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Super Bowl 59 Grins and Groans

Nader Ashway3 Comments

Super Bowl 59 is in the books, and congratulations to the Philadelphia Eagles on an outstanding performance. If you were in the mood for a dominating defensive performance, you had a very good evening. If you were in the mood for great advertising, well…you certainly got a LOT of ads, but not sure if they were all great. Some high points, some low points, and some decidedly weird points. Let’s break it down.

Themes
Like last year, a lot of advertisers turned to the meta approach for their spots. This is when the ad is about making the ad. Dunkin, Homes.com and UberEats all took this approach, and it can be really funny (like the way Homes.com doubled down on the “it’s the best” meme with Morgan Freeman,) or it can get a little obtuse, like the Dunkin’ ad with actor Jeremy Strong trying to get into character by immersing himself in a barrel of coffee beans. (Right?)

Facial hair was another theme in this year’s ads. (There’s a sentence I never thought I’d write.) Both Pringles and Little Caesars decided that their best angle would be to have men’s facial hair – eyebrows and mustaches – fly off for some odd reason. Some of the gags were humorous (the caterpillars chanting “we’re not worthy” to Eugene Levy’s eyebrows made me chuckle,) and I think Pringles did it with a bit more context. After all, there’s a giant mustache on every package.

A surprising few amount of spots this year from car manufacturers. Polestar showed up in the pregame show, but not as an official Super Bowl commercial. Only Jeep and Ram appeared this year, which is odd, given the history of this game and some of the iconic spots that have run. If you’re counting, we had more spots with Matthew McConaughey than with cars.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:
A few ads played it safe, and still managed to deliver decent brand messages. Orlando Bloom and Drew Barrymore did a cute tete-a-tete on European vs American holiday/vacation expressions, and it painted MSC Cruises in a similarly cute light. Homes.com played at the idea of saying they’re “the best” while their legal counsel advised them that they can’t legally say that. Uber Eats continued their “the NFL is trying to sell you food” conspiracy theory with origin stories, and it gets especially funny when Martha Stewart laughs hysterically that the Super Bowl venue is “named after a salad!”

The last couple of years, Jesus has made an appearance at the Super Bowl, but this year’s was a bit more special because he brought along a better soundtrack. Note to aspiring creative directors: having Johnny Cash sing Depeche Mode in your spot is ALWAYS a good idea. Hat tip to Jesus’ creative team. Hailee Steinfeld and Wanda Sykes teamed up for a smart PSA that made me look, er, notice, er, appreciate their, I mean ITS, value. It’s for Novartis, and it’s aimed at getting more women screened for breast cancer. And Dove scores another hit with a female empowerment spot that was punctuated by the line “let’s change the way we talk to our girls.” Nice.

While we’re mentioning some ads, we have to talk about Seal playing a, well, seal in the Mountain Dew spot. If facial hair flying off faces, and tongues flying out of mouths (more on that in a moment,) wasn’t weird enough, a seal with the face of Seal, singing a jingle to the tune of “Kiss From a Rose” was basically a 12 on the weird-o-meter. Fun? Sure. But about 50 million Americans probably had a terrifying dream about that one last night.

GRINS
First off, golf claps to Weather Tech for finally listening to their agency and doing a concept spot instead of their usual “here’s a view of our factory where we prove they’re made in America” pandering. The grannies-go-wild approach offered lots of good laughs, and then quietly made a nice plug for their spill-proof floor mats. Much more memorable than the last few years.

Google Pixel 9 really tugged at the heartstrings with their dad-and-daughter vignette disguised as a “guy turns to Gemini AI for help preparing for his job interview.” The reason this worked so well is that it contextualized the product benefits while letting us in on the backstory. Really well-conceived, and really well-produced. You almost never want to go soft-sell on Super Bowl, but Google almost always has, and almost always wins.

