Last Night's Super Bowl 'Debacle' A Bit Rosier in the Morning

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Oh how the morning after brings clarity to the prior evening's dalliances. After having obsessively consumed over 40 ads, analyzing them and then writing about them all within a three to four hour period, we sat down this morning with a cup of coffee and did what ad people to the morning after: we watched the game again. Or, to clarify, we fast forwarded through the game and watched the commercials

We laughed. We smiled. We grinned. We even enjoyed that Will Ferrell commercial. And, we bathed in the beauty of Coke's beautiful balloon ballet. In the heat of the battle, people can be harsh and in some cases, we were. But from the perspective of the average viewer not hunched over a computer or in front of a conference room screen, most of the ads weren't so bad.

When it comes to the Super Bowl, we raise the bar of expectation quite high. Sometimes unreasonably high. Even the Sobe dancing lizards - complete with Naomi's not so great dancing and the farting lizards - wasn't the debacle some in the industry thought it was. In fact, akin to our less-than-critical morning after viewing, the spot landed itself a top ten slot in USAToday's Ad Meter, not that we're placing any great scientific validity to that particular metric. Then again, the popularity of a commercial is not directly linked to what it's really supposed to do: sell stuff.

So as we all bitch and moan this week about "the worst ad bowl in a long time," remember, we are not the audience. The customers of our clients are. It doesn't matter what we say. In fact, it doesn't even matter what they say. It matters what they do with their wallets and that not-so-small data point won't be tabulated for quite some time.

by Steve Hall    Feb- 4-08   Click to Comment   
Topic: Opinion, Super Bowl 2008   

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Comments



Comments

Best part of the whole night—no ED spots from Viagra/Cialis, etc.

Posted by: bg on February 4, 2008 1:54 PM

I don't work in the industry. I'm just a regular joe. I watched the game with five other regular joes. We ALL thought the ads were abysmal this year. There were no more than two or three chuckles the entire night.

Posted by: The Audience on February 4, 2008 2:02 PM

Thanks, Steve. I slept while you worked.
Your comments as well as Angela's are insightful. Garfield ain't got nothin' over you guys.

Tom Egly
TGD Communications
www.tgdcom.com

Posted by: Tom Egly on February 4, 2008 3:45 PM

Like many of us here, I'm in "the business" - and I have to side with the self-proclaimed "regular joe". This year's ads weren't just unremarkable, they ranged from dull to just flat out bad.

The singular exception was Coca-Cola. Their ads were lively, well executed, and right on the money for the brand. That's saying something in a year where consumers are asked to believe that a major selling point of a Toyota Corolla is that the car is so well insulated for sound that you'll never hear a man being ripped apart by wild badgers.

I keep reading about the drought of creative talent in Adland. Perhaps the problem is that the bad talent has jobs and the good talent is out looking.

Man, I miss Robert Goulet's nuts already.

Posted by: Scott on February 4, 2008 5:03 PM