• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, February 5, 2007

The Super Bowl had many predictable results -- the business of the commercials, the resultant champion Indianapolis Colts, and the rainy Miami weather, which yielded some dampening results.

USA Today suggested in its annual poll that Anheuser-Busch's spots were once again rated the best. These ads included everything from a translator teaching immigrants to say "Give me a Bud Light" to two men playing rock, paper, scissors for the last Bud Light. In the latter spot, a man wins by throwing a rock, smacking the other guy on his head.

Other common results: GoDaddy, the Internet-domain-selling company, doing its version of the annual wet T-shirt contest where everyone at GoDaddy wants to work in marketing -- a place where there is always a party going on.

Perhaps it was also fitting the favored Indianapolis Colts beat the Chicago Bears, just as sports gamblers had expected.

The New York Times observed that some 60 commercials offered up, in general, "cartoonish violence." Commercials from CareerBuilder, for example, showed the extremes that people would go to keep their jobs -- surviving jungle attacks, being hounded to run through gauntlet-like trails. The Times noted that the commercials tried to be "humorous, but often came across as cruel or callous."

All this seems like similar versions of what marketers had done in previous years. But in years past, the humorous violence occurred at the hands of monkeys or other animals.

But despite the violent nature of some spots, Advertising Age believed the ads were unusually good this year. At the same time, critic Bob Garfield noted the amateur nature of marketers employing user-generated commercials, with results that were just that -- amateurish.

But even those spots weren't the lowest of the low. Garfield said salesgenie.com had the most amateurish ad -- seemingly created by a proper advertising agency. In the spot, a sales executive becomes successful using salesgenie.com to generate sales leads. He drives up in a Ferrari; his boss wants to take him out to dinner; a pretty blonde takes a liking to him.

The TV business trade press did many similar stories leading up to the event. A lot was made about how CBS fell far behind with the sales of commercials of the Super Bowl --- but CBS executives publicly said that wasn't the case.

Virtually all TV business publications mentioned $2.6 million as the average price of a commercial -- not really digging deeper to explore individual deals.

User-generated commercials were one new theme this year. A Doritos spot involved a car crash, a beautiful woman, and some crunching chips as airbags. Another new theme: marketers looking to extend their high-priced Bowl marketing efforts, using mobile marketing extensions, as well as having CBS run the spots on its Web site.

Finally, The Los Angeles Times said the actual game was great compared to the actual commercials -- a change from the usual refrain that viewers actually are interested in marketing messages this particular Sunday rather than the game.

The paper said: "The best thing that could be said about the amateur ads was that you couldn't tell them from the professional ones."

The game was played in sloppy, wet Miami conditions. Both teams made many mistakes and turnovers; much the same could be same of Super Bowl advertising.