Liquid Death literally made me LOL with its “drinking on the job” spot. Pilots, surgeons, school bus drivers, even the cops are pounding Liquid Death, and to an awesome theme song. The company has disguised their filtered water to look like small-batch beer cans, and this is exactly why: so they can misdirect and manipulate you right into the big reveal. Good stuff. Spots end with bold type: “Don’t be scared. It’s just water.”

It just isn’t Super Bowl without a Budweiser Clydesdale spot, and this one, “a horse walks into a bar,” is by far one of their best ever. It’s great storytelling, with virtually no dialogue. Our hero is faced with a choice, has to overcome difficult challenges along the way, and somehow, some way, prevails. For decades, Budweiser hasn’t even tried to sell beer with their Super Bowl commercials…they sell this version of Americana on which we can (almost) all agree.

Hellmann’s went retro with their “When Harry Met Sally” sendup. It features Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan back in Katz’s Deli, and wouldn’t you know it? Meg has another orgasmic experience (this time it’s REAL!) thanks to a shmear of Hellmann’s mayonnaise. Targeted at Gen X? You bet. Wrapped in a bow for Gen Z? Sure, and that’s why you have Sydney Sweeney deliver the punchline. So much better than their last several years of Super Bowl spots, which were big groans for me. Oh, and Hellmann’s signs off with the apt line “It hits the spot.”

Doritos proves that when you crowdsource your advertising (through their thankfully resurrected “Crash the Super Bowl” campaign,) really good things can happen. Here, an alien ship comes to Earth and tries to take a guy’s Doritos away. He fights them off – sort of – and then, by chance, the Doritos destroy the alien ship! The alien survives, and he/she/it (?) and the guy enjoy the chips together. What’s great about Doritos is that they ALWAYS put the brand front and center, and the motivation is consistent: get your hands on some Doritos.

I think my favorite of the night (and this is a bit of a critic’s pick, I’ll admit) was the ChatGPT “dots” ad. Again, no voiceover, just graphics, and magnificent ones at that. All of it based off ChatGPT’s “dot” prompt. So it’s a little “hello world,” and a little “IYKYK.” Anyone who has used ChatGPT will recognize the dot. During the spot, the dots sync up to go and create all kinds of interesting images, symbolizing progress through time, from fire to the wheel to the steam ship, to walking on the moon, to dial up modems to now. And then it delivers the line “all progress has a starting point.” I like this most of all. It says “AI is not the be-all and end-all. We’re just getting going, and let’s see where we might go from here.” A bit of a departure for Super Bowl advertising, but a simple and clear way to illustrate the power and potential of this particular AI engine.

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GROANS

RED BULL: When I saw this spot come on, I immediately recognized the illustration style, and the classic setup. Boy penguin says to his father “I figured out how to fly!” Dad, suspicious, says “oh…really? And how exactly are we going to do that?” The boy responds that all they have to do is drink Red Bull, and they’ll be able to fly because, after all, Red Bull gives you wiiiiings. Up to this moment, this is a typical Red Bull spot. But then, the boy can’t fly, because the Red Bull he attempts to drink is frozen. (They’re penguins and it’s 40 below zero, according to Dad.) So…the product doesn’t work. The benefit is never realized. And we’re all disappointed. They try to make us think they’re in on the joke, because the voiceover says Red Bull gives you wings, “but only if you drink it.” No. No. No. Don’t do that.

SQUARESPACE: Look, I get that it’s hard to sell tech enablement as a Super Bowl spot. Squarespace is a platform that helps do-it-yourself-ers build and maintain their own websites. Last year, they tried aliens…with Martin Scorsese directing and starring in the spot. The year before that, it was an obtuse take on “the singularity” with Adam Driver. In 2022, they actually made a really GOOD spot with Zendaya, who portrayed Sally, who sold (you guessed it,) seashells by the seashore. That spot followed a simple narrative. Sally was not doing well. Then, she built a website with Squarespace, and things really took off! That’s generally how we like to portray our brands in our advertising: as aids in the hero’s cause.

