Apologies for being a little late on this post, but I’m still a little bleary eyed after watching 6+ hours of TV on Super Bowl Sunday. When I wasn’t gripping the arms of my chair while the Pittsburgh Steelers slowly pecked away at the Green Bay Packers’ lead (which the Pack thankfully held on to), I was underwhelmed by this year’s crop of Super Bowl ads. It’s not exactly true about a bad apple spoiling a bushel, but, man, some of the ads were awful. You can see where the ads ranked on USA Today’s site.
In my eye, the worst ads came from discount coupon sites. Apparently their humor is cut rate as well. One ad that had me scratching my head was LivingSocial’s (which aired during FOX’s pregame coverage). The ad details how the discount site “changed” a man’s life from being trapped to embracing what appears to be a more effeminate lifestyle — including dressing in drag.
While some people are unhappy about LivingSocial making a joke out of transgendered individuals, I had no idea who this ad is supposed to appeal to. Most of the male audience wouldn’t necessarily get or appreciate LivingSocial’s message. Perhaps the ad was geared more toward the women in the audience — that could be savvy insofar as recognizing that the Super Bowl draws a large audience from both sexes.
The other set of ads that I thought were dreadful were the GroupOn ads. They start off with tearful testimonials about the suffering in the world only to say that it’s OK because people can save big bucks with this discount site.
Some of these ads seem to portray potential customers in a negative light. GroupOn basically says use our site and be a tool (but save!). It reminds me of the Sprint ads where people are being jerks but it’s OK because they have unlimited minutes or texting.
Although I’m a Sprint customer, my desire to keep the service is diminished whenever it portrays customers as blowhards. Portraying customers as petty, selfish and callous does seem to run counter to the old advertising tropes where you depict customers being attractive and successful while using a product.
Along those same lines, another ad that portrays potential customers as weird was a Doritos ad where a man apparently just can’t get enough of that nacho cheese-flavored crack — he has to rip a co-worker’s pants off to lick the crumbs that the co-worker wiped on his legs. I guess it might appeal to the more juvenile in the audience, but I wasn’t amused.
Another set of ads I didn’t find funny included two where a dog or baby are thrown into glass. The one with the baby dealt with a vacation home renting site HomeAway (which posited a problem with hotels that I don’t think most people have to deal with). The commercial depicted a lab testing how uncomfortable hotel rooms are culminating with a “test baby” being thrown into the lab’s glass walls. It was a little shocking, but ultimately was a miss.
The other ad with glass included a man taunting a small dog with a bag of Doritos from behind a glass door. The dog is running, running and running until the ad’s punchline where the dog breaks down the glass door, pinning the man and liberating those tasty, tasty chips. I didn’t think the ad was particularly funny and I was a little bored with it.
It’s interesting that people just loved the dog one (it tied for first in USA Today’s AdMeter), but panned the baby one.
Looking at the rest of the list of Super Bowl ads, many of them were just average. I did like the Coca-Cola ad where the two border guards find a creative way to share a Coke while staying on their respective sides of the border.
Movie trailers are interesting if you’re interesting in the upcoming attractions, but they aren’t great Super Bowl ads. I can’t remember the last time there was a creative trailer during the big game. I also won’t take a movie entitled “Cowboys vs. Aliens” seriously.
In the end, the Super Bowl is one of the largest stages left in the world and it might be hard to please everyone with so many people watching. That may be part of the problem — in trying to please everyone or to be “funny,” some advertisers end up pleasing no one.
