While the game itself was a classic, not so the advertising that ran during it. That was the general consensus of agency artisans, primarily creative directors, surveyed by SHOOT as to the ad industry’s performance in this year’s Super Bowl.
Still, there were some Super Sunday commercials that drew praise, including this week’s SHOOT “Top Spot”: Coca-Cola’s “It’s Mine” directed by Nicolai Fuglsig of bicoastal/international MJZ for Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Ore. But for every lauded spot, there were seemingly dozens that were either panned or dubbed mediocre at best by our stalwart ad experts. Their feedback provides some interesting food for thought on the state of creativity for the Super Bowl advertising derby.
As it has over the years in this survey, SHOOT talked with creatives whose agencies did not have any spots on the Super Bowl so as to get an unvarnished, apolitical perspective on this year’s Big Game advertising. Here’s a sampling of what they had to say:
Jonathan Cude, executive creative director, McKinney, Durham, N.C.
It’s interesting the emphasis we put on this game. Why don’t we care as much as an industry about our work everyday, about all of our spots? Why aren’t we trying to engage and entertain people all the time? Why are we trying so much harder on the Super Bowl? I understand there are a lot of eyeballs, it’s a huge event and very competitive but isn’t the “Super” effort to engage audiences something we should be doing all the time?
Having said that, I think it was kind of a down year overall for Super Bowl advertising. The football players lived up to their end of the bargain. The marketers didn’t.
For me, for these kind of spots and this kind of audience, FedEx does a great job and they did this year as well [“Carrier Pigeons” from BBDO New York]. It was a simple idea, executed really well. It was fun and big and for me the top spot of the game.
For delivering a message, the Tide spot might have been the best with the talking stain [Saatchi & Saatchi New York].
After that, Budweiser always does a nice job [primarily DDB Chicago]…But there wasn’t a lot of new territory. E*Trade worked and was well executed [Grey, New York] but talking babies are hardly new. I enjoyed the Coke parade commercial [this week’s SHOOT “Top Spot” out of Wieden+Kennedy, Portland, Ore.], thought it was really well executed and a great feel-good message.
There’s a lot of emphasis about airing during the first and second quarters of the game. But Coke did quite well airing later on–since the game itself was so great and held the audience’s attention throughout.
This is kind of a general statement, meaning you have to be careful about it as a blanket observation. But it seems you can sort of measure the cultural Zeitgeist of the country as reflected in Super Bowl advertising. And this being an election year with angst over the economy, I felt the advertising reflected this with a decided lack of risk taking. There weren’t any classic spots–like the Budweiser Clydesdale kicking the extra point. Nothing this year even got close to being in that realm. It’s kind of like a pendulum. Maybe last year it swung too far with the guy humor. So this year it was more safety first. The Super Bowl represents an opportunity for us as an industry to really shine. I’m not quite sure we did that this time around.
Cameron Day, executive creative director, McGarrah/Jessee, Austin, Texas
I have a very short list of what work appealed to me.
The E*Trade commercial with a baby explaining how easy it was to do a trade was riveting and interesting to watch. It had me from the very first word. I love that it was done as a YouTube video and it captured that aesthetic very well. When he barfed, he seemed more surprised than any of us viewers. That was what was so fantastic about that little moment. Conversely, I thought the other E*Trade spot with the clown went nowhere. It wasn’t nearly as good as the first one. They would have been better off running that one twice.
I really liked the Coke ad with the dirigibles. It didn’t go for the gut laugh. It was cinematic and beautiful, the edit was great, the film looked great. What was really wonderful about it was you could have your eighty-year-old mother on one side and your four-year-old grandson on the other and they both would have gotten it, they both would have gotten a warm feeling from that spot. It harkened back to Coca-Cola advertising when they didn’t compete with anybody and acted like a global brand and a universal phenomenon, with Coke being a coveted thing. And the balloons represented icons from different generations–Underdog, Stewie and Charlie Brown, the definitive everyman who ends up with the bottle of Coca-Cola. It was an absolutely brilliant ad that I wish I had done.
P&G’s Tide stick product was a winner. It was wonderfully off center, great casting, great product identification, no explosions or hyper effects. It was a well told story that came around to the P&G product. P&G should get a lot of credit for hitting one that far out of the park.
I also liked the Charles Barkley and his fave five T-Mobile spot with Dwyane Wade [Publicis West, Seattle]…That’s the hardest product category in my mind to do something really good with. The spot was smart and funny and it had two athletes actually delivering lines well.
One that hit me like a ton of bricks was the anti-drug spot [White House Office of National Drug Control Policy via DraftFCB, New York]. Having a drug dealer talking about how business is down for him was a powerful message. What’s in my medicine cabinet could be as much responsible for a drug problem as this drug dealer villain. In the midst of everyone telling jokes on the Super Bowl, someone imparted a fact to me that was riveting. Great writing for a spot that seemed so real.