This year, however, we have actor Barry Keoghan (the guy who went full frontal in Saltburn,) riding a mule through the Irish countryside, whipping laptops at people like a sedated and psychotic newspaper delivery boy. But they’re laptops! And they’re dangerous! And one smashes through the window of a pub. (Also, and even stranger, hardly anyone reacts to any of these near-death assaults.) And how, exactly, does this connect me to any understanding of their basic offering? Most Americans could hardly make out the brogue, let alone the value proposition.  

COFFEE MATE: So, let’s give props to Coffee Mate for shelling out the almost $8 million dollars and producing their first-ever Super Bowl ad! (Applause.) Aaaaand…let’s give it up for Shania Twain writing and producing a new song specifically for the commercial. Yay.

However, that song starts with the lyric “let’s go tongues.” And the young man in the ad, who has just had a taste of cold foam after adding it to his cold brew coffee (I guess?) goes into a trance, where his tongue (yes, you heard me right,) does various dances, makes heart shapes, plays the chimes, high-tongues (I just wrote that) the Coffee Mate logo, and then – are you sitting down? Jumps out of his mouth. And spins around in the air while fireworks go off, and then plunges back into the young man’s mouth as he awakes from this fantasy. Just as a reminder, we’re talking about his TONGUE!

Then the young man and his pal start chugging (question mark) the Coffee Mate foam together, as we cut to the closing shot of the line “a little foam a lotta fun” spelled out in, you guessed it, foam! I could have lived a very full life without having seen that. And hopefully, I never will again.

So…what were your favorites? Let me know in the comments.

The Law of Environment

Nader Ashway1 Comment

If you watched Super Bowl advertising this year, you saw a lot of big-budget, celebrity-filled laugh-fests during the broadcast. From Peter Dinklage and Morgan Freeman in a hip-hop lip sync battle for Doritos and Mountain Dew to Eli Manning and Odell Beckham Jr. hilariously re-imagining “Dirty Dancing” as a touchdown celebration, there were some big hits during the ad breaks.

And you also saw some fumbles and outright clunkers. (Not to name names, but we’re talking to you Ram Trucks.)

Take a look at this Budweiser “Stand By You” commercial.

On the surface, this was an excellent commercial. There’s a strong narrative flow, very good performances, and a cinematic feel to how it’s filmed.

But this commercial was mis-run during the Super Bowl, precisely because it failed to maximize The Law of Environment, which I state here as:

Consumers are either open or closed – indeed available or not available – to your advertising message depending largely on the environment in which they find themselves when that message is presented.

Environment, as it’s used here, includes four important ingredients, which you can remember as the T-A-M-E scale:

Timing: What time of day or night is it? How long does the message last?  Does the viewer/reader have ample time to process the message in detail, or just in broad strokes, and general images?

Atmosphere: Is the viewer alone or with company? Is it loud or quiet? Is it indoors or outdoors? Up close or far away? If there is one, what size is the screen? What else is happening while the advertising appears?

Medium: Is the message itself in motion? Is it on a screen, on a surface, or delivered via audio? Does it use words, or just images? Can you hear sound? Is it interactive?

Emotion: How much emotion – and which one(s) – is included/embedded in the message?

If we review the Budweiser commercial against these qualifiers, we see that it demands the viewer to spend some attentive, even quiet, time with the spot to take it all in. The viewer can perceive the seriousness, and the smoldering heroics of the lead character. It’s perfect for a full-size screen to get a sense of scale and distance, and there is a swell of emotion, in the “going outside of oneself” or “doing good by doing for others” sense of service.

And while that’s all very positive, you can see how it’s a mismatch for the Super Bowl environment, based on the atmosphere.

To generalize, the “average” Super Bowl environment finds the consumer in a living room with a group of friends or family, with conversations going on, and it’s largely a social event with a lively atmosphere. When this ad comes on, it may immediately be perceived as “too serious” or “too quiet” or even too much of an intellectual investment. So it fails to connect. And that’s a shame, because it happens to be very good advertising.

