Did you like the 'Hyku Pre-Game Show'? Oh wait I guess my sponsorship check didn't get there in time so they used Full Throttle instead.
Here are my thoughts on the commercials from Super Bowl XL (that's 40 for the non-Roman readers). This is not a complete list of all the spots, but it is in chronological order. For more in-depth coverage you can check out AdJab's SBXL coverage. RexBlog is also live-blogging. Like AdJab, AdRants is doing a bit more in-depth analysis. I'm sure there will be plenty of post-game discussion about the clips. Overall the bar is set very high for Super Bowl commercials. You've got to make them memorable while trying not to over do the shock factor.
Update: Google Video has all most of the commercials online
Bud Light - Hidden Bud Light (6/10): VIEW ONLINE - ho-hum, there were some funny moments, but in hindsight I would have led with the 'Magic Fridge' spot.
Burger King Whopperettes (4/10): VIEW ONLINE - Didn't really impress me, but my 4-year-old said it was "Yummy!" BK should have had a Birkenstock wearing 'veggie burger' girl in the background.
Sierra Mist (6/10): Anything with Jim Gaffigan is funny in my book, but unfortunately anything with Kathy Griffin is not funny.
Bud Light -Magic Fridge (9/10): VIEW ONLINE - Good stuff, I especially liked the quick shot of the guys praying to the table at the end.
Toyota Camry Hybrid (2/10): VIEW ONLINE - Didn't really leave a lasting impression on me, it makes me say, 'why spend $2.5 million on that?'
FedEx Caveman (9/10): VIEW ONLINE - Funny spot that keeps with FedEx's humorous tradition during the Super Bowl. I especially liked the 'FedEx doesn't exist' - 'Not my problem' exchange.
Bud Light - Bear Chase (5/10): VIEW ONLINE - Interesting premise, but I was expecting to see the bear drink some Rainier Beer!
Diet Pepsi - Diddy (4/10): VIEW ONLINE - What a waste of Jay Mohr, and oh year Puff/P Diddy/Diddy was in it.
Alleve - Leonard Nemoy (5/10): Cute, but not memorable. At first I thought it was going to be a Priceline commercial with Shatner popping out somewhere.
Ameriquest - That Killed Him (6/10): This is the same as last year, funny commercial but how does it relate to mortgage services?
Bud Light - Fixing the Roof (7/10): VIEW ONLINE - Another cute spot, but not drop-dead funny.
Diet Pepsi - Jackie Chan (5/10): Man I'm tough to impress, another waste of Jay Mohr's time.
Cadillac CTS (5/10): It's tough to get excited about a car that's a few years old. Granted they are advertising a new high-performance model, but at least they didn't use an Led Zeppelin music.
Budweiser - Goat Streaker (9/10): VIEW ONLINE - At first I thought, 'this commercial is a few years old' but nope....there's a goat streaker! Goatse? 'I didn't need to see that!'
ESPN Mobile (7/10): Interesting from a technical standpoint, i.e. getting all that action on the screen, but of course the big question is how will all that action translate on to the tiny screen of a mobile phone?
CareerBuilder.com - Monkey Celebration (6/10): I guess that actor has a solid gig year after year to appear in CareerBuilder's spots.
Cadillac Escalade Fashion Show (6/10): VIEW ONLINE - Creative in the sense that it kept you wondering what it was going to be a commercial for.
Dove Self Esteem Fund (5/10): VIEW ONLINE - Once again I thought of another commercial first....was it a new Monster ad? Nope Dove.
Ford Escape Hybrid (8/10): VIEW ONLINE - I guess when you grow watching the Muppets anything with Kermit is good :-)
GoDaddy.com (5/10): VIEW ONLINE - Channeling the characters that Tom Hanks and Jon Lovitz did on SNL...."Wasn't classy last year, isn't classy this year"
Gillette Fusion (7/10): VIEW ONLINE - Hey look a particle accelerator! No wait a five-blade razor, the Fusion! Too bad for Gillette I just released my 6-blade razor. It comes packaged with my 7 Minute Abs video.
Halftime, maybe Ben will update his blog during the Stones show.
Ameriquest Airline Fun (7/10): Once again funny but off-topic. Does sex sell mortgages?
Motorola Pebl (6/10): A cellphone....evolution or intelligent design? If you follow the gadget sites you've seen this phone for quite a while.
Sharpie Retractible (6/10): Can they use the Captain Hook character without Disney's consent?
Bud Clydesdale (10/10): VIEW ONLINE - From an emotional hook standpoint this is the best commercial so far. Reminds me of the Bud Troops ad from last year.
Nationwide (3/10): VIEW ONLINE - Is SNL doing their spots?
Hummer - Little Monster (1/10): VIEW ONLINE - Nothing worse than using your air time to show a commercial that is what 6 months old?
Practical Solutions Cleaner (7/10): VIEW ONLINE - Creative and the creativity actually relates to the product.
CareerBuilder.com Monkey Work (7/10): Like the Hummer spot above I thought, why repeat an old commercial, but wait there are donkeys!
Taco Bell (4/10): Where is the dog? Doesn't Taco Bell still use the dog?
SlimFast (3/10): Waste of air time.
Gillette Fusion (1/10): ho-hum, who wants 5 blades when you can have 6?
Toyota Tacoma (2/10): Did anybody else think of last year's tsunami when they saw this ad? Gave me the creeps.
Sprint Wireless (6/10): They almost lost me till the Benny Hill reference came in. I wonder if anybody under 30 knew that was from Benny Hill?
These next few are local ad inserts
Dodge Trucks (1/10): Why!!!!!! This commercial is so old!
