- Share This Post
- Pin It
- 1
- 14
-
Sparkle (1)
Last night’s Super Bowl was full of surprises, but perhaps the most surprising was that the GoDaddy commercials were not the most tasteless. That dubious honor goes to the pseudo-Tibetan PSA that segued into actor Timothy Hutton pimping social couponing site Groupon.
Overall, this year’s crop of Super Bowl ads was pretty disappointing. Unusually, the game itself was actually more interesting (and I don’t really like football that much). Here’s my report card.
The Best Super Bowl Ads of 2011
Ad agency Deutsch usually delivers for client Volkswagen, and this year was no exception. The Darth Vader spot that was leaked at the end of the week was superb, and as @edwardboches commented on the #brandbowl twitter stream, it was genius to pre-release the 60-second spot on YouTube but run the shorter (less costly) 30 during the game. By the time the spot aired, people were actually waiting for it.
And the agency’s New Beetle ad featuring the song “Black Betty” was perhaps even better -- a clever use of animation that actually highlighted the brand’s personality versus CGI for CGI’s sake (Salesforce.com’s lame spots for Chatter.com featuring the Black Eyed Peas, anyone?)
As a body of work, the Fox and NFL house ads were among the best of the bunch this year, especially the NFL’s Best Fans Ever TV nostalgia spot that aired late in the game.
Overall, I think it was my favorite of the night. It has something for everyone, left you feeling good and made the point -- the Super Bowl and football are part of American culture. Even if you don’t watch a minute.
That “good feeling” is what I expect to get from Coca-Cola’s commercials, and it just wasn’t there this year, even though the production values met the company’s usually high standards. "Border Crossing" was clever, and on message for the brand, but I didn’t really get the dragon breathing fire one. Perhaps it was that both commercials played off confrontation and war, themes that I generally don’t associate with the brand.
As usual, there were lots of movie ads. Other than the Kung Fu Panda “We will wok you,” which was clearly done for the Super Bowl, these were typical movie spots for films expected to entice the Super Bowl audience. Personally, I am looking forward to Captain America and Thor, thank you very much.
Speaking of house ads, there seemed to be an awful lot of Fox house ads -- particularly for House, Glee and the Daytona 500. More than usual? I don’t know but it sure felt like it.
Retro was definitely in this year -- among others, the aforementioned NFL fans spot, Mercedes Benz, and Chevy Volt and Motorola all played to the past to good effect.
[BTW, if you are looking for the review of the Chevy ad that ran during Glee and featured the show's cast, it’s not here. I am not a Gleek and it was past my bedtime.]
Beer, Chips and Soda Ads
As always, Anheuser Busch debuted a number of commercials. Loved, loved, loved the "Tiny Dancer" spot. It uses surprise so very well. Plus the Clydesdales.
I also got a big kick out of Dog Sitter -- especially the final frame of the dogs playing cards, evocative of the turn-of-the-century cigar ads http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogs_Playing_Poker. The product placement spot was a bit forced, and at this point in this column, I don’t remember any of the others.
Doritos was a mixed bag. The finger-sucking, pants-licking kid? Memorable. But creepy. And not in a good way. The other spots were also a little creepy, but you really can’t miss with a pug, and the power of Doritos to revive dead fish, plants and even grandpa was very amusing.
Pepsi’s PepsiMax commercials, on the other hand, were disappointing. I absolutely love the company, but was not impressed with the ads, all of which were structured around gender stereotypes. Yes, I know PepsiMax is the boy diet soda, which is probably why all the spots were aimed to appeal to an adolescent male, but I honestly think they could have gotten their message across without sexist innuendo and nut shots. Makes me wish they had given the money to the Refresh Project again this year.
Car Commercials
Other than the
