their commercial data for the 2006 Super Bowl. Here's a list of the top 10 most "replayed" commercials of the Super Bowl:

1. Ameriquest, Friendly Skies
2. Ameriquest, That Killed Him
3. Budweiser, Streaking Sheep
4. Fed Ex, Caveman
5. Michelob, Touch Football
6. Bud Light, Hidden Bud Lights
7. Sierra Mist, Kathy Griffin
8. Bud Light, Bear Attack
9. Aleve, Leonard Nimoy
10. Bud Light, Revolving Wall

Yikes... this really wasn't a good year for Super Bowl commercials. How Kathy Griffin's Sierra Mist commercial and the Aleve commercial got on here, I have no idea. Unless people were replaying the ads to tell their friends: "Look how awful these Super Bowl commercials are!"

I'm also a little surprised about the Ameriquest ads. I just didn't care for them. Maybe that's because last year, their ads were much better. Remember the guy cooking dinner and it looks like he's killing the cat? That was funny...

Link via PVRwire.

Super Bowl Commercials & Search

One of the things I was most impressed about the Super Bowl this year is how many advertisers were including search engine advertising as a part of their Super Bowl promotions. We all know that after the Super Bowl, people go to search engines to try and find the ads they missed, or the ads their friends are talking about. Running search engine ads is essential to connect with these people.

Last year, we were applauding just a few advertisers for doing it, but this year, the search engine ads are running in full force to accompany Super Bowl commercials.

Here's a short list of the folks I noticed running Super Bowl specific search engine ads on Google:

• Honda
• Cadillac (they were doing it last year)
• Mission Impossible
• Career Builder (they were doing it last year)
• Prudential
• Nationwide
• Ameriquest
• Sprint

Now, I have to dog on Sprint just for a little bit. The weird thing about Sprint is that their search engine ads are directing people to SprintEnterprise.com. Say what? You can't access any of the commercials by visiting Sprint.com, but for some reason they're all on SprintEnterprise.com? Come on Sprint, get your act together.

Super Bowl Commercials: Mastercard MacGuyver

I didn't think much about the MasterCard MacGuyver commercial when I saw it during the Super Bowl. At least, I didn't think much other than - wow, Richard Dean Anderson is getting old. But it was one of the Super Bowl commercials where the URL caught my eye. The commercial directed people to Priceless.com. And guess what? It looks like MasterCard is trying to pull off a blog.

They actually refer to the entries as "articles", but Priceless.com clearly is supposed to feel blog-like. however, it's missing many of the features that would make it a blog, like comments and an RSS feed. Having said that, though, I'm impressed by something on the Priceless.com site... they link out to other sites! Kudos on that.

I don't think people will be turning to MasterCard as the guru on "life's adventures", but it's nice to see them give it a shot. I mean, they could have just sent people to a credit card application. But they tried something different.

Watch the commercial here, and visit Priceless.com.

Superbowl Commercials: Addicted to LOST

Sure I'm biased. I have a podcast about LOST, so I'm a huge fan. But I loved the "Addicted to LOST" commercial. It was one of my favorites in the 2006 Super Bowl.

I didn't just like this commercial because I'm a LOST fanatic, I loved it because this type of "mashup" is something that speaks directly to an Internet audience. It's not the same old advertising...