Last night, I was part of this week’s Beancast with Bob Knorpp. Along with Adland’s Ask Wappling, Make the Logo Bigger’s Bill Green and AdScam’s George Parker we skewered this year’s Super Bowl commercials, Crapped on Google’s Buzz and laughed at Edelman’s study which claimed, in a nutshell, no one trusts their friends’ recommendations any more.
In terms of the best Super Bowl commercial, we agreed Google was it. It was one of the few commercial that actually explained how the product worked and what it’s benefit could be to people. The commercial wasn’t perfect. There was debate on it’s effectiveness in terms of the attention level it required to understand it and how that might be difficult during a drunken Super Bowl party. But George Parker made the point that, well, that’s the point. The game and the commercial scream at you for three hours. The Google ad was a welcome and calming interlude between all the screaming. In that respect, it may have commanded a bit more attention that, say, Betty White getting thrown to the ground.
The worst? Bill Green couldn’t trash Skechers enough. The once semi-cool brand has devolved into…a PowerPoint presentation? But picking this year’s worst Super Bowl commercial was like deciding which Swedish Bikini Team member was the hottest. Not easy. They all kinda sucked.
In the midst of the conversation, we all wished Old Spice’s I’m on a Horse commercial had run during the game. It brilliantly skewered the whole metrosexual thing but in a a way that was humorous. Sadly, it did not appear.
It was a pleasure to hang with Ask, Bill, George and Bob. It’s always fun to trash bad work but it’s even better to learn from it and I hope our conversation can help marketers in the future. So please, please, please. Take a good, hard, long look at the work you produced this year. Then throw it in the trash barrel and look ahead to 2011. All of us eagerly await your redemption.