Understanding your consumer is of course critical to advertising success. But when you go beyond demographics and psychographics to an understanding of these critical advertising receptivity parameters, you can “TAME” the environment to maximize your message’s efficiency, no matter where or when it runs.

Super Bowl LI Grins and Groans

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Well, this year’s Super Bowl was more super on the field than it was on the airwaves.  History was made on the field: the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history; the first ever to go into overtime, and crowning a 5-time Super Bowl winner (and 4-time MVP) in Tom Brady.  My heart goes out to Falcons nation…that had to be a rough second half to endure.

Speaking of rough to endure, this year’s advertising was not the entertainment bonanza many hoped it might be.  There was a notable lack of verve, and since advertising is often reflective of the voice of American culture, it’s likely that this year’s ad-blah-ness is reflective of the current unease in the nation and the recent geopolitical dance card of current events.  Immigration issues and matters of race and religious and gender tolerance hang over our daily headlines – it’s no surprise these same themes found their way into our ad-vertainment.  Telling.  But kind of a bummer if you’re an ad junkie.

Thankfully, there were some moments that were enjoyable.  Here, my Super Bowl 51 Grins and Groans:

Honorable Mentions

Hyundai – created a commercial in real-time during the beginning of the game with service men and women stationed overseas, and then edited it and aired it before the trophy presentation.  Led by noted film director Peter Berg.  Poignant and kind and an interesting approach.

Febreze – took a frank and funny look at Super Bowl parties (when everyone runs to the bathroom at halftime,) and made a simple point about the truth: “sometimes halftime stinks.” Simple, smart, and most definitely on strategy.

Snickers – made headlines mostly because the spot was carried live, a first in Super Bowl history.  The spot featured actor Adam Driver “messing up” the commercial because he was hungry.  A strong execution – there were prop gags and some good performances, but I don’t think this was the blockbuster they hoped it would be. (A colleague pointed out that most people probably did not KNOW it was live.)

GRINS

Bai Antioxidant Infusion Drinks

This was one of the brands that absolutely stole the show last year with the insanely funny “horse whisperer” ad.  They’re back this year, with less laughs, but enough smarts to put Christopher Walken in their commercial (who killed last year for Kia, by the way.)  In it, he stages a dramatic reading of the N’Sync hit “Bye, Bye, Bye,” which, of course, is a homophone for “Bai, Bai, Bai.”  Camera pulls out wide to reveal Justin Timberlake in a red velvet jacket.  You can almost see the outtakes where they bust out laughing.  Just silly, and light, and funny.  And by the way, if you’re scoring at home, they got the product name in the spot approximately nine times.  (Spoken and sung.)

Budweiser

This spot got a lot of buzz before the game because of its uncanny timeliness with the recent executive order on immigration whose news gripped (and divided) the nation.  However, it’s likely that the spot was in the can for months, and that this was simply a happy timing accident.  However, the commercial is strong:  cinematic, inspirational, and a simple declaration of the humble beginnings of what is now arguably the MOST American brand of all American brands. It shows a young Adolphus Busch risking life and limb to come to America to pursue his dream of making a German-style lager in the new world.  He happens upon Eberhard Anheuser, and the rest, of course, is history.

Mr. Clean

Smart, funny, and well-executed.  Sara, who seems a little bored and uninspired, cooks dinner and spills some sauce on the countertop.  Suddenly a super-buff animated Mr.Clean appears (refreshed for the modern era in a tight white t-shirt and a few more flattering physical features,) and starts to turn Sara on by how well he cleans, and how damn good he looks doing it.  When her frumpy husband snaps her out of her suburban fantasy, she’s super turned on and attacks him with affection.  The theme line wraps it up perfectly:  “You gotta love a man who cleans.”

