Super Bowl Top Two Best and Worst Ads

All this week people have been reflecting on and discussing their favorite Super Bowl ads from last Sunday’s showcase. Now it is my turn. First of all, I think it is important to determine a criteria of standards for what constitutes a great commercial. Although this is a very subjective topic, I am going to take a stab at it. I think that a great commercial is one that is memorable, it has to have mass appeal and really resonate with the majority of its viewers. It also has to communicate its message clearly and effectively. Even though these are 30 second spots, an advertiser needs to get to the heart of the message and get the main point across. A consumer should be able to sum that point up by the end of the commercial and in discussing it there should be a consensus as to what it is about. At its most basic principles, this sums up the definition of a great ad. With that being said, here are my top two best and worst Super Bowl ads of 2011 starting with the worst.

1) The worst Super Bowl ad of 2011 was the Go Daddy commercial. I get what their style is and I get what they were trying to do, introduce the .co domain name, but it did not work for me. They hyped up their Go Daddy.Co girl pick and it turned out to be Joan Rivers, a big let down if you ask me. She is not a relevant person to pick for this role. It may have made for a surprising reveal, but in a really bad way. Then there’s the fact that they can never finish a commercial without sending you online to see the rest of it. Why not tie in the incentive to go online while finishing the commercial? Last time I checked there are ways of doing that.

2) Stella Artois fell flat and looked dated. Their choice of setting appeared to be 1960′s Paris, and choosing Adrien Brody as the main singer and character did not say much about Stella Artois. There is no doubt that Adrien Brody has a singing voice, just not a very interesting one. The whole thing was a sleepy effort that was easily forgettable. They may have been trying to come off as suave and sophisticated. If they were, it did not work.

Now for the top two.

2) Volkswagen takes my second spot because it was charming and not boring like a lot of other car ads we saw that day. The little toddler thinking he had the force when really it was the remote start feature? A clever way to introduce a new option for the 2012 Volkswagen Passat. Perhaps the only downside was that the Star Wars and ‘the force’ themes going on had me thinking perhaps it also had more power. However, it is a 5 cylinder engine and the previous was a four-cylinder turbo engine. It is hard to beat a turbo engine, even with an extra cylinder. They also failed to elude to how spacious it is inside. Yet, for having to choose only one focal point to get creative with they made the best choice.

1) Finally my favorite ad is…Doritos. I do not eat Doritos and this ad was clever, funny and tempting. The office nerd who is a Doritos fanatic got the point across that Doritos are good. Simple as that. Just when you thought you saw perhaps the weirdest but funniest part, him licking Doritos off his coworker’s finger, they took it up a notch with him stealing his coworkers pants just to get a whiff of Doritos crumbs. A true Doritos fanatic’s commercial but also one that caught everyone else’s attention.

There you have it, my take on the worst of the worst and the best of the best from this year’s Super Bowl ad extravaganza. Overall, it was not the best or the worst and some people really need to step it up next year. For example, Budweiser’s frogs made more of an impression on me than any commercial Budweiser put out this year. One can only hope that next year is a bigger and better year for all involved.

Super Bowl Sunday Commercials: Ideas Old and New

As all of you know, this Sunday is the biggest Sunday of the year. Not just because it’s the Super Bowl, but because of the commercials that will premiere in front of such a large audience during this illustrious game. For me, it’s one of the reasons I started watching the Superbowl in the first place. Although I like football more now, Super Bowl Sunday is still all about the ads for me. During the holiday season I read Natalie Zmuda’s ”Target, Amazon Trounce Walmart in Holiday-Ad Poll” http://bit.ly/fHz3tq. Basically, the gist of it is that Target and Amazon’s quirky ads won over consumers sick of seeing penny-pinching ads in the recent recession era. Quirky ads are the trend of the moment, as consumers look for exciting and imaginative ads that captivate and satiate them. Here is my preview of this Sunday’s upcoming ads (to be followed up next week with my analysis of the best and worst ones). Some companies are advertising to express brand values and beliefs, others go specifically for the quirkiness value, and others return to what worked for them in the past. Two that are returning to what worked for them in the past are CareerBuilder and Pepsi. CareerBuilder is bringing back the chimpanzees that made their 2005 and 2006 Super Bowl ads so popular. Tied into this strategy of returning to what works is their plan to refresh the popular Monk-e-mail with social sharing features and 3D images, as Stuart Elliott’s “The Game Plan? Returning to What Works”  discusses here http://nyti.ms/eIhG0L. Pepsi, which took a year off to pursue a game plan of using ad dollars to benefit the community, is back as “Yet Another Superbowl Spot Brings PepsiCo’s Total to Seven” http://bit.ly/fE7f9n  and one is rumored to belong to Lipton Brisk.

My analysis? CareerBuilder is making a smart move using such a popular ad to introduce new features to a popular fixture. PepsiCo is smart to come back to the game as “Pepsi’s Bet on Community Projects Over the Super Bowl” http://nyti.ms/el7a2X mentioned Pepsi’s sales fell 6% last year, indicating that they need to be using more than just social media to communicate their message and maintain consumers. Six spots are also reportedly consumer-created, which can be horrible or fantastic as recent consumer ads have shown.  Meanwhile, General Motors has seven spots also, all based around the tagline “Chevy Runs Deep” as noted in Rupal Parekh’s “What to Expect From General Motors in the Super Bowl” http://bit.ly/gDtKZt. Ignoring polls that say quirky is the way to go, they are telling stories about what makes each spot’s Chevy brand special. I guess someone needs to stick to the more traditional route of brand storytelling in their Super Bowl commercials, and this year’s appears to be General Motors. Last, but not least, Motorola is promoting its new Xoom tablet with an edgy commercial that may reference Apple’s 1984 Macintosh Super Bowl commercial. “Motorola Goes After Apple’s iPad in Super Bowl Teaser for Xoom Tablet” http://bit.ly/eCAtxd and Motorola’s Super Bowl commercial could be one of the best commercials of the day if its anything like the teaser. Depicting a planet with Apple’s white ear buds on each side and the tagline “2011 Looks A Lot Like 1984″ splayed across the front, the teaser hints that the commercial is an edgy dig at Apple reflective of when Apple went after IBM 27 years ago. All in all, if these ads are any indication, this Super Bowl Sunday will be a spectacular display of brands on parade.