Sierra Mist's "Karate" spot where the coach asks his class what to do when a bunch of bad guys tries to steal your refreshing Sierra Mist? Unrefreshingly blah. Salesgenie.com's unsubtle, unfunny, and uncreative ad about the middle-aged executive who gets the flashy sports car, wins the hot girl, and becomes best buddies with his boss? More blah than late-night TV. Godaddy's commercial about busty women in their marketing department dancing around in tight tank tops in the office? Blah-er than Grossman's performance on Sunday night. Although I appreciate the effort, what was I supposed to take away from that ad? That Godaddy uses your $1.99 to hire women to party in the office? That one should always work in the marketing department? You would think that for a couple million dollars, Godaddy would be able to create an ad that elicits more than a few chuckles and a raised eyebrow.
With epic television events like the Super Bowl showdown inevitably comes epic commercials: Epic, as in, epic-length. Revlon's spot about Revlon Colorist's heroic struggle to win the affections of Sheryl Crow as she toured around the country with flawless hair must have run for over a minute, and there was something strangely disturbing about all those lovingly-shot close-ups of Sheryl Crow's stylist's hands fluffing the singer's hair. The rambling mock-documentary just about put me to sleep.
Still, as bad as those commercials were, it might be possible that they were so intentionally bad that they will manage to generate enough buzz about their products to be worthwhile. Though it is difficult to imagine the creators of the Salesgenie.com or Godaddy.com spots ever being able to conceive of any idea as convoluted as that.
On the other hand, a few hits did emerge from the field of misses. Budweiser, who showed a series of different spots throughout the Super Bowl, managed to generate most of the humor of the evening (except, of course, for Grossman's laughable second half.) A young couple driving on a lonely road in the middle of the night picks up an axe-toting hitchhiker for his case of Bud Light; a bunch of crabs turn a cooler of Bud into an object of worship (conveniently carrying the cooler past two very attractive women sunbathing in bikinis). Another spot had Carlos Mencia teaching immigrants how to ask for a Bud Light in different parts of America. A game of rock-paper-scissors for a Bud Light turned hilarious as one of the contestants actually threw a rock. The ads are all as silly and lighthearted as the world should appear after a couple Bud Lights.
Nationwide ran the much-hyped K-Fed commercial where he raps about how much money he has in an expensive looking video, and then he is brought back to reality where he is actually serving fries at a fast food restaurant. The ad works because most people derive some satisfaction from watching the cringe-inducing Kevin Federline being reduced to working at Mickey D's or its equivalent; who hasn't, in the happier days between Kevin and Britney, wished at least once or twice that someone would smack that obnoxious grin off of K-Fed's face? It doesn't entirely all pull together, though, because we know that K-Fed is in fact laughing all the way to the bank again, this time with his very own $500,000 Britney-independent paycheck (80 percent of Grossman's 2006 salary!) for the ad. And if Federline is in fact willing to make fun of himself in the ad, he becomes a less hate-worthy object than the ad needs him to be.
Though its humor doesn't quite reach the level of the Bud Light spots, Garmin Navigation's ad for its GPS device was possibly the most spot-on of the night. The ad neatly demonstrated how inconvenient maps can be, and how superior the Garmin GPS device was. The story of the ad saw a paper map turning into a giant evil Maposaurus while an ordinary driver, using the Garmin device, morphs into a Power Ranger-like fighter who eventually vanquishes the paper monster. Any advertiser that incorporates heavy metal and a Power Ranger-like dude is OK with me.
Overall, though, the Super Bowl ads were a mediocre disappointment. I mean, the Doritos ads-which were the winning entries of a laymen's competition and cost less than 15 bucks to make-were pretty much indistinguishable from the products of slick advertising firms. It's pretty clear that the marketing industry has a problem. The Super Bowl is supposed to be the advertisers' version of what prom is to a high school freshman; if they can't even rustle up a 30-second spot engrossing and convincing enough to get me to buy a bottle of Sierra Mist or a couple boxes of hair dye, then they might as well give their $2.6 million to Rex Grossman.
Rylan is a sophomore Resident Counselor in Davis dormitory. He is planning on majoring in economics.