Lastly, I liked the Garmin spot with the European car driving about by with Napoleon eventually climbing out of it [Tierney Minneapolis]. Last year Garmin did the Godzilla movie takeoff [Fallon Minneapolis] which I really liked. This time a Euro aesthetic which strikes me as a smart subtext for a global positioning device.
But the bottom line is I liked only six spots out of sixty-three. A lot of clients could have saved their money. There are some very obvious targets to hit–GoDaddy with Danica Patrick. If I was going to pop online to see an attractive brunette undress, there are a thousand ways to do that without involving an advertiser. Salesgenie [bicoastal Creative Mint] was a bad storyboard come to life.
Under Armour [client-direct] had me scratching my head. Let’s do “1984” all over again but make it not about an idea. It was beautifully shot. I’d kill to work with that director [Ericson Core of Backyard, Venice, Calif.] but not with that creative director.
And why do advertisers insist on trotting out cavemen and lizards when The Martin Agency has already done a fabulous job of owning them. A gorgeous model dancing with gekkos. What’s the point?
And there were spots I wanted to like but couldn’t quite come around to liking, an example being Audi’s takeoff on The Godfather. With the final reveal of the new Audi, my reaction was what’s the connection here? I have a high regard for the work for Audi coming out of its agency [Venables Bell & Partners, San Francisco] but from a message standpoint I would have been better served seeing a romantic shot of that beautiful car.
And FedEx’s carrier pigeon spot had all the makings of a great Super Bowl spot and all they ended up with was a spot on the Super Bowl. It was a funny premise, with explosions and big production. But it felt to me like a Michael Bay movie–no soul, no insights but wow, what effects.
The thing that continues to astound me is the frat boy genre of beer advertising. Will Ferrell doesn’t make it for me, I’m sorry. As a genre you can almost dismiss the whole category. You’ve got to go all the way to Bud Light radio advertising before it gets interesting for me. One day someone is going to do something really smart with beer advertising. There’s been a real lack of courage to do something different with the beer category. At least Miller with “Man Laws” tried to do something with some intelligence. I heard awhile ago a term used to describe this style of lowest common denominator advertising–“gag and tag”–and that’s a good description of ninety-five percent of what you see in this product category.
Michelle Edelman, chief marketing officer/strategic planning, NYCA, Encinitas, Calif. This is one year people will talk more about the game than the commercials. But one thing’s for sure–the Super Bowl is no longer just a bank of TV spots anymore. There are URLs flashing during the game and in various spots. I thought the AMP energy drink sponsorship [BBDO New York] with the guys cycling and creating enough energy to power the pre-game activities was an interesting way to link with the pre-game audience.
But overall if we’re in “Wave 3.0”–“Wave 1.0” being traditional advertising, “Wave 2.0 being Web. 1.0 and Web 3.0 being consumer engagement, the Super Bowl had a lot of failing grades in terms of integration efforts. At least there was some attempt at 3.0. and we got away from last year where there was a lot of consumer-generated advertising.
I broke the advertising down into different categories—plain old great advertising, good Super Bowl advertising and a fair amount of work that was neither.
What stood out for me as just plain old great advertising was the Tide-To-Go spot. There was clearly a strong insight there which we can all relate to. You have a stain on a shirt and it says something about you–in fact, it speaks louder than you. It says you’re not together. This was an ad that could air any day of the week, not just in the Super Bowl. And the spot extended the experience online. The URL was left on screen long enough for you to remember it. That seems like a minor point but it isn’t. The Ford F150 commercial [JWT Detroit] had the URL buried somewhere. It was tough to find the URL even when you sought it out.
I’d place FedEx in the camp of good Super Bowl advertising where the client’s strategy is to thank customers by doing something entertaining. The FedEx commercial was just a lot of fun, well produced and an engaging storyline.
The flip side for me was the Budweiser Clydesdale spot which I found disappointing this year [DDB Chicago]. It was warm and fuzzy like every year but this year the high five with the dalmatian just didn’t make it for me.
I liked the message of Careerbuilder [Wieden+Kennedy, Portland] where you dream about your future and part of what you dream about is your career. You deserve to pursue your dreams, which is a positive message as compared to the past Careerbuilder ads where you are stuck working with monkeys. I think that was a good, interesting shift for Careerbuilder.com.
Under the “gratuitous” category would be [Sobe] Life Water [The Arnell Group, New York] with the model and the lizards dancing to “Thriller.” What was that about?
Under the “damaging” category would be Vitamin Water [Berlin Cameron United, New York]. I could tell you more about that brand before I saw that spot. I had thought about the product as having healthful qualities. But Shaq on a race horse is an image I was trying to reconcile for the first 20 seconds of that commercial. What are you trying to tell me about Vitamin Water?
And the Salesgenie ad, with the Panda speaking in a Chinese accent, struck me as racist. It wasn’t even entertaining.
gain, as a consumer, after watching all the ads during the game, the one that stuck with me, that I had the most positive recall about, was Tide To Go.
Damian Fraticelli, group creative director, Ignited, El Segundo, Calif.
