Is there any question who the biggest loser of the night is?
No, there's not. It's Anheuser-Busch. What a pathetic bunch of ads. Really, all, yes ALL of them sucked ass. Maybe not the worst of the night, but when you're spending 20 million dollars or so within a couple hours of advertising, I'd expect to see at least one memorable thing. They came close with the false Dalmatian spot, as it at least looked promising in the beginning. Unfortunately, it fell pathetically flat.
And, in the loser's lounge, AB is joined by Sales Genie, Revlon, Garmin, FedEx, and cars in general. Also, Doritos proved my theory that advertiser-backed CGC is fucking dead. Thank the lord. Seriously, I've never been so annoyingly bored. The Sales Genie ad below gets worst ad of the night. Did an agency create this, or some in-house hack? On the biggest advertising stage in the world, probably not a good idea to waste our time with this filth.
The big winners for me were Careerbuilder.com and Coke. CB.com for flawlessly replacing the monkey spots with another campaign oozing with legs. From strategy to execution, spot on. And, Coke for probably the best group of ads on the night. Of course, most of us had already seen them on the web, but regardless, they're brilliant. All of them set this smile-inducing tone that's hard as shit to pull off without sounding cheesy. I think it's safe to say that Wieden has overtaken CP&B as the best creative agency in the states.
My top 8.
1) Coke - Give a Little Love
2) Careerbuilder.com - Office Survivor
3) Careerbuilder.com - Promotion Pit
4) Coke - Old Coke Revisited
5) Coke - Fantasy
6) ETrade - Bank Robbery
7) Sierra Mist - Beard Combover
8) Snickers - Kiss
And, the honorary win goes to MySpace.com for putting these all together in one place, and allowing for easy embedding. Seriously, why the fuck would anyone use cbs sportsline if they only offer real player and no embed code? Just fucking stupid.
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but it sure did seem like a ton of CBS promos. Some empty inventory maybe? All in all, a distressing night for traditional ad-men all across the world, and a few hours of content smuggery from new media mavens such as myself and most of you.
**Update: YouTube also has a nifty little super bowl ad round-up here. But, since coke didn't upload all of their ads, and the absolute fools at careerbuilder.com disabled embeding, I couldn't switch them all over. Now I feel bad for rating their ads so highly. What a dumbass amateur mistake. I feel bad for giving them extra exposure if they don't really want it.
Well, Paul we have some similar taste. I also liked the career builder series and I especially liked Coke's happy machine. I also thought that the Snickers Ad, although sophmoric was effective in that the silliness made me laugh but yet remember what it was actually advertising.
I gagged at the Fed Ex office Ad and thought all the Budweiser dog ad was missing as some puppies, bunnies and kittens.
I've got a poll up at L+E so feel free to vote.
And also feel free to cheer me up. I thought the Bears were going to take it the way that first quarter went...
*sniff
Posted by: David Armano | February 04, 2007 at 11:54 PM
The anti-Grand-Theft-Auto ad was my favorite new one. I liked the other happiness ad, but I had seen it before.
Posted by: Cam Beck | February 05, 2007 at 07:41 AM
Hey... What's with this Captcha junk?
Posted by: Cam Beck | February 05, 2007 at 07:41 AM
You are so right, as usual, friend.
Corporate video must become YouTubed, web sites must become bloggy, blogs must become wikified, wikis must become Open Source revolution.
Posted by: vaspers the grate | February 05, 2007 at 12:19 PM
Captch junk?
He got rid of the captcha because he has comment moderation, and thus captcha is merely an impediment to comments
Posted by: vaspers the grate | February 05, 2007 at 12:21 PM
Hard to beat the first 14 seconds of the game really. Everything else was downhill from there.
It never ceases to amaze me that a brand like Coke can so 'get' the creative -intersecting and interrupting GTA- and then not get (or even prompt)the audience that they're talking to with that insight.
This audience should want to talk about it, see it, share it online. And they should be planning for this. Dumbass!
Posted by: Katie Chatfield | February 05, 2007 at 12:45 PM
GGAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!
You NOT ONLY tricked me into watching the WORST commercial ever (Sales Genie), you also tricked me into giving them one more "play". You should be ASHAMED!!! ;) ;)
Posted by: Sean Howard | February 05, 2007 at 05:37 PM
For some reason, I got grandfathered on the captcha junk. I'm disappointed. :(
Posted by: Cam Beck | February 05, 2007 at 07:30 PM
Paulie:
I updated my Stupidbowl liveblog list this morning with embedded links from iFilm (including Careerbuilder.) Careerbuilder gets bonus points for the security guard line "sign out please." Fucking awesome.
Snickers sucks and should be ashamed for perpetuating a bullshit stereotype - made even worse with participation from the NFL on the website. I'm so disappointed by them.
Loved Coke Happy Machine, Emerald Nuts/Robert Goulet and laughed at Budlight "He's Got an Axe". This year's batch of spots was so bland that even the hairdo on the morning news show said it was "kind of boring."
Posted by: Lori Magno | February 05, 2007 at 08:02 PM
Sales Genie needs to be shot- one bullet, one kill. That was the lamest, weakest piece of ad poop I think I've ever seen.
The Coke Give a Little Love and Happy Machine were my favorites. The Career Builder ads were pretty great too, but Coke still gets my vote. Stunning visuals. Too bad they are so lame at participation... they could really capitalize on some great viral potential.
For the record; I didn't watch the game at all, so this is the first time I've seen these. Lucky me!
Posted by: Tim Jackson | February 05, 2007 at 08:53 PM