Tide

Really well-executed commercial that smashes together some simple product demonstration stuff with some modern social media jargon and wraps it up in the ultimate goofball, Terry Bradshaw.  Made to look like a “real” Super Bowl cutaway, it turns into a goofy aside as we follow Terry outside the stadium to find help for the barbecue sauce stain on his shirt, while he’s “trending” on social media.  He does find help, hilariously, in the person of Jeffrey Tambor. This is a “how our product works” spot wrapped up in a contextualized narrative using a relevant (and believable) character.  Tide’s been on a roll with these spots, and it’s primarily because they’ve kept their strategic focus so hyper-centered on a core element:  removing stains.

BIGGEST GRIN:  T-Mobile

To me, T-Mobile WON the ad bowl, hands down.  They ran four separate executions, and only teased one (the Justin Bieber integrated “unlimited moves” execution,) before the game.  Another execution features the unlikely (and pretty hilarious) pairing of Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg, as she provides options for what Snoop might be trying to compare unlimited data to.  He says, “You might say it’s all that and a bag of…” and she launches into a dozen Martha Stewart-isms (“purple cushy throw pillows?” “herb-roasted lamb chops?”)  It’s cute.  And again, hyper-focused on their core proposition:  unlimited data.

But the spots that really stole the night were the pair of “50 Shades of Gray”-inspired sendups featuring killer performances by Kristen Schaal, that feature “naughty” behavior centered around getting “punished” for exceeding data limits. It’s advertising gold, partly because of Schaal’s astounding comedic performances, partly because it absolutely shreds Verizon in the process, and mostly because it (again) hammers home the core strategic focus.

The first spot sets up the spoof with the gigantic super:  “Wireless pain is fine.  If you’re into that sort of thing.”  It’s full of comedic gems, including the jab “wait til you see how confusing the bill is.”

Then, in the follow-up, she takes the action to a Verizon customer service agent.  She mentions that she’s gone  over her monthly data usage, and as the representative tries to pull up her information, she asks, seductively, “what are you gonna do to me?”  He’s confused.  She’s in the moment.  And it’s simply great advertising.

 

AND NOW FOR THE GROANS.

Google Home

A spot that does a nice job of showing the product in action across diverse audiences, but in kind of a weird way.  It’s set to the tune of “Take me Home, Country Roads,” the John Denver classic.  But you’re not quite sure why.  There’s no connective tissue there.  *Unless some of it was filmed in West Virginia?  With a mountain momma?  Sorry, but this was a miss.

84 Lumber

Everyone LOVED this spot.  It was sweeping, and cinematic, and timely, and poignant.  But it was rejected in its entirety, and people had to go online to see the end.  That itself is a bit indulgent, but when the site crashed, it became maddening.  As it turns out (SPOILER ALERT) the mom and the daughter enter through the “great doorway” and “get in.”  What’s wrong with this spot is a.) it was intended as a recruiting effort for 84 Lumber employees and b.) it will make exactly half the people in this country want to shop there and exactly the other half want to boycott it.  I hope for their sake they have stores near where that first half lives.

Turbo Tax

The Humpty-Dumpty-themed spot, which attempts to show how easy it is to get mobile customer service (I guess,) was, well, weird.  He’s all cracked up, he’s bleeding yolk, and it just kept seeming like jokes for jokes’ sake.

SoFi

Here’s a brand that did SO bad last year, I was surprised to see them back at it again this year, (I haven’t done the research, but I’d guess it’s a new agency,) with a low-budget spot focused on student debt.  At first they praise themselves for how much they lent last year, which sounds like a payoff line (because it is,) then they go on to say what the average student debt is, which sounds more like a setup line (because it is.)  Just kind of out of order and unremarkable for the $5,000,000 investment.

BIGGEST GROAN:  ALL the automotive ads (except one.)

Generally, we look to the Super Bowl for great automotive advertising – in just the last few years, we’ve seen some exceptional entries from Audi (remember “Prom” and last year’s “Starman?”) and Chrysler (where they launched the “Imported from Detroit”) and so many others.  Gosh, Christopher Walken for Kia last year was an epic victory.

