Super Bowl Ad Review: Year 2

Would you believe it's been an entire year since I started blogging for Experience.com? Good Lordy, time does fly. Well, anyways, in case you hadn't heard, a little thing called the Super Bowl happened on Sunday. Unlike last year's relatively unexciting Chicago Bears whuppin', this year's Super Bowl featured, arguably, the most improbable upset of all time. Seriously, who would have said at the beginning of the season that the New York Giants would win it all?

But we're not here to talk about the game.  No, we're here to talk about the ads.  And let's just say, it's a good thing the game was exciting, because, for the most part, the ads stunk.  It seems like this year most of them fell into one of two categories.  It was either the, "Wait, what was that ad for again?" variety or the, "Wow, that really cost 2.7 million dollars?" type.  It seemed that there was, generally speaking, just a plain lack of creativity.  Here's my unscientific list of hits and misses from this year's festivities.  Mind you, this list doesn't include all the commercials, just the ones I thought were very good and very bad.  In other words, I'm showing the As and the Fs.  If you want to see the Bs, Cs, and Ds, you can see all the ads again on Youtube.

The Hits

E*Trade - Trading Baby

This ad was very enjoyable to me because of two things.  One, it has a cute baby talking like an adult, always a recipe for comedy, and, Two, it delivered a cogent message about the product.  Trading stocks can be an intimidating process for some people.  With E*Trade, trading is so easy a baby can do it.  Brilliant.

Budweiser - "Rocky" Clydesdale

While I think that this ad could do a better job at selling beer, the image of the Budweiser Clydesdale is fairly well implanted into the conscious of America.  What really makes this ad work is its clever and somewhat surprisingly heartfelt narrative.  Everyone loves a good comeback story, and the training montage set to the strains of the Rocky music was simply too good to ignore.

Fed-Ex - Carrier Pigeons

Animals are usually a sure hit in commercials.  So how about giant, destructive, man-eating animals?  Well, if this Fed-Ex spot is any indication, the bigger and more terrifying the better.  Kudos to Fed-Ex for pulling one of the more creative ads of the day.  

Tide to Go - Silence the Stain

This was my favorite ad of the night.  Besides delivering an incredibly strong brand message, the spot was brilliantly conceived.  What's more distracting than a big ugly stain right in the middle of someone's shirt?  I love how the guy giving the interview's eyes keep wandering toward the stain.  Very funny and subtle acting for such an absurdist style ad.  

The Misses 

Well, since Salesgenie.com occupied the top spot on my list last year, I must say I'm a little surprised they ended up here again.  Usually when something is so unbelievably terrible and stupid a company tries to change it for the better.  Instead, Salesgenie's spots are still lame and, now, are even mildly offensive.  I just don't get it.  How can one company invest so much money into such a lame commercial? Are they trying to use reverse psychology or something?  I just don't get it.  Anyways, here's the spots in questions.  I'm not even gonna bother commenting on each one separately.