My Two Favorite Super Bowl Ads Last Night

William Sydney Porter

120 years ago, William Sydney Porter made his mark as a writer by creating stories with a surprise twist at the end. We know him today as O Henry. My two favorite commercials last night had the same "Aha!" effect that O Henry was famous. 

The first, if you watched the commercials, followed a motif that a friend of mine shared with me several years back. Claude is from Switzerland, and I don't know if this ad made American airwaves or not, but it was memorable even if I never saw it. 

He was at a movie theater where they run commercials while the theater seats get filled. On the screen it looked like a Marlboro commercial was beginning. The angle of the camera was down low as the famous emblem for Marlboro cigarets came riding toward the audience on a horse.

Suddenly the camera switches to the river and we see a man in a rowboat, the mascot for Camel cigarets, Joe camel rowing toward the shore. The natural reaction would be, "Is this a Marlboro commercial or a Camel commercial?" As the camera follows the rowboat toward the shore we see both company mascots. What's going on here? 

Finally, they're near enough to talk and one says to the other, "By the way, what tooth whitener do you use?" The other replies, holds out a tube and they both affirm it's the best.  

Well, that tooth whitener commercial came to mind after I watched the Miller Lite and Coors bar fight. Is it a Coors commercial or a Miller commercial. Naturally, this are the big kahunas in the major U.S. brands beer brawl. It really had me going. I almost wondered if they were getting ready to announce that Anheuser-Busch and Coors had merged. 

The spot begins with two guys seated at a bar. One turns to the camera and says, "For the first time in 30 years, Coors Light has an ad in the Super Bowl." The second guy swings around on his barstool and says, "Actually, this is a Miller Lite commercial." The first guy then slugs him in the face and a brawl ensues, with dramatic music. 

Coors commercial? Miller commercial? "Actually...." Watch it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe4zS3y9PeI

The other commercial is titled Jack's New Angle. You don't have to know who Jack is, but in this story he takes up the triangle as a musical instrument. It's a 90-second spot and hilarious, with shades of Being John Malkovich. Like the previous commercial cited here, it uses story-telling and humor to keep viewers' eyeballs engaged till the dramatic reveal at the end, another surprise ending with an "Aha!" Watch it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYPYfEVU62U

Now how fun was that? 

There was a lot of action in the Super Bowl ads last night. While some commercials worked better than others, it was fun seeing companies pulling out all the stops. 

Meantime, life goes on all around you. Laugh a little and it will lighten your load. 

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Did you watch the game? What were your favorite commercials?

Super Bowl Advertisers Get What They Paid For: A Game People Watched to the End

A nod to pollinators.

From before the opening kickoff, the advertising was a kick. Kudos to Secret for their Let's Kick Inequality ad before the kickoff. The timing of the ad was good for them because they didn't have to pay the full in-game price for the ad, yet you can be pretty sure everyone was watching as they put the ball through the goal posts. Watch The Secret Kicker.

When you think about the $5.2 million dollar price tag for the parking space alone (plus cost of production) this event is not for the little kids on the playground. But when you look at the size of some of these players (a few of these companies are Trillion dollar babies) you get the impression they could sneeze five million and not even notice.

This is an illustration of one trillion dollars. The little man in the lower left corner
is life sized. Next to him are two layers of skids of packets of hundred dollar bills.
Get the picture? It's a lot of money.

And so it is that we see tech gorillas Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft coming to play. Squarespace and Verizon round out the tech ads. Budweiser is a perennial player at the big game. Or rather, Anheuser-Busch since they were pushing Michelob Ultra and this Bud Light Seltzer which seems, well... different.

I thought the cross-promotions of brands in the Proctor & Gamble stable was cool. The guy with a stain on his shirt was clever. And what did you think of that Wal-Mart play with movie tie-ins. Watch Famous Visitors. They also had two other spots, flexing their muscles a little.

Speaking of movie tie-ins... "Ned! Is that you?" Yes, we re-lived the best parts of Groundhog Day with Bill Murray. It was hilarious and if you have a minute, I've embedded it below. 

This is just a graphic element.

Pepsi's Half-Time Show did the usual pyrotechnic thing with lascivious performers seeing how much they could get away with without being flagged as indecent. Pepsi spent $11 million to sponsor that halftime extravaganza. They also had ads for their other various brands from SodaStream, Cheetos, and Mountain Dew to Doritos and Sabra. There with something new in a black can, but that was two days ago and I forget.

Coca-Cola introduced its new Coke Energy line and Kellogg trotted out its Pringles and Pop-Tarts. (A first.)

The carmakers are ever present. Thank goodness we didn't see that stupid Chevy spot with the "real" people being "amazed" at their awards. Unforgettable because it was so nauseating. (Sorry guys. Go back to Heartbeat of America. Or is that just a slogan now because you ain't the heartbeat any more.)

So we saw Toyota, Hyundai, Jeep (my fave) Audi and even Porsche, fewer car spots than in years past.

Last but not least, Little Caesars made a first-time Super Bowl appearance. Congrats. I saw their ad in Friday's USA Today which promised a free pizza for everyone in the world if they texted that the Little Caesars ad was best. (Or something like that.) I meant to, but forgot.

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Google is one of those companies that made a name for itself without advertising, so it's interesting to see them just show up. Not everything they do succeeds (See: Google Flops & Fizzles) but if your company has a net worth of one trillion dollars (See graphic: What Does One Trillion Dollars Look Like) you must be doing something right. What's amazing in this story is that in 1986 there were dozens of search engines and Google didn't even exist. It was a crowded market in a very specific niche, yet they muscled their way in with a better concept that made it easier and faster for users to find what they were looking for. Two decades later they are being compared to monopolistic robber barons.