But this year, the auto ads were flat at worst and over-reaching at best.  Kia was closest with their Melissa McCarthy spot, because it was light, and funny, and at least tried to feature the car’s core benefit as an “eco-warrior.”

Alfa Romeo purchased three separate spots to the tune of $20 million, and hardly distinguished themselves at all in the process.  The “Riding Dragons” spot reads more like a brand film to be used internally to motivate salespeople.  Listen to all the “we, we, we,” and “us, us, us.” The others were a bit better, but equally befuddling.

Honda went long with celebrities in their “yearbook” spot, but over-reached on the “dreaming” theme.  Buick got close with the “Cam Newton” spot, because it was cute, and it reinforced their “hey, is that a Buick?” theme, but it didn’t do much for the brand overall, in my opinion.  Audi’s female-focused spot was beautiful, and a wonderful sentiment, but oddly out of place as a Super Bowl spot.  Lexus was also kind of a weird spot:  just some beauty shots of the car and some freestyle dancer dude dancing sideways on the wall and the car.  Which would be super cool if Apple hadn’t just done it last month for their Air Pods.

Super Bowl advertising is – by definition – supposed to be big and brash and even bawdy.  We expect lots of laughs, maybe a little lewdness and a heavy dose of celebrities.  But sadly, we got issues and platforms and statements.  Funny how suddenly, we’re wishing for busty blondes in bikinis and talking babies, eh?  Until next year!

 

 

Super Bowl 50 Grins and Groans

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Well, the Super Bowl had its “golden” anniversary last night, and, by all accounts, the anniversary was about the ONLY golden thing of the evening.  The game was a bit of a mess, dominated by Denver’s defense, with a lot of fits, starts, sacks and turnovers.

But the advertising that showed up was a little dull, too.  Which is sad, because last year’s big game didn’t live up to 2014.  Alas, we’re on a downward trend.

A couple of notable items:

Scantily clad women were kindly asked to stay OUT of the advertising this year. Weird.

There were very few surprises, but the ones that were held back were certainly worth the wait.

A couple of newcomers likely won’t be back. They’ll be lucky if they’re in business.

It was basically the “Celebrity Bowl” of advertising this year. A few of the standouts (read more below) were Christopher Walken, Helen Mirren, Drake, Ryan Reynolds.

And say farewell to the Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl” party.  This was the 10th and final year of that enormously successful campaign.

The ads that made me grin:

Snickers – “Seven Year Itch” with Willem Dafoe
They continue to nail this campaign with the “you’re not you when you’re hungry” meme year in and year out.  And this year’s offering, a takeoff on the Seven Year Itch scene with Marilyn Monroe, was so well done and so well executed and so well performed, it made me grin twice.  (I still think it may be slightly off target, unless Snickers is now being marketed to Boomers??  But still, this spot kills.)

Mtn Dew Kickstart – “PuppyMonkeyBaby”
While a lot of people just scratched their heads at this, it’s actually very funny, and simplistic enough to be strategically on point.  “Three awesome things combined,” says the ad, referring to Mountain Dew, juice and caffeine.  So they combined three awesome things into one triple-cute mascot:  puppy, monkey, baby.  Makes perfect sense!

Quicken Loans’ Rocket Mortgage – “What Were We Thinking?”
This was most certainly a reach, and some may argue an over-reach.  But it was also so helplessly optimistic, it was hard not to like.  Plus, when introducing a new product, what better way to get people to remember it than by comparing it to, say, the Internet?  Well done.

 

Double Grins:

Bai Antioxidant – “Horse Whisperer”
This was a spot that wasn’t leaked earlier, and it’s super funny, super on target, and super performed, and so super unexpected!  What a great risk to take – I think they pulled it off!

Doritos – “Ultrasound”
The “ultrasound” commercial was funny.  In a gross, male, immature way, but funny.  And that’s EXACTLY what Doritos advertising is about.  It’s not supposed to be haughty, it’s supposed to position the chips as so insanely delicious that people will do anything to get them…including jettisoning from the womb.  Also remember that this ad was submitted by an “amateur” into the “Crash the Super Bowl” sweepstakes.

