We’re entering Advertising’s most holy time of year. The Super Bowl (or as their legal hounds would prefer, “the big game”, which also ticks me off) is advertising’s moment in the sun.
For a few weeks in the dead of winter, EVERYONE and their cousin is suddenly an advertising expert. They can tell you which of the extravagant ads from the game was the best one. But the barometer of the “success” of the ads is usually based on which one was the funniest / most controversial / etc. It’s never on which ones were the most effective and caused people to buy the product, increase awareness, or any other quantifiable measure.
Plus, this Solomon-esque judgment of the best ad is a finite phenomenon. Even if you’re in the ad industry, can you name more than one or two Super Bowl ads from last year?
And something that’s worse than the postgame ad analysis is the pregame hoopla that we’ll have to endure over the next few weeks. This company bought 3 spots! A :30 commercial goes for $3 bazillion dollars! And what has become the single most annoying aspect of the ad spotlight during this time of year is the Bob Parsons / GoDaddy ego trip. Do you wake up at night in a cold sweat like me wondering if they can get past the “censors”?
Has your company drunk the Kool-Aid Flavor-Aid and bought time during “the big game”? Since you’ve blown such a large hunk of your budget on placement, let me give you this year’s winning creative pitch for free.
The hooves of flatulent horses dig up the corpse of Robert Goulet who then runs through a CGI generated Orwellian world full of bikini clad college girls. He throws a hammer through a TV screen that has some contest-driven user-generated-content on it. Then the screen fades to black for 15 seconds.
I don’t recommend anything involving your actual product/service or anything that resembles a call-to-action.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m an ad guy. I love creative / clever / funny / etc advertising. But what is forgotten during the Super Advertising hoopla is that advertising’s purpose is to sell. The trouble with most Super Ads is that they are heavy on the concept and light on the message.
I have offered postgame Super Bowl ad analysis in the past.
I’ll go ahead and offer my postgame analysis now. In the 2008 Super Bowl, there were several companies who gambled $3 bazillion dollars in the hopes that they could curry the favor of the masses for a moment. There were a few that grabbed some attention for a short time. The rest lost.
(and the Patriots will win)