Post-show: Give It A “Meh”

From Amanda Bower:

I’ll only catch bits of this, but…

USA networks. Awesome. Completely shows the characters’… uh… character.

Hardees ads make me feel like you have to have an eating disorder to eat there.

Overall:

At the outset I’ve (and others) have said the big challenge was tone- how do you go big without going big. And it appears that most of these advertisers chose the “go home” option. Very little was Big and Big was meh. Most ads looked normal, and any ads that were new for the SB looked more like the SB was their debut and not that they were “Super Bowl Ads.”

If I’m thinking who overall won… Hyundai maybe? If you cobble together both benefit and strategic underpinnings. I do have to say though that Budweiser’s stuff is in the Hall of Fame. However, in terms of net benefit instead of gross, I’m going with Cash4Gold. Cute ad, cheap to make (assuming MC Hammer and MC Mahon aren’t going for too much these days) and it lent legitimacy beyond a 30 second spot during a Cities of the Underworld rerun on the History channel at 10 in the morning butted up against an ad for a Medicare supplement. (Update: I’m happy to report that Bob Garfield of Ad Age agrees with my take on Cash4Gold.)

If I’m thinking who lost, I’m going w/ Teleflora (if that’s who did the talking box flowers). I mean, ungrateful. It’s not enough that I sent flowers, I had to send them in a tacky duck arrangement. If I sent you flowers in a box, I’m actually obnoxious. Speaking as a target market of one, someone who gives and receives flowers, I had a real “…and the horse you rode in on” reaction.

In the end, you pay all that cash for a Super Bowl spot because of the benefit you think you’ll receive. That benefit may be pure numbers of eyeballs, or maybe it’s the associated PR, or maybe it’s the “bigness” of the SB, or the control over your message because this tends to be an event experienced simultaneously rather than time-shifted (this is one of the advantages to Hyundai). Maybe it’s- in the case of Cash4Gold- a sense of legitimacy and arrival. Or maybe it’s something you create yourself- a synergy with an event like SB- so that 2+2 = 5. Or maybe a sense of presentation- that you are helping us out, offering us something new, something that actually benefits us. That could help build a relationship with a brand, a sense of reciprocity. Even the 3D stuff is cute but not exactly innovative. I mean, we did 3D a few years ago in my advertising class. I don’t know. It’s just hard to see the synchronicity of the pre-game show “brought to you by the Glad family of products.” Glad either needs to stick with Top Chef, or tell us why on God’s Green Earth Glad fits in at the SB. It could fit in, clearly. Like a great ad that night on ESPN replays showing somebody trying to put away all the leftover wings, 7-layer dip (thanks Tina Fey!), etc. Make it more of an experience than a one time, superficial, cheap shot “Brought to you by…”. Stop assuming that the value of an ad exists only within the confines of a single 30 seconds spot. Blech. Boring.

But this year, I think they were mostly paying for eyeballs, which honestly, is kind of depressing. Little in the way of taking advantage of anything the SB had to offer other than eyeballs (and like an annoying teenager trying to annoy me with annoying stuff and get my attention, I’m ignoring you Go Daddy). It was sort of energy-less, joyless. Bright spots, sure. But there’s no sense that the marketers have strengthened their relationship with anybody (aside from the three I keep coming back to). I’m going back to the Fallon term of “Creative Leverage”- there wasn’t enough.

Overall- Oh a scale of “Woo-hoo” to “Bleh” I give it a “meh.”