Sucked is about the only word I can think of to describe the biggest day for television advertisers. A poor effort to say the least. If you didn't get a chance to see them all during the game, you can check the commercials out here.
I can honestly say that there wasn't a single commercial worth seeing the entire evening. Thank goodness it was at least a great game. What do you think?
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Pepsi
Sun, 02/03/2008 - 20:56 — Brendan West (not verified)The only redeeming commercials I saw were the Diet Pepsi Max ad near the beginning (which featured Joe Buck lampooning himself, and a some-what cheesy surprise of Chris Katan acting like everyone was making fun of him), and the NFL's "Super Ad," which wasn't so much a great commercial as it was a great story told well.
They did suck
Sun, 02/03/2008 - 21:04 — KSBrennan (not verified)The commercials were bad. I agree that the Diet Pepsi Max one had a great finish. Other than that this was probably the worst Super Bowl for commercials in recent memory. The best game though. I'm a Giants fan so I'm choosing to forget the 2nd and 3rd quarters.
Super Bowl Commercials
Sun, 02/03/2008 - 21:13 — D. Amack a.k.a. rhymingdesigner (not verified)I agree, James, but what else could we have expected considering the huge cost of airtime?
Coming up with a funny idea is the same as developing great design. It may start out great, but once it becomes a group effort (i.e., the brass gets to weigh in), it turns to mud.
I thought the Budweiser commercial with the fire-breathing sneezer was actually funny. In that case, though, it was the product that sucked :-)
OK, you're right
Sun, 02/03/2008 - 21:25 — JamesThe fire-breathing sneezer was sort of funny, but it was a "one-time-funny" type of commercial. I couldn't remember it 2 hours later, let alone for a few days, weeks, months or years.
Kinda
Mon, 02/04/2008 - 06:32 — mike (not verified)I wouldn't necessarily say they all sucked, but they definitely, as a group, were not up to some past years' standards. The one that sticks in my mind is the one near the end with that Will Ferrell making all sorts of questionable genitalia references about some beer. It was much worse than the supposedly "banned" GoDaddy beaver ad, which makes me wonder if that whole concept was just part of the GoDaddy publicity juggernaut (although you think Fox would say, "No, we didn't ban it" if that was the case).
Cost of airtime is not relevant
Mon, 02/04/2008 - 06:44 — JamesThe cost of airtime is of little consequence here because the cost of creating the commercial is the same regardless of how much it costs to actually air it.
What is in question is the thinking behind the commercials. These advertisers spend several hundred thousand dollars in some cases to produce these commercials. For that money, I think they got the short-end of the stick from their ad agencies. There was little "smart thinking" behind these spots. They almost seemed as though they were trying to be clever and just ran out of ideas, or stopped short of really making them memorable. Almost like they were rushed to get them out.
GoDaddy is the perfect example. They have/had a formula to work off of from past commercials with the sexy women. Instead of making something truly memorable based off of those, or going in a completely new direction, they tried to live off of past glory (so to speak) and just tossed in a good looking woman and some "iffy" narrative and called it a day. It just didn't seem thought out. The supposed "too hot to handle" version on GoDaddy's Web site was a complete let-down. And I think the entire thing was a publicity stunt. They knew it sucked on its own, so they played the "censored" card to try to hype it up.
I should have been more specific
Mon, 02/04/2008 - 20:28 — RhymingDesignerIt's difficult enough for many companies to commit to a really creative concept on a normal day. But when the stakes go up (i.e., cost of airtime), the hand-wringing and second-guessing increase exponentially. Fear on the part of the execs will stifle creativity on the part of their ad agency every time. On Sunday, the execs got scored on and lost the game. Think of it as "prevent defense" in the corporate world.
Coke/Carville commercial
Mon, 02/04/2008 - 09:14 — Phos....The only redeeming thing for me regarding the commercials is that a friend of mine was in the Coke commercial starring James Carville.
He's the street artist drawing Carville...he's on for about 2 seconds.
http://www.myspace.com/dominickphilip
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1916770/
Overall level was down
Mon, 02/04/2008 - 20:18 — David (not verified)I'm going to have to agree with the majority of people in that the overall group quality was subpar compared to previous years. I'm going to guess that the clients probably felt the Super Bowl pressure more than the ad agencies and over-managed the ideas.
But what else is new?
It's still her fault
Mon, 02/04/2008 - 23:09 — DJ Rizzo (not verified)I don't have the time, energy, or inclination to seriously study the claim I'm making here... but I think it's all still Janet Jackson's fault that the ads and the half-time show sucks. (I am a huge Tom Petty fan but let's face it - the performance wasn't anything "super").
The fact of the matter is (in my under-the-influence observations) that after Janet's booby popped out the innuendo and suggested raunchiness of ads (especially beer ads) started to disappear.
Another reason I think this year's ads were tamer is because last year's ads had problems with some segments of America. Women protested against that ad with the wife nagging her husband who also happens to be a NFL referee and gay groups protestrf the Snickers commercial that showed two men go through ridiculous hetero posturing after accidentally kissing over a Snickers bar. (BTW, I think the gay protesters were wrong and that the ad was actually pro-gay: I think it showed the stupidity of homophobes).
Take a moment and watch some European commercials and ask yourself if they'd ever be aired here... there's your answer: the Puritans still rule all!!!
Online casino
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