Another Super Bowl has come and gone. If you’re not from Boston or Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), you were probably a little more excited about the game than you are for the upcoming Pro Bowl. But at least there are some good commercials during the game, right?
Maybe not. This year the commercials were by and large a letdown, although there were a few good ones.
First off, the disappointments. The Staples “Easy Button” ads, show a variety of people doing a plethora of difficult activities with the aid of a big red “Easy Button.” The only problem with this one is that I have seen it 100 times before. Staples, it’s the Super Bowl. To slightly paraphrase a Sonic Drive-In commercial, “You gotta go strong to the tube, or don’t go at all!”
Next were the two Diet Pepsi ads. Some polls have placed these two at the top of the popularity spectrum from all of this year’s ads. One has P. Diddy, that consummate catalyst of pop culture, catching a ride to an awards show in a Diet Pepsi truck and inadvertently causing the gargantuan “rides” to become the next hip-hop trend. A lot of people liked this one, but I was nauseated at the thought that P. Diddy (Is that still what he calls himself?) could lead anyone to do anything.
The second and still worse Diet Pepsi ad featured a hunky guy walking down the street to the Bee-Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” while female onlookers gawk. It culminates with Carson Kreesley from “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” joining in the “checking out.” The fact that Cindy Crawford is in the ad should be a clue to everyone that Pepsi has beaten this horse to death. For more than 10 years, they’ve been parading some “hottie” around for people to admire his or her body as well as the Diet Pepsi can. New idea. Please.
The Careerbuilder.com commercials with the chimps working in an office were quirky but overall uninteresting. I got the joke about five seconds in but had to sit through the rest of the thing to see who was doing the advertising (or the torturing).
According to the polls, a lot of people liked the Emerald Nuts commercial, too. It showed a little girl asking her father for some Emerald Nuts. He refuses, saying if she eats one, unicorns will disappear forever. Then you see a talking unicorn, a not-so-chubby Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny rebuking the dad for his lies and suggesting he let his daughter have some cashews. I thought the fairy tale creatures were not funny, but creepy. The unicorn’s voice was disturbing, the Santa was too thin and appeared to be wearing dark eye makeup and the Easter Bunny was obviously a puppet with an attitude more like Alice’s Mad Hatter.
However, there were some good ads during this year’s Super Bowl. I was touched by the Anheuser-Busch ad featuring homecoming soldiers walking through an airport amidst cheers and applause from onlookers. The black screen that followed was interrupted only by white letters spelling the words “Thank You.” And they also had a funny commercial with people jumping out of a plane after a Bud. A hesitant guy waits too long and the pilot jumps out after the beer instead.
The Ford Mustang convertible ad was a good one. It had a police officer pulling up behind a red 2005 Mustang convertible at a stop light in the middle of an eerily white and desolate nowhere. The light is green, but the Mustang, with the top down, doesn’t budge. The scene and music is very “Fargo-esque.” While trying to explain to the driver that the light is green, the officer realizes that the smiling, Hawaiian-shirt clad driver is frozen solid. The tag line finishes, “You just don’t introduce a convertible this irresistible in the middle of winter.”
My favorite commercial was the Ameriquest Mortgage commercial with the white cat. A guy comes home early to cook a romantic dinner for his girlfriend. As he’s chopping some vegetables with a large knife, her white cat knocks over the pot of spaghetti sauce and jumps into the mess on the floor. He grabs the cat by the scruff of the neck and picks it up just as his girlfriend walks in. She gasps as she sees him holding a bloody-looking cat in one hand and a giant knife in the other. The tag line reminds you that, like Ameriquest, you shouldn’t judge too quickly.
Perhaps the best commercial was one that I missed and had to catch on the Web. It was for GoDaddy.com, a domain naming company. It featured a busty woman wearing a tank top with Go Daddy written on it. As she is testifying in front of a congressional-looking committee about what GoDaddy is and what they do, one of the straps on her top breaks. She finishes her pitch while holding “herself” together. This commercial was great for GoDaddy because it did everything they could have wanted from an ad. It achieved name recognition, it explained what GoDaddy does and it managed to spoof last year’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction.”
Nick Thompson is a senior communication major. He can be reached at [email protected].