Tuesday, February 05, 2008

On Super Bowl ads: the best of the best

Okay, so I watch all ads, whether they're during the Super Bowl or not. I'm in advertising. It's my business and my hobby. It's kind of an annoying hobby, as they go, because for every really great, inspired ad you see, there are twelve local car dealership ads with men named Bubba in brightly-colored pleather suits screaming at you that you can own a new Suzuki for ONLY ZERO DOWN NINETY-NINE A MONTH OH MY GOD SQUEEEE!!111!!!one!!

And in theory, Super Bowl Sunday should be awesome, because the sheer cost of ad space during the Super Bowl should be so prohibitively high as to scare off crappy advertisers, but that's not always the case. And when bad ads appear during the Super Bowl, they fall far shorter of particularly high expectations than they would any other weekend, and the disappointment is all the worse.

This isn't about those ads. This is about the ones that jumped off the screen and made me laugh, cry, and/or go online to see them again. I'd love to get all philosophical and/or technical about these and expound upon what aspects of the ads really speak to my consumer brain and what subtleties amused and intrigued me, but the fact is, the barfing baby was, like, totally funny, and stuff, so there.

In no particular order, for no particular reason, with no particular agenda, my faves:

Bridgestone Tires


NFL - Chester Pitts


E-trade

Talking, barfing baby both amusing and disturbing? Right on.

Careerbuilder

Gawker didn't really like this one because of the creepy imagery of the heart leaping bodily from the woman's chest; I'll admit to being somewhat concerned that her boss would eat it once it was on his desk, but when the (admittedly obvious) punchline came up, I was right amused.

Coca-Cola

I can't help but have some affection for Carville, and I had to laugh watching Bill Frist invoke the rules of "jinx."

Honorable Mentions
- Audi. I liked the Godfather reference, and if that weren't enough, the car is simply dead sexy. Dead. Freaking. Sexy.
- Pepsi Stuff. This one is really, really hard for me to admit, because I have significant feminist objections to Justin Timberlake (ask me about the ways his videos objectify women. Wait, just for the sake of time, don't), but I thought this one was cute and funny. For all his faults, the man seems to have a good sense of humor and doesn't seem to mind looking silly. And, yeah, I wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating crackers.
- Fed Ex. Even if that last shot was eerily reminiscent of the mass-slaughter scene toward the end of Dogma.

ETA: A hilarious one that completely slipped my mind? This one:

Pepsi was three for three in value for their Super Bowl ad dollars. Pepsi wins at Super Bowl advertising.

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