Super Bowl Disinfectant XVI
Posted by Bryan
USA Today offers its polling for the Super Bowl commercials.
My Top 5ive (awww, remember the days of Top 5ive? Me, either.)
- Ameriquest - Romantic Dinner: To those who know my inclination toward the feline family, this dark and humorous ad should be no surprise as my top choice.
- Fed Ex - Burt & the dancing, groin-kicking bear. As Journey sings, "don't stop believin'."
- Anheuser Busch - Soldiers ovation: I've wanted to do this, because every soldier deserves it.
- Career Builder - I Work with Monkeys: Countless Americans watched these and said, "that's MY office!"
- Napster - Do the Math: Because I saw the math and felt like an idiot for thinking the 99 cent rate was good (though I'll not download 10,000 songs in my life, nor could I justify a $15 per month fee).
And the Bottom 5ive:
- Go Daddy - Congressional Hearing: Okay, it's not that hard to figure out. Just because you disaprove of this ad doesn't make you a prude. The fact that I have my six-year old son sitting next to me and I have to cover his eyes because a commercial shows a woman flaunting her breasts and dancing like a stripper justifies its low rating. Didn't Fox get the message that the Super Bowl was still considered a family entertainment program?
- Degree Deodorant - Mama's Boy: Funny concept, poor delivery. The "action figure" premise was a complete non-sequiter to the pit sauce ad. I didn't make the connection. Because there was no connection.
- Quiznos - Baby Bob: The baby's not cute. The morphed-on mouth is poorly done and causes the tyke to look disfigured. Most egregious is the swimsuit-clad gal chatting poolside gives of a creepy undertone of pedophilia. Enjoy your sandwich, perverts.
- Olympus - Photogroove: Is there really a market demand for this product, much less one that demands two ads featuring unnaturally-getting-jiggy-wit-it people? Who fooled this camera company into believing that a digital camera-slash-mp3 player was the new Reese's Cup of personal technology?
- Emerald Nuts - Santa, Tooth Fairy, etc: Unless, of course, the purpose of the Ad is to drive away potential customers, in which case they hit a home run!
And a few other random ad notes & observations:
- Enough with the cialis ads -- in an age where virtually every other prescription advertised is so vague that you barely know its a drug, why do the medicines of this sort need to be so explicit? Any time you hear a reference to "....lasting longer than four hours, go see your doctor immediately!" you've got to assume that is counter-productive to the ad's intent.
- In the battle of the movie promotions, War of the Worlds appears to be ready to do serious box office, while The Pacifier causes only a non-plussed reaction that Vin Diesel has at least got his own Kindergarten Cop in can and now may move back to the movies where he expresses rage against his over-agressive barber.
- I felt sorry for MC Hammer in the Frito Lay commercial. He may only be a joke, a mere caricature of himself today, but there was indeed a day when he was 2 Legit 2 Quit (hey haaaaay).
- Cadillac's ad where the dad doesn't care if the daughter runs off and elopes - just not in his car - not funny. Again, much props if the auto manufacturer was marketing to the jerk, materialistic, misogynistic demographic out there...otherwise, I think the ad bombed.
- NFL Commercials: Don Cheadle, once again, very good. Renee Russo, are you kidding me? She's worse than Ben Bratt. Any ad re-living John Elway's Super Bowl conquests is good, whereas any ad revisiting his humiliations is to be scorned and hated. The most hopeful ad of the broadcast was by the NFL Network's "Tomorrow," where the axiom "Tomorrow, every team is undefeated" somehow comforted me.
February 8, 2005 3:44 PM