My favorite thing wasn’t even a spot. It was when the Terminator took out the Fox robot [to promote the Fox series, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles] It happened right after a friend sitting next to me said, “I hate that Fox robot.”
My favorite commercial overall was the Coke parade spot. It had that big Super Bowl feeling that Coke is known for but it didn’t feel contrived or over the top. It was really nice. The other Coke spot with Bill Frist and James Carville was more contrived. I sort of rolled my eyes when I saw it, you knew where it was going. But the parade spot was beautifully done–with Underdog and Stewie and Charlie Brown.
The Tide spot also worked well–and it worked hard for the client.
Salesgenie freaked a lot of people out. It seemed kind of racist. I saw in an article that the owner defended it on the grounds he was trying to make the worst commercial on the Super Bowl. I guess he succeeded.
The Life Water ad was puzzling. I never heard of Life Water and you can see that they tried to do a big spot–a combination of Naomi Campbell, the “Thriller” song, lizards and a production number. But it felt really dated–something old like “Thriller” to introduce something new. For launching a brand, it felt kind of weird.
I felt pretty lukewarm about all the Budweiser stuff. I just remember the opening motion graphics with the phrase “superior drinkability.” I don’t even know what that means. Sounds like a slogan that sprung out from a focus test. And it was a set-up for obscure things the beer doesn’t have. That “drinkability” slogan is as obtuse as the beer being able to make you fly.
There were also a lot of Indian gaming casino ads [in California relative to propositions on the state ballot]. The back and forth on those ads was insane. Overall I couldn’t say this year’s commercials were much better than past years. Maybe because the game was so good and compelling it made the commercials seem even less impressive by comparison.
Woody Kay, chief creative officer, Arnold Worldwide, Washington, D.C. I’m not a huge football fan but the ads turned me into one. The game was great. But I was disappointed overall in the commercials.
Still, there were some standouts. Coca-Cola hit a home run with the balloon spot. It was beautifully shot, scored and produced. The spot was uplifting in every sense of the word, literally and figuratively. I loved the big idea, I loved the attention to details like the girl holding the football in the park just like Lucy [of Peanuts cartoon strip fame] which set up the ending with the Charlie Brown balloon finally getting the prize, in this case the bottle of Coke.
What Coke is doing is fantastic. With “The Coke side of life” campaign, they’re getting back to the great spots they used to do. The other Coke spot, “Jinx,” with Carville and Frist wasn’t as big as the parade spot but it resonated particularly with me since we’re in D.C.
Tide did a great product-demo spot. I also liked Doritos as a bizarre product demo with the huge rat bursting out as a result of the Doritos Cheese chip in the mousetrap [produced by the directorial duo Gentlemen for the Doritos spot entry contest overseen by Goodby Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco; Gentlemen–the team of Brett Snider and Bill Federighi–has since joined Uber Content, Los Angeles]. Diet Pepsi Max [BBDO New York] also was a good product demo, a big production, real fun, with people nodding off only to be revived by Pepsi Max.
Coke was as good as many of the best ads of years past. The Bud Light stuff was like light beer–watered down yet strangely satisfying. I thought “Wine and Cheese” was an interesting spot, nicely produced, good details. The Budweiser Clydesdale spot was nice and interesting it that it had the Rocky nod. It’s a feel-good spot that’s not as good as the best in the series, but not as bad as the worst.
Yet while there was quality, the quantity of quality ads on this year’s Super Bowl was disappointing. GoDaddy, E*Trade and Careerbuilder missed the mark. Net conferencing the demonic toddler for E*Trade just didn’t work, particularly with kids and the Internet and the fear of online predators. I don’t know what they were thinking. Careerbuilder with disembodied organs and hungry spiders made me feel like we are heading into a recession.
GoDaddy is an easy target. At first I thought, what does this have to do with web hosting? But I felt I should check out the site–not because it was a female race car driver but because I wanted to see what it offered. Then I got there and felt like I should be looking over my shoulder. It felt like a porn site and I erased it from my browser history.
I was expecting a lot from the Under Armour commercial. I love their products..But the work showed why Nike and adidas spend so much on their ad agencies.
Audi’s Godfather spot was well cast but ultimately didn’t connect for me in terms of what they were trying to sell.
Kevin Lynch, partner/creative director, zig, Chicago It’s always surprising to see how wide the gamut is in terms of quality. From the big production numbers on down to the “I don’t care what people think of me, I just want them to go to my website–like Salesgenie and GoDaddy.com. They may get tons of hits but what people think of their brands is another question.
I thought Tide was pretty terrific. The job interview was so centered around a truth. You could have said that 20 years ago and it would still work–a good ad revolves around the truth. And you didn’t need a Super Bowl production budget to make it work. To see that truth play so well in the midst of spots that deal so much in hyperbole and exaggeration was refreshing.
Overall I thought, though, that a lot of stuff was pretty appropriate for the brands being advertised. There weren’t many home runs hit but there were a number of doubles.
