What if they gave a Super Bowl party and nobody came? That is what I am left to ponder after this year’s Big Game, its bigger than usual ad letdown and the biggest story of all, Jacko’s twin sister’s "costume malfunction."
There we were, with a post score for Cadillac set to break on Super Sunday, and Janet winds up with all the decent exposure. Talk about your basic … well, rip off. You go through all the creative development, you do all that great work, you go through all manner of marketing and publicity and self-promotion so your clients, your mom and your potential clients know you’re "opening" for Led Zeppelin and Cadillac on freakin’ Super Sunday, and BUSOOOOOOM—there’s Janet in all her glory.
So, yeah, voyeuristic thrills notwithstanding, I couldn’t help feeling just a little let down the morning after.
But how selfish of me, lamenting our disappointment. How must our clients feel? I mean, there’s Cadillac, with a number of truly smart spots introducing automobiles so cool—so beyond amazing—that driving them borders on a metaphysical, out-of-body experience … and they get eclipsed by a nipple ring. That just ain’t right.
And how about all those other advertisers who plunked down 2.3 million dollars for :30 of airtime? You have to feel for those folks—to have all of that upstaged by some boob (four actually: the literal one, Justin and Janet themselves and, of course, FCC chairman Michael Powell in all his prattling, neo-con idiocy). Yeah, you have to feel for this year’s advertisers. Especially in light of what Ric Anello suggested in SHOOT’s Feb. 6 issue ("Super Bowl Spots Generate Not-So-Super Feedback"): It was such a great game—for a change—that great opportunities were missed.
And so I ask again: What if they gave a Super Bowl party and nobody came? Think about it—a Super Bowl that is actually about football and deciding the NFL champion and not about all the periphery! Now there is a revolutionary notion.
It goes something like this. The pre-game is a half hour long, like on any normal Sunday. There’s a national anthem that’s sung by someone who knows the words and doesn’t go through some Cirque du Soleil vocal contortions at the "land of the free" part. There is no firework smoke for the players to have to slog through before or during the game. There’s a kick-off at a time more conducive to football and not missing The Simpsons than to prime time ratings. There are no five-minute commercial breaks to disrupt the flow of the game. There’s no interminable half-time sextravaganza featuring artists no one really cares about. And, most importantly, there are no 2.3 million dollar spot buys—just normal, everyday, Sunday-afternoon-at-the-NFL costs per point.
Naive, you say? Unrealistic perhaps? Maybe. Except for one thing. What if? Just what if? Imagine our satisfaction at telling the networks to take their annual extortion plots and shove them! Maybe then Super Bowl spot rates would only be twice what would normally be considered fair and reasonable and rational?
If nothing else, imagine having all that extra media money left over for production. Hell’s bells, you might even be able to get Pytka if your ideas are good enough! And once the ideas start improving, there’s no telling the heights to which Super Bowl ads can aspire. I mean, to actually have spots based on good ideas again—maybe something revolutionary like, oh, sending up George Orwell’s notions of 1984. I know, thanks to John Ashcroft, 2004 is like 1984 (the novel, not the year), but that’s not the point. What I’m trying to say is, instead of having to fall back on easy, me-too executions involving fart jokes and talking animals and Jackass-brand carnage, we get to fall back on ideas, and not suffer the fallout of Janet’s … well, you know, fallout.
Mmm … ideas. Now there’s an idea.
Given all that is at risk in creating and running a Super Bowl spot, perhaps it is simply time for the advertisers and their agencies to be the ones to dictate how much they’re going to invest to reach that precious 88-million-strong viewing audience. In the final analysis, CBS, FOX or whoever certainly won’t say no to organized resistance—they can’t say no—as long as all those doing the dictating stick together. Perhaps it’s time for the advertisers and their agencies to even dictate how the networks and their production teams comport themselves on Super Sunday. If nothing else, please, no more hip-hop—the notion of talentless thugs grabbing their crotches and "puttin’ it in me" is infinitely more offensive than Janet showing some cleavage.
If we do that, if we say no more to all of it, then my clients and your clients don’t have to risk a morning-after super hangover of doubt and controversy and embarrassment and—most importantly—really, really expensive and patently irresponsible media costs. Or worse.
What if they gave a Super Bowl party and nobody came? How about if we find out, starting next year!