Publix Supermarkets (3/10): Publix usually has great commercials (think Holidays and salt/pepper shakers) but this one looked like a rush production job.
Back to national spots....
Emerald Nuts (6/10): VIEW ONLINE - One of the fun things about the EN ads is trying to figure out what the acronym will be. This one was a bit more difficult because it wasn't EN, it was EMERALD NUTS.
Budweiser Stadium (8/10): VIEW ONLINE - Creative ad, I had thoughts of Yale's Harvard Sucks bit.
MasterCard (9/10): Ah Richard Dean Anderson back in the MacGyver role. They even worked in the paper clip reference as well!
ESPN Mobile 2 (5/10): Nothing new, saw it in the first half
Honda Ridgeline (7/10): VIEW ONLINE - Creative metaphor, but will it sell the hardcore trucker crowd?
Beer Institute (5/10): Not really sure what they're advertising, but did you catch the Guinness clover at the very end?
World Baseball Classic (2/10): VIEW ONLINE - I think no matter how hard they try to sell the WBC it won't fly, players are dropping out left and right and it's only February.
GoDaddy Replay (1/10): VIEW ONLINE - I guess when you sell cheap domains you get cheap commercials.
Outback Steakhouse (2/10): Another local brand trying things out, but not a very impressive showing.
Way to go Steelers!!!!
Visitor Comments
Great Job with your coverage of the Super Bowl commercials!
Posted by: DR U | February 5, 2006 8:30 PM
Hi Josh, Thanks for letting me know what I missed. A friend and I were talking about our favorite AB ads and the memory of the post 9/11 one came to mind. Went to budweiser.com to see if they had an ad archive and though I have not gotten that deep in to the site yet, here is a nice link to the ads from tonight, http://budweiser.com/commercials_06/start.html?c_id=null
Mark
Posted by: Mark | February 5, 2006 10:39 PM
Thanks for recapping. I fell asleep after halftime. The Stones suck.
(While in college, I completely wanted to be a copywriter and work on the Budweiser commercials for the SuperBowl. Maybe in another life.) Anyway, I'm totally with you on the Bud Clydesdale and the Goat Streaker.
For the most part, I don't think the ads (other than Budweiser who always rocks) were up to par when compared to past SuperBowl commercials. I was disappointed.
Posted by: Jen | February 6, 2006 1:06 PM
Wow. So I guess I didn't have to even watch the Super Bowl last night. I could have come here today and seen all the commercials. Oh well I quit after the Rolling Stones anyway.
I was curious to see what you thought about the Dove commercial. I wrote a post before the game speculating on its choice of the Super Bowl spot. I guess a 5 out of 10 is fair. My roomates (all girls) oohed and ahhed about how sweet it was. I wasn't sure how the male audience would take to it. Then again, how great can anyone feel about soap. I am not sure they got their money's worth, but at least it wasn't a GoDaddy ad. Awful.
What a great idea to track all of the commercials. With all the hype these days, that is why most people watch anyway. I was disappointed on the whole. It seemed like most of the ads were trying to look like someone else (Excluding the magic fridge- by far the best). I love to see funny ones, but it is still an ad not a sitcom. There aren't too many of these that I could remember the brand from. Well there is always another $2.5 million to spend on thirty seconds next year.
Posted by: LC | February 6, 2006 2:37 PM
WOW!! I'm impressed! You took a lot of time and energy to write down all the ads, the companies, give them a rating and give a little description about each one. It took me awhile to get to the end of your post because I went and looked at all the commercials you had linked to. I did not watch the majority of the super bowl because it was my 21st birthday and the Colts did not make it. But I did catch part of the second half and some of the commercials.
My favorite, by far, was the Clydesdale Budweiser commercial. Now I am a girl and yes I picked the tear-jerker ad. I thought it was real cute and left a memorable feeling at the end. There were not a lot of hilarious commercials this year as there has been in the past. I did like the CareerBuilder.com commercials. The monkey one was pretty funny and then when the second one came on, I thought why would they show the same one again and waste $2.5 million on that. That was a good idea though to use the donkeys. People remember the monkeys and the donkeys and it's for the same company.
I appreciate this post a lot because it caught me up on what I missed during the super bowl in a simple and convenient way.
Posted by: Heather | February 7, 2006 4:57 PM
Excellent idea! I always enjoy hearing (or reading) what other people think about these high-dollar ads. I thought it was interesting that you gave only one commercial a score of 10...and that it was the Clydesdale commercial. When I first read over your ratings I didn't even remember this commercial so I went to Google and watched it. I thought it was nice and sweet, but for the Super Bowl? It seemed slow and boring for such a high-paced event. I vaguely remember seeing it during the game, but it seemed that everyone I was with lost interest and ignored it. I think light-hearted, funny approaches are more appropriate for the 'Super Bowl atmosphere'.
I also found it interesting that the Whopperettes commercial only received a four. I do think that the commercial was strange and somewhat dumb. My friends and I were saying "What the hell is this?" throughout the entire commercial, however it is an ad we all remembered. Isn't one of the main purposes for the ads to be remembered and associate with a product? I think this commercial was effective in doing this.
I completely agree with your ratings on the H3 and Dodge ads. If you are going to spend millions of dollars for one ad, at least attempt to come up with something new. We have all seen the old commercials; and I doubt that the extra millions these companies paid to get time during the Super Bowl are going to result in higher sales or a higher recall rate among viewers...waste of money!
Overall, some ads were good…and some not so much. I can’t wait to see what next year’s Super Bowl will offer in the way of advertising.
Posted by: Tiffany | February 8, 2006 6:08 PM
I don't have cable and one thing that I don't miss is commercials.
Posted by: Rose DesRochers | February 9, 2006 3:29 PM