I think Super Bowl ads have been kidnapped by the frustrated advertising creative departments that have kidnapped the budget for a one-day multi-million-dollar excursion into entertainment.
It's a boondoggle, a free trip on company expense.
I like the funny ads. I normally fast forward through the ads, but for the Super Bowl, I watch them first, to see what they've got, then fast forward through the less entertaining ads.
But I can't help remembering John Crawford, then-Dean of the School of Journalism at the University of Oregon, teaching that good ads made a point. Later that became USP, the unique selling proposition. Dean Crawford was an excellent teacher and a mensch, hardly your cold-blooded hard-sell advertising hack; but he also said that the best ads in history (this was 1971, so history extended 38 years less than now) were the toothpaste ads that made a selling point: "You'll wonder where the yellow went," and "cleans your breath while it cleans your teeth."
So I really liked the game yesterday, and I enjoyed a lot of the ads … but I'm just sayin' … can you remember who paid for them? Are you more likely to buy something because its maker paid $2 million to make you chuckle.
I think my all-time favorite Super Bowl ad was the herding cats ad of a couple of years ago. And I can't remember what it was advertising.
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The superbowl used to be known for its great ads and since companies were spending so much on them, they would be great, but it seems like the last few years have just been terrible. I was extremely disappointed with this years ads and also what happened to the miller high life 1 second commercials? they even had commercials leading to it before the superbowl and then i didn't see any. Very disappointing.