Sunday, February 7, 2010

Super Bowl Commercials in Review

I must say, the game outdid the commercials by far this year. I was pulling for the Saints - not so much for the city of New Orleans (although I'm certainly happy for them) but because I'm so sick and tired of the Peyton Manning hype, as described in this post.

There were some decent commercials this year during Super Bowl XLIV. There were also some that were pathetic.

First the bad...

We wasted a lot of money on the Census commercial. Ed Begley Jr.? Good grief.

In my opinion Doritos needs to hire a new marketing department. The one with the dog collar was kind of funny. The rest stunk.

Boost Mobile may have taken the worst of the year with the remake of The Super Bowl Shuffle. It was funny until they pulled out the cheetah print thong business. TMI, people...

Dockers and Career Builder "Casual Friday" need to put their pants on. Horrible, both of them.

Dove "Because you're a man" was pathetic.

CarMax is not "Dramatically Smart" when it comes to advertising.

The Bridgestone "Your tires or your wife" clip was sad.

Coca Cola was very disappointing this year. I don't care for The Simpsons so I didn't care for that one, and the guy walking around sleeping was not even good.

Now... for the better ones.

There was an awful lot of hatred spread around for this one, which was very classy and respectful in its message, and not "anti-choice" at all.



Google's search for love in Paris was not new, but blows away anything Microsoft and their junky Bing has to offer, as does their search engine.

The Accord Crosstour with the squirrel was funny. They've had a couple of other good ones during this new marketing campaign, including this one.

There was a good FloTV commercial with the remix of "My Generation," that said "Don't miss a moment."

The talking baby and his girlfriend, talking about the "milk-a-holic" was great, as E-Trade usually delivers.

Bud Light delivered well this year. The Asteroid one was funny, as was the House of Bud Light.

I appreciated the Miller High Life commercial. They market that product to "The Everyman" and although it was not flashy or super entertaining, it delivered.

Hyundai had a big hit with the Brett Favre 2020 MVP commercial, as did Kia with their Sorrento "Party Animals." I also liked Dodge's commercial for "Man's last stand."

Gene Simmons and company had a great non-PC hit with the "little kiss" of Cherry Dr. Pepper.

Monster.com's fiddling beaver made me chuckle.

Snickers had a hit with Betty White and Abe Vigoda, and TruTV gave a good laugh with Punxsutawney Polamalu (thanks Chris W. for reminding me).

Two more late entries - Megan Fox of Transformers fame gave me a laugh for her Motorola plug, and Don Rickles as talking flowers in a box for Teleflora.com was funny too (Thanks to Malcolm for bringing these to my attention).

But by far and away, the best commercial of Super Bowl XLIV...



Iu disagree with any of my judgments, leave me a comment - I'd love to hear what you think!

Left Coast Rebel also has an opinion page up on the subject, as well as a link to Google Trends if you want to see what's really hot.

Also, if I by chance missed one that you really loved or hated, drop a link in my comments area...

13 comments:

Chris W said...

You missed the Snickers one with Betty White and Abe Vigoda (who knew he was still alive) which IMO was the funniest one by far.

Soloman said...

Chris.. thanks! That was a funny one, I'll add it.

Chris W said...

Soloman,

One other one that I forgot, Punxsutawney Polamalu. That was pretty funny also.

And thanks for following my blog too.

Soloman said...

Just added that one too.. I even had that one written down. Notes got sloppy after a while, I thought I could get them all on a 5x8 ledger pad.

Note to self.. use bigger sheet of paper next year...

Glad to follow.. I'll put you on my blog roll too.

I saw your piece on McCain and Hayworth, don't know if you saw the comment I left. I'm going to follow that story closely.

I've got a piece partially written about Hayworth's recent appearance on Hardball with Chris Matthews, and I'm also working on an opinion piece about Palin supporting McCain here, as opposed to Hayworth who I think aligns much more closely with her values.

I hope to have both of those posted within the week.

tammy said...

I had no idea Abe Vigoda was alive either.

I just wish I would've known you were doing this post so I wouldn't have had to watch the whole game. ;)

Woodsterman (Odie) said...

I must say about this last commercial, "Welcome to California !"

Malcolm said...

Two of my faves were the Megan Fox spot for Motorola and the Teleflora.com ad featuring Don Rickles as the talking flowers. Although the "talking baby" gimmick got old for me halfway through "Look Who's Talking", this year's E-trade spot was bearable.

The Conservative Lady said...

Everybody at our house had the came comment about Abe Vigoda...'he's still alive???'.

One comment about the commercials this year...it seemed that there were a lot of commercials featuring people in their underwear.

Soloman said...

Tammy...

Now what fun would that be? You would have missed a great game, plus there's that incredible (cough) Who concert at halftime you got to see!

Soloman said...

Odie -

Agreed - California and many other areas of the nation.

I thought that one made a great mockery of the wacko environmentalists.

Soloman said...

Malcolm,

I completely missed the Motorola clip. I found it on YouTube - it was decent. I have a tough time with Miss Fox.. she's one of those Hollywood types that should keep her politics to herself... but that's a subject for another time...

The Teleflora ad I remember seeing but somehow missed in my review. I agree, very funny.

I added them both to the review.

Thanks!

Soloman said...

TCL -

Maybe the lack of outer clothing was a budget issue??

I did notice that as well, and didn't find the clothing-less spots very appealing.

Maybe just me getting old, or maybe just the spots lacking in class...

Teresa said...

Great analysis of the commercials! I enjoyed both the Focus on the Family ad and the Betty White snickers ad. I am going to post the Tebow ad to show people how stupid they were to spew such hatred all over an ad.