AdFreak co-editor CATHARINE P. TAYLOR
 Sunday, Feb. 4 — 5:20 p.m.
OK, so I’m done with the usual sturm und drang that
typifies my Sundays—paying the bills and doing not quite enough
laundry. So, it’s weird making the screechingly abrupt transition to
watching that Coors ad where the fans are allegedly at the press
conference with Mike Ditka, while I’m still wondering when the whites
will be done.
Now I’m watching the J’adore perfume (parfum?)
commercial with Charlize Theron. I could’ve sworn, or maybe I’m just
having a flashback—that she has a wardrobe malfunction during the ad.
That’s the thing about Super Bowl ads, you feel like you’ve seen it all
before, except that just when you think the hype can’t get any more
over the top, it does.
5:20 p.m.
Super Bowl cliché watch: What exactly is meant by the phrase these Indianapolis Colts?
5:41 p.m.
“I’ll Stop the World and Melt with You” for the GMC Acadia cross-over SUV? (What is a cross-over SUV, anyway?) It’s a little peculiar, but … sorta … catchy. On the other hand, does anyone really want to melt with their car? It brings up some not-so-good thoughts.
5:47 p.m.
OK, now I’m watching the Michelin man ad, which becomes more memorable because it features about a dozen Michelin men. That scene with the Michelin men in the playground is a little bizarre though. As a parent, what would you do if you saw a bunch f Michelin men coming at your kids? God, I overthink this stuff.
5: 54 p.m.
Nothing against Cirque du Soleil, but it seems a little strange for a Super Bowl pre-game show. Well, you know how the Quebecois love football (?), although the point of this show seems to be celebrating multi-culturalism, like the culture of men, I guess, who wear green tights.
5:55 p.m.
The first good commercial I’ve seen so far, for Combos, that paean to empty calories. Son comes into bedroom sick. “Mom” who is lying in bed and is actually a guy in a wig, gives son Combos to make him feel better. Tag: “What your Mom would feed you if you’re Mom was a man.”
9:22 p.m.
I've been so busy posting our guest bloggers thoughts that I haven't had time to put down my own. I'll probably get back to this after the game.
9:35 a.m., the morning after
I admit I’m predisposed to liking just about anything Prince does—and I've never been much of a football fan—but, for me his performance was the highlight of the show, including the commercials. I could have done without the dancing chicks in the high black boots, but it’s Prince, what was I to expect?
Now, as for the commercials, I found them to be almost completely disappointing. Though I did emit a giggle or two from, say, the Bud Light ads, there were very few iconic ideas. Nothing along the lines of “Whassup!?” or those great spots featuring Cedric the Entertainer, which have a resonance that long outlasts the football game. (One notable exception: Robert Goulet for Emerald Nuts. That commercial was so out there it makes you wonder what the people at Goodby were smoking when they created it. But whatever it was, it must have been very good.)
But all in all, it was—and in this, this Super Bowl was not alone—the Cheap Laugh Bowl.
A few other thoughts: did it seem like there were a lot of spots on-air last night—even more than usual—that had already been airing? It seemed so to me. Two of Coke's spots (the Grand Theft Auto- gone-happy commercial and the Rube Goldberg-like vending machine commercial) have been around for a bit, and, as good as they both are, I wonder if you don't get the most bang for your 2.6 million bucks by showing the audience something they haven't seen before. Still, the commercials from Coke showed they are moving in a really positive, innovative direction with their advertising, and that's great to see.
If I were a car advertiser, I think I'd avoid advertising on the Super Bowl entirely, at least until I was the only car advertiser left wanting to buy the game. Surely some creative media-planning could achieve the same reach. There were so many of them—Chevrolet, GMC, Ford, Mercedes, Toyota, Honda—that they became interchangeable, particularly because most of the ads were excruciatingly boring. Which brings me to Honda. Honda, you ask? Yes, Honda. Here was an advertiser that aired at least four spots during the game, and yet very few of our guest bloggers found their ads even worth mentioning. In a year where very few commercials stood out, and some, like Sales Genie, achieved mention simply for being so bad, the worst offense is still to air spots that were only so much wallpaper. And that's what the Honda effort was.
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