Hyundai – “Ryanville”
How far can you go to promote one tiny little (optional) feature on a car?  Well, in this spot, they went all the way to Ryanville, and nailed it.  Not only do they make a good case for the auto-braking-pedestrian-detection feature, they do it with a nice flip-of-the-gender-script, and have the gals ogling the guys.  Well, it’s one guy, but apparently, this one guy is all girls need.

Audi – “Starman”
Audi has basically been killing it for the last three years with their sweepingly cinematic spots.  But this one manages to do something that the last couple haven’t done:  connect (finally) more completely to their target audience.  It’s a piece of fiction, and a momentary suspension of disbelief, but we are more than willing to go on the journey to the past and back to present within a span of seconds.  Really well done.  And wow – they had Bowie.

But my biggest grin came when I saw this spot from Kia called “Walken Closet”
Could anyone else have delivered such a compelling performance?  “It’s like the world’s most exciting pair of socks….BUT – it’s a midsize sedan!” Funny, and drives home a core point about standing out of the “beige-ness” of midsize sedans.  (I know what you’re thinking.  “But Kia IS a midsize sedan!”  True, but the average car buyer in that category doesn’t consider Kia as a car with any excitement, or performance, or as Walken so eloquently puts it:  “pizzazzzzzzah.”  The mere fact of CONSIDERING Kia, as opposed to the “safe” choices in this category, like Honda, Nissan or Toyota, is what makes this a leap out of the “beige.”  Good stuff.)

 

Honorable mentions:
Prius’ “The Chase”
Two brand (and beautiful) spots from Jeep
Texting PSA for domestic abuse
Drake for T-Mobile

As usual, there were some groans this year.

Groans:

Persil Pro Clean – It’s always risky to come into the Super Bowl as a first-time advertiser, and Persil didn’t really do enough of a job of distinguishing themselves.  It was a clean and well-produced spot, but there wasn’t much there to grab onto.

OIC-  this spot, entitled “envy,” shows a man wishing he could go to the bathroom, and envying all these others that can.  Again, a well-produced, well-executed spot, but because it wasn’t for one particular brand, but rather, more of a PSA to get you to a doctor to talk about OIC, it just lost any connective tissue.  The spot is “made on behalf of those living with chronic pain and struggling with OIC.”  Which is everybody, sorta.  And nobody.  Sorta.  Just think what they could have done with the roughly 8 or 9 million bucks this spot cost to get this message to the right people in the right places at the right time.  Smells like a consortium buy to me.

My least favorite:  SoFi. 
Listen, no matter what anyone tells you, you never, EVER, EVER say mean things to your consumer.  Not even anything that can be misunderstood as mean.  Well, there’s nothing misunderstood in this spot, except why it was made in the first place.

This commercial starts its first eight seconds of life like this:  “Jim is great.  Sara is not great at all.  This guy – NEVER been great.  (then the camera pans down to a cute baby in a stroller…) No.”  So inside of eight seconds, we’ve identified that three out of four random people, including a baby in a stroller, are not great.  And since they’ve set up the construct that there are basically two kinds of people in the world (great and not great,) we’re all nervously wondering if we’re great.  I probably don’t need to tell you this is NOT what you want your consumer doing when you’re trying to get them to like you.

The ad goes on to say that SoFi gives great loans to great people.  (And leaves the rest out in the cold, I might add.)  And then…are you sitting down?…the ad invites you to visit SoFi TO FIND OUT IF YOU’RE GREAT!  (I bet a zillion people did that.) I know you can’t believe this, but it actually. Gets. Worse.  The final line of the voiceover, after saying “find out if you’re great at SoFi.com,” says “you’re probably not.”

Hey, here’s an idea.  Fuck you, SoFi.

Until next year, keep grinning!

