This is our “A” game?
All right, I’ll jump right in. I was disappointed. Superbowl Sunday. The biggest ad day of the year (football? what’s football?). Yesterday our clients spent the combined economic value of a small-ish country to slap millions of people into consumeristic submission. And, for the most part, it wasn’t even funny.
I’ve purposely not read what other people have been saying about yesterday’s ad, preferring to keep my thoughts until I got them down here. So here’s what I remember:
Favorite spots: both for Coke. No surprise here, but I still love Happiness Factory and the newer Grand Theft Auto-ish one is great too. That being said, both were repeats. Granted, repeats that haven’t had a ton of air-time as far as I’ve noticed, so they may have been new to some.
Others that made me laugh: Blockbuster’s mouse effort was funny up until the technical/fair balance/whatever just about killed it. Bud Light’s Rock, Paper, Scissors was pretty funny. Snickers Man Kiss made me laugh. It also got my friends and I to the website where we preferred the "Wrench" ending.
Disappointments: Fedex. After last year’s ad, landing on the moon felt boring. GoDaddy. Who cares anymore? Bud Light. Other than Rock, Paper, Scissors, I wasn’t horribly impressed. Toyota Tundra. I LOVE the Tacoma ads. The Tundra ads…welcome back to car land.
Tweeners: CareerBuilder.com. Jury’s still out on these. I remember the gladiator one being pretty funny, though I wish it had gone further. Sierra Mist. I respect the sentiment and the willingness to step out there. Wasn’t really laughing though.
So what do YOU think?
I think that if this is our "A" game, we’re in trouble. I guess what I really think is that watching the Superbowl for the ads (the only reason I bother) isn’t so satisfying anymore. It’s sort of like going to the #1 movie that everyone’s been raving about and coming away feeling like it didn’t live up to the hype. We’ve talked-up the Superbowl ads to the point that they really can’t match expectation. Maybe its time to take a break from spending obscene millions on one spot?
Oh, and on a totally unrelated note, did anyone else hear about the NFL threatening to sue a church for televising the superbowl to its congregation? They do realize that there’s a bunch of folks out there who now own TV’s larger than 55"? Lame on you NFL. Nothing like alienating your fans for a couple of extra bucks. Squeezed out of a church no less.
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Disappointed? Absolutely. Also concerned, bordering on fearful.
Did it scare anyone else that some of the best ads were the ones that weren’t done by agencies? Doritos got a megaton of publicity and some very amusing spots out of their “make our ad for us” stunt, all for the cost of a Web site. And while they didn’t exactly save money on it, Chevy’s college ad competition winner was better than anything they’ve run for years (not that that’s saying much).
In the grand “me-too” tradition of corporate America, you can bet your Bud Light there will be a lot more of such consumer-generated creative next year. Welcome to the YouTube generation.
My little agency does maybe 3 spots a year, so I’m not too worried about my paycheck. But if my job was to concept TV for the big shops, well - let’s say my dreams might be looking kinda like the GM assembly line robot’s.
You make some good points Danny. I think the Coke stuff was good, some of the Bud work, and Emerald Nuts too. I did NOT like the HHR spot. As a guy, I don’t want to buy a car men are all over. Hundreds of guys at my school can attest to that. I won’t bash GM or Chevy for the lame work this year, but they have had good stuff in the past.I’m not going to say it scares me that consumers can create commercials. If you have a contest with a million entries, of course there will be a great ideas. I still don’t think these contests can compare to the work of a full-service ad agency, but what do I know.
“If you have a contest with a million entries, of course there will be a great ideas.”
That’s exactly why I think ad professionals should be a little scared. A client can hold a contest and get a million ideas to choose from. How many do they get from their agency when they give them the assignment?
It’s analagous to the mindset behind reality TV - why pay writers and actors when regular people would give anything to get their 15 minutes, and all you need is a production budget and a premise?
Is the industry going to go belly up because of it? Of course not. But we’re going to be seeing a lot more amateur ad contests in the coming years, and like reality TV, it is going to get worse before it gets better.
I am not an ad guy, per se, my only point is PRINCE? I think NFL Network has lost it. As I said in my blog…name two more performers more inappropriate?