We turn the page, you add an insert. We ban billboards from our state, you fly banners over our beaches. We hang up on your telemarketing, you call back with answer machine message leaving auto-bots. We install an email spam filter, you send spam to weblog comments and trackbacks. We stop reading comment-spammed blogs, you launch spam blogs whose sole purpose is to peddle your crap. We block your pop ups, you fuck with technology to serve them anyway. We stop watching TV to spend more time with online gaming, you plaster our games with advertising. We skip our ads with our DVR, you plaster commercial graphics all over the screen during programming. We become immune to advertising, you launch a hoard of buzz marketers on our ass.
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For the 18th time since The American Association of Franchisees & Dealers began surveying the ratio of Super Bowl ads purchased by franchised and non-franchised enterprises, the franchisers continue to dominate - this year by a record margin of 82 to 38. According to AAFD Chairman Robert Purvin, who launched the organization's Advertising Super Bowl survey 19 years ago, "Super Bowl advertising continues to demonstrate the power of franchising. How else can small business owners afford to share their messages with 72 million households at one time?
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Retiring its 20 year old "It's everywhere you want to be," Visa will introduce a new TBWA/Chiat/Day LA-created tagline, "Life Takes Visa," during the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Interestingly, the tagline was created a few years ago by Visa's previous agency BBDO New York and was in some Latin America ads created by Leo Burnett.
Unlike Intel's new but meaningless "Leap Ahead" tagline, Visa's tagline nicely connotes you can get just about everything you need in life with a Visa card. That is, everything that costs money. A piece of plastic isn't going to help solve your marital woes but hey, we can only ask so much from a piece of plastic.
Once again, the American Family Association has whipped out its big one and forced NBC to submit to its masochistic control over what Americans are able to watch on TV. Maybe that's a bit harsh and its previous victory getting NBC to cancel its controversial Book of Daniel had far more to do with lack or advertisers and ratings than any protesting the group did, but the American Family Association is now, apparently, quite pleased the term "Cruci-fixin's" won't be used in an upcoming episode of Will&Grace which will guest star Britney Spears.
Pleased as the group may be, NBC is now saying they never intended the word to be included in the episode and that previous mentions of the phrase in press releases were erroneous. Oh, what people will do for publicity.
While we watched the Super Bowl, we marveled at the promotions for ABC's Lost, particularly, as Adrants reader Terry Heaton so thankfully reminded us this morning, the "Addicted to Lost" version set to the tune of eighties icon Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love" which showed Palmer and his eighties girls on the TV where Jack and Locke watched that creepy video at the end of last season. Perhaps, it's because we already watch Lost, we liked the promos so much or, perhaps, it's because they were just really good.
So the Super Bowl is over. Was it worth the $2.6 million each marketer spent on a :30? We won't know for months but who cares. It's all entertainment anyway. You can read Bob Garfield's take on the whole thing here and marvel at his shock that the Super Bowl (oh, the horror) is commercial and that rock and roll is (oh, the horror) about making money. You can watched some of the ads Ad Age found more memorable here. You can watch all the ads at iFilm here. Or you can just go get a cup of coffee and see what your co-workers think.
We're not quite sure what our favorite is yet but for some strange reason we're leaning towards the Burger King Whopperettes commercial. Either that or the wonderfully on-message ESPN Mobile ad. The Hummer H3 ad, of course, was very good but we've seen it too many times already. A nod also goes to Ameriquest for their two very funny spots and the Beer Institute did a good job telling us we should all just go have a beer and the world's problems would be solved. Oh, wait, we said that.
Also high on our list are the Budweiser Clydesdales spot and Bud Light's "Magic Fridge."
While we might have thought the Toyota Tocoma Super Bowl ad that parked the vehicle during low tide, showed it getting thrashed about then driven off as if nothing had happened to it was a bit of truth stretching. Well, after watching this video about another Toyota truck that received far worse treatment that just a little sea water, we are humbled. Seriously humbled. Nothing this guy did to his truck would stop it from working. Nothing. Toyota should have paid $25 million to run this 10-15 minute video as their Super Bowl ad rather than do a :30 copy of it.
Everyone's all excited about the Hummer H3 Jennifer Loves the Monster spot but we saw it too and were like, "Dudes, that's so over." The commercial's been making the rounds since last summer. OK, so last summer, there wasn't a Super Bowl but still. There is something new though. The Monster has a cheesy website where she professes her love for the robot. Way to extend a campaign Modernista!
The Beer Institute ran a Super Bowl ad that showed people around the world saying "cheers" or some such equal salute in different languages and locations around the world. It's an interesting strategy and one that harken s Warren Beatty's statement in in the movie, Bulworth, when he said, "If we all fucked each other, we'd eventually end up the same color," in that if everyone in the world just got together and had a few beers with each other there'd be none of the ridiculous political problems we face today. See the ad on the Beer Institute's site.
OK, the Emerald Nuts Super Bowl ad was just stupid. There's not much more to say about it. Unless, of course, you have a thing for druids and Asians with machetes. If you simply have to see it, you can see it here.
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