Super Bowl 49 – Grins and Groans

Nader Ashway4 Comments

If you’re a football fan, you liked this game. A slow burn, with twists and turns, and a dramatic finish. Good stuff. (Unless you’re a Seahawks fan, then, not so much.)

If you’re an advertising fan, you got pretty much a reflection of the game: a kind of slow and steady stream of ads, none of which made you say “wow,” and a few headscratchers late.

Mostly, we were left with questions:
Where were the really big ideas?

Where was Chrysler? (there was only the one Fiat spot and it was pretty funny) – but after Dylan, Eastwood and Eminem, they had set the bar pretty high, and not seeing them in the game was weird.

And seriously: what was Nationwide thinking???

A few themes this year that were notable:

Dads – three advertisers embraced dads this year: Dove, Nissan and Toyota. (And we’re not sure why, exactly.)

Puppies – Bud’s follow-up to “Puppy Love” from last year, and GoDaddy’s “controveersial” spot that never made it to the air (and it should have, since their “replacement” spot was meh.)

Celebrities poking fun at themselves:

Kardashian for T-Mobile was really good and funny and actually made good advertising.

Brosnan for Kia was very well done and a big grinner for me.

Pete Rose for Skechers was actually cute, and he was a good sport to take on that sensitive subject matter with such air.

The Esurance spots with Lindsay Lohan and Bryan Cranston proving that “sorta” is not good enough were pretty good.

And Liam Neeson absolutely KILLED IT in his I’m- a-badass-and-I’m-coming-for-you brogue for Clash of Clans.

The ads that made me grin:

Fiat and the little blue pill:

Mercedes Benz fable

Coke

Double Grins:

BMW i3 with Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel

This spot was funny, had great performances, and made an excellent point: big ideas take a little getting used to.  Smart, and very non-typical auto advertising.

Snickers Brady Bunch

Snickers took their “you’re not you when you’re hungry” to a great new place, by going to a great old place.  Well done!

Doritos – When Pigs Fly

This wasn’t my favorite of the Doritos “crash the Super Bowl” ads, but it was still entertaining, light-hearted, and well-executed.

But my biggest grin came early in the game when I saw this spot from Turbo Tax:

Man this was just flat out good. High cinematic value in the production of the spot, and high concept in rewriting history around a simple (and relatively benign) benefit of “free filing.”

Of course, we all know it’s free to file your federal return. But you still have to pay for the software of course, and for state taxes, you’ll still shell out that pesky little 29.95 or so. Bah, details. They made a great ad!

As usual, there were some groans this year.  And one flat headscratcher.

Groans:

Cure.com insurance (pair of 15’s) – bad jokes, worse production.

Jumlia – credit to coming into the game as a first time advertiser, but it was forgettable – an animatic for toenail fungus. They could have made like a billion or so targeted impressions online, and still had a couple million bucks left over to buy a whole bunch of spots during the professional bowling championships later in the year, when toenail fungus really flairs up. (Duh.)

Squarespace with Jeff Bridges – just weird. Any ad that’s going to make you go to a URL to figure out what it’s all about is just a waste of the airtime. Who’s going to leave the game for that? And for Jeff Bridges acting creepy? No thank you.

But the biggest WTF this year was Nationwide Insurance’s “make safe happen.” I can’t even believe they chose THIS strategy, and chose THIS buy. Didn’t anybody over there THINK about what the typical super bowl viewing environment is? You’re talking beer, wings, chips, salsa. You’re trash-talking about your team. And wait, now we’re thinking about our potentially dead children? No, no, no. NO! Kids and puppies in advertising are great…but you don’t KILL them in your spots. Jeez! You’d think somebody over there knew the basic rules.

Outside of the Turbo Tax spot, there was no real altitude attained this year in terms of high concept approaches. A few bright spots, and a few duds. Oh, and Nationwide killing our children to make a very serious point at a really shitty time. And that’s STILL not as bad as that one really bad decision to pass at the 1-yard line by the Seahawks’ offensive coordinator late in the game.

Until next year, keep grinning!