Commentary
On To the Post-Ad Bowl Show
- by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, February 7, 2011
There are more than enough opinions flying about this morning about who "won" the Super Ad Bowl that now runs parallel to the big game. Hulu's voting audience has declared "The Force," a VW ad featuring a kid Darth Vader 'magically' starting a car to be the most popular, followed by the Bridgestone "Carma" spot (beaver saves driver from rushing torrent) and VW's "Black Beetle." The Dorito's House Sitting ad (grandpa resurrected) and the NFL ad reprising great TV moments round out the top faves. Interestingly, Hulu's visitors rewarded concept over celebrity. We don't see stars (aside from the NFL montage) until the sixth top rated slot for Snickers featuring Richard Lewis whining and Roseanne Barr getting whacked by a log - which is vote bait if we ever saw it.
A number of ads were mere teases for longer iterations found online. GoDaddy.com, as is its wont, deliberately threw viewers where it wanted them to be, the Web. According to the company this morning, the reveal of Joan Rivers as the new GoDaddy Girl helped drive domain registrations past the 46 million mark in total for the hosting/registry firm. But it was the obvious bait of the second spot, the promise of naked GoDaddy models that got the predictable reaction. In the brand's usual fashion, it spoofed its own predilection for vapid cheesecake ads while delivering a cheesecake ad. The possibility of seeing Danica Patrick and Jillian Michaels nude sent twice as many people to the site within two minutes as had gone for the 2008 "banned" GoDaddy ad.
Critics long before me have commented on the post-modern turn the Super Bowl ad ritual gives us. The targets of advertising become its critics, judging how "effective" an ad is. Does such a turn immunize the viewer from advertising's influence, assuage us with the deceptive feeling we are immunized, or simply turn us into collaborators in our own persuasion? Whichever is truest, the Super Bowl coalesces a cultural trend; we reward smart persuasion.
The "What-The-Hell-Were-They-Thinking?" award has to go to Groupon, whose ads seemed designed to offend by taking serious subjects like Tibet, whale extinction and rain forest deforestation and turning them into self-conscious jokes about consumer obsession with Groupon deals. I like irreverence as much as the next guy, but there was not a thing funny here.
Personally I thought the most genuinely effective spot I saw all evening was the most straightforward in messaging and visual impact. Chrysler's homage to Detroit featuring Eminem was just flat out good video. The voiceover, dismissing rhetoric against American-made cars, built up with its own rhythm, and the visuals focused on the iconography of the great era of production: deco paintings of workers, arms of steel, world-weary laborers. There was a pace, visual style, messaging and mythology all at work to deliver something powerful. Ultimately, after all of the jokes, self-conscious gyrations, and CGI elsewhere in the Ad Bowl, I found most memorable the ad that just had a damned good story.
Steve Smith is Editorial Director of Events for MediaPost
Chrysler spot wins for not only its general excellence, but for actually standing for something besides "Buy our car." It was genuine and genuinely inspiring. Copywriter deserves whatever he's making (and probably more).
VW and Deutsch were smart to put the :60 V(ader)W online early, because the :30 doesn't carry the same impact.
I wonder if the ad biz will ever realize that this fictitious contest fundamentally doesn't matter. The company who wins is the one whose ad causes the best impact. Despite modern advertisings worship of "like-ability", liking an ad is a very important SECONDARY issue. Primary issues start with: does the ad say what it needs to in order to persuade the target consumer. Is it meaningful to the target consumer?
We are a silly business...
I liked the ad for Kenny G. I also thought the auto insurance ad with the monkeys in the parking lot was funny. The one for the transvestite dating service was good too.
I wonder when ad execs will learn? If everyone else is going to succomb to their ad agency's hype and spend millions to make really entertaining ads that lure viewers to actually pay attention during the commercial break, then the smart thing to do is take advantage of this abnormally attentive audience and show a commercial that actually sells your product.
Been hearing a lot of comments about Chrysler. But it looked to me like they wasted 90 to 115 seconds of VERY expensive time. Sure looked to me like the message was a 15 second message stretched to 120.
If we include ad cost in the Chrysler equation and figure they spend $5 to $7 million for that one ad (as opposed to $2.5M), does it still hold up?