Guest blogger: JASON MARKS
• Jason Marks is vice president of programming and development at Heavy.com.
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Sunday, Feb. 4, 2007, 7:08 p.m.
Bud Light: Slapstick isn’t bad, but after watching the mountain biker fall down the hill all season and all day leading up to it, it’s a pretty weak start.
Doritos user-generated spot: I hope this commercial finally dispels the myth of user- generated content, and most importantly as a submission-based campaign. It doesn’t work. These spots aren’t good, or funny, and there is a reason people get paid to make ads for a living.
Blockbuster: This spot is schizo.It attempts the lovable animal angle but then dissolves into a pure messaging play. If you’re going cute, stick with it—don’t make your audience read the rest of your spot. Entertain or provide a message. Not both.
All in all, a very weak opening.
7:40 p.m.
Sierra Mist, first spot: Beard comb-over is okay but too office, too quirky. Seems played for the largest stage in advertising, but might be the best so far.
Sales Genie: What? They wasted their money on what ended up looking like a Devry Institute ad.
Sierra Mist, second spot: Tracy Morgan rules. if you’re going to pay him to be in your spot, use him. Wasted here, hope he shows up later.
Ford: Straight car commercial. Had a happy ending joke right there for the taking, refused to take it. Do these ever change?
FedEx: Moon station? Didn’t really make any sense. FedEx trucks will be awesome in the future?
Bud Light: Auctioneer at the wedding? Felt like I had seen this before. I want more “rubber floor” level humor.
Snickers: Brokeback Snickers? Maybe last year.
Chevrolet: This sing-a-long has a sense of humor, crosses demos. Not great or groundbreaking, but better than Ford.
Monday, Feb. 4, 2007, 1:43 p.m.
Budweiser: I can’t help but think that dividing your spots into sub-brands and having different creative for each is spreading yourself too thin—moving from violent slapstick to Carlos Mencia to animal-cute drops retention. To take your total buy on the world’s largest advertising stage and focusing that into a single message is the more powerful play. See Coke.
GoDaddy: These were cheap. They played cheap, they looked cheap, and their graphic work may have actually been clip-art.
Garmin: While most relatively unknown brands stayed in their comfort zone, this is one of the few unknowns who used low production value to their advantage. Battling the Map-o-Saurus message was clear and funny, and using a hip, Kaiju Big Battel meets Ultra-Man low-budget style was money. It entertained.
Nationwide: K-Fed sorta rocked it. He looked natural in the cliché rap environments and just as natural as a fry cook. The problem is when it jumps to the CG piggy bank, it is such a break in mood and visual style that it felt like a new commercial started. They should have figured out a way to brand within context.
Doritos: User-gen video campaigns are a bust. People think because of YouTube that there are millions of budding filmmakers out there. First of all, they are mainly thieves, or a happenstance camera man that nailed the ‘hit-in-the-balls’ shot. Second, it is assumed that YouTube traffic is equivalent to its filmmaker population. But it’s not millions of users
each posting their own masterpiece, it’s actually thousands of users posting thousands of somebody else’s masterpiece. That being said, the second one with the Doritos dirty checkout girl was decent. The first one was flat.
Coke: From the simple, print-based, Coke silhouette end card to the big concept of magic and wild energy in a bottle, Coke focused on the big brand and gave themselves room to execute within one message. The machinima video gamescape and the magical psyop land of cokeness were cool, designy, and fun—united in concept with unique executions.
Even the old-man-seizes-the-day piece stayed within the wild energy ethos and played very cartoony and fun. I think for overall branding, Coke was iconic, creative, and consistent—a winner.
GM: Somewhere between the IKEA Lamp and the Maytag repairman, GM took a big, fun concept and executed it flawlessly—turning a page on the humorless, beauty-shot-before-big-idea car commercial template. I love robots, and robot dreams are unparalleled high humor. Big win.
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