Monday, February 8, 2010

Mrs. Tebow can't act and the no-pants trend on the Superbowl tonight

I thought that everyone seemed to be playing it a little safe in Superbowl Ad-land this year. I found most of the ads to be rather forgettable, but here are my thoughts on the rest.

The Tebow Spot:
Like I said, Mrs. Tebow doesn't have a future in Hollywood. That being said, overall that was a lot of hype for something so lame. And the production of the whole thing...little too much Apple and E-Harmony in there. It seemed to rely very heavily on the URL call to action at the end. However, no search terms about that spot made it into the Google search trends or Bing xRank, which means that either everyone remembered that URL and went straight there, or the spot was pretty ineffective, relative to other spots (more about those below).



The Beer Advertising Monopoly:
Anheuser-Busch is the ONLY beer advertiser in the Superbowl? And honestly have to say that I was a little disappointed in the overall beer ads. Beer ads used to literally run the Superbowl - what is up with them now? I think Budweiser is taking the horses a bit far now, and personally, of the beer ads, I only liked BudLight's T-Pain Spot:



The Car Spots (and lack there of):
I really expected more form the American car makers, but the Dodge spot was good. I found most of the spots pretty lame for Hyundai and Kia, but I think VW did a great job making a classic Superbowl spot. They took an idea so simple that everyone, from age 6 to age 90 can understand, and turned it into a spot. SlugBug. I liked it.





The Google Spot:
A first for the search engine, and it was definitely cute. Once again, points for being a very simple quick-get idea. I think most people can relate to it. But I find it interesting that this was loaded onto YouTube back in November, so obviously not made just for the Superbowl. Last-second media buy discount, or strategic move?



The Internets
Since people kept talking about social media and the Superbowl, I expected stronger calls to action driving to websites, social media, and texting in spots, but really didn't see too much. However, some naturals prevailed in search as usual. Dockers seemed to take the cake for most search terms on Google, and Bud and GoDaddy appeared to win on Bing. Most notable is that there was no mention of the Focus on the Family spot, or those Intel spots that were hell-bent on getting you to go submit a moment to their microsite. That means if there is a load of traffic, it is coming from direct entry of the URL, or it just isn't popular enough to get on those trends lists. Once all the buzz around spots happens over the next few days, I think we'll have some more info to report on.

Overall trend = No Pants
I couldn't really figure out why there were so many spots with guys not wearing pants? Dockers, Coke and Careebuilder.... Did anyone else find it funny that Careerbuilder.com's "Casual Friday" was played back-to-back with the Dockers "Men Without Pants" spot?

Funniest that I didn't talk about above: Snickers

Worst that barely deserve a mention: Sketchers and FloTV.

The Rest:
If you missed them, want a chance to see them all again, or just need some commenting material, check them out in Hulu's sweet little widget, below:

1 comment:

alicia houselog said...

My favorite fo sho were Snicker's (I LOVE BETTY WHITE) and Google. It was sappy, sure, but I am a sucker for that shit.

I agree, though. The ads were very lackluster overall.

 
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