Super Bowl XLII is over! Were the ads worth the $$$$?
Posted by Scott Dunn on February 3, 2008
Well, another NFL Super Bowl is over and in the books. The New York Giants won an upset over the New England Patriots in the final minutes of the 4th quarter. In essence they robbed the Patriots from a perfect season and Tom Brady from his 4th Super Bowl win. This year’s Super Bowl definitely lived up to the hype as the game was very, very close with huge momentum swings for both teams.
As for the commercials, I would rate some as very good and most as mediocre to poor. The thing I do not understand is why a company would spend millions of dollars on advertising during the Super Bowl only to air a crappy ad? To this end, I am going to compile an on-going list of what an ad must have to be great!!! Let me know your thoughts as to what you think makes an ad great. I will post the list and make it available for companies to use as a bench mark for next year’s Super Bowl.
For those of you who missed any of this year’s ads, click HERE and you can see every ad run during the Super Bowl. Of these ads, which ones do you remember, which ones do you like and why?
Leave your comments on the ads you like and the ones you don’t.
Congrats to the New York Giants, Super Bowl XLII Champs!!!!! Looking forward to being in East Rutherford next year for a game.
February 4, 2008 at 8:33 am
Agreed that most of the ads were really quite bad. I think anyone with even a passing interest in marketing has to wonder how companies willing to spend millions on an ad wouldn’t have taken a step back for some of those….like the Careerbuilder ones, and thought “wow, that’s a really crappy ad” (did they change ad agency from the ones with the monkeys, because those were great! What happened?)
The key is that people now expect all superbowl ads to be funny, and funny is hard to do. I think marketing execs and their ad agencies fall into a sort of “groupthink” (similar to the Apple 1984 ad Scott posted) where they think the ad is great and, once past a certain point, have to convince themselves that it is funny and memorable regardless of what whispers to the contrary exist.
My personal favorite was the eTrade talking baby. Especially the one with him talking about how he “underestimated the creepy-ness” of the clown performing behind him. Wow…talk about funny!! Works well with the message too. I mean, if a baby could do it (even one talking like an adult) can use it, so could anyone else.
Thanks for the posting and glad to see your blog is up and running Scott.
James