They have plenty of cash to play with--over $100 billion--so why not be part of the world's biggest party?

Here's an interesting article about how we might be watching the Super Bowl in the future... with hologram technology and other gizmos.

And finally, for Mac users, that epic ad that showed the real possibilities of building a brand with a single "shot heard round the world" --Watch 1984.



And so it goes.

What would your Super Bowl commercial look like if your were hired to be the executive creator for one of these brands? 

A New Cable Network Devoted to Advertising: The Ad Channel! Whatcha Think?

Can someone explain to me how an ad like this
is a form of manipulation?

Every once in a while, and again this weekend, I come across an article written by someone with a visceral hatred for advertising. In this case, the writer begins by stating that all advertising is manipulation.

Manipulation: the action of manipulating someone in a clever or unscrupulous way.
Manipulate: control or influence (a person or situation) cleverly, unfairly, or unscrupulously.

(Disclaimer: my career in advertising spanned more than 30 years.)

One line from the Adbusters Manifesto reads,  "To fight the mental takeover of an ever-present ad industry..."

Is the advertising industry trying to take over our minds? O.K., yes, advertisers do have an agenda that has to do with your mind. Or rather, businesses have an agenda, by means of their advertising  and that is this. When you think of going out to eat, a restaurant wants THEIR NAME branded on your brain. That is, they want the top of mind position in your thoughts. When you get hungry and don't feel like making a meal, they want you to think of them as a favorable alternative. Same goes for when you need to pick up something from the hardware store, or choose a bank, or buy a car. Businesses do want their stores or products to be something that "comes to mind" as a solution to your perceived problem or need. Will you be drinking beer in front of a football game today? Budweiser wants to you "think Bud."

This top of mind awareness has to come from somewhere. That's why restaurants and other businesses have "Grand Openings." It creates an occasion to get the name out there. so people know the business exists. To make the opening grand they need to get the word out, which is achieved in a variety of ways using the media. Ads, radio spots, television spots, if possible some coverage in the newspapers, all serving as a kind of invitation to the party.

People who do a lot of interstate travel have no doubt had the experience of being hungry and wondering where they will stop to eat. I've found billboards, hated by many, to be quite useful in these situations. "Next Cracker Barrel: 21 miles." Why is this such a problem? Does Cracker Barrel manipulate people into stopping? Those billboards just let people know that there's a Cracker Barrel up ahead and the memory of your last experience, if it was good, will do the rest.

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It may be time to start thinking about Xmas Shopping.

Let's narrow our scope to television advertising. I found this David Ignatius op-ed piece quite telling. It's cut out from a yellowed, aged newspaper and regrettably I'm not sure how aged, but I'm guessing mid-90s. He begins with this:

"New evidence (as if we ever needed more) that business has taken over the American mind: Surfing the channels in these dog days of summer, it's hard not to conclude that the advertisements on TV are better than the programs."

I don't believe he's the only person to make this observation. That's why instead of blocking ads, why not block the shows? In fact, what if we create a new Cable Network called The Advertising Channel.

I've already begun outlining the programming.
1. Beer Commercials, with whole episodes devoted to different brands. The opening week would be a full hour devoted to Budweiser Super Bowl commercials. Who wouldn't want to watch this?
2. Oldies Hour, featuring television commercials from the 40s and 50s.
3. 60s and 70s commercials.
4. 80s and 90s commercials
5. Car Commercials. It could be used in schools to teach the history of the automobile.
6. Banned Commercials. Commercials that went a little too far.
7. European Beer Commercials.
8. European Oldies Hour.
9. European Commercials Banned in the USA.
10. A program about the ad agencies that made the commercials. Week One: The Marlboro Man.
11. One of the programs could feature a host, seated by a fireside, looking spiff, who introduces commercials one at a time, telling details about the making of it, the duration of the spot, etc. One week could be about famous people who starred in TV commercials. Orson Welles, for example.
12. Movie Trailers. We can show current, recent and past trailers. This program could also have some kind of talking heads who provide stats on how effective the trailers were at filling seats on opening weekend. Maybe that show could be called Box Office. Or maybe you've got a better name, I'm open.
13. Maybe a show in which teams compete to come up with the best commercial for a new product. People who lose get fired. (Oh, was that already done?)
14. What about a show in which people are selected to get an inside look at how commercials are made on Madison Avenue. Modern, not nostalgic. "Making Commercials With The Stars."
15. How about a show devoted to advertising before there was television? It could be a history of print advertising from 1900 to the Present.
16. "Scandals" might make an entertaining segment. I am referring to advertising related scandals, not the Jimmy Swaggert kind.  Here are a few, and there are plenty more.
17 And finally, perhaps a curated program called The Clown Show in which we feature political ads from the past. 60 years of political advertising from local to national. There's a whole dumpster full of these stored somewhere, I am sure.

* * * *
I mentioned my idea to a friend. "What about this? A cable channel that only airs commercials."

My friend replied, "I'd get the buttered popcorn out for that one."

He went on to say, "Half the time the commercials are better than the show you're watching. They have higher production values."

* * * *
While researching for this blog post I learned that the Networks are aware of the problem of too many commercials. Here are some sample headlines I came across, the content self-explanatory:

--TV networks shed ad time as consumers skip commercials

--Even TV networks agree there are too many commercials - Marketplace

--Heavy Commercial Loads Are Killing Basic Cable 10/18/2017

--TV's Ad Apocalypse Is Coming - The Atlantic

Would this idea work as a new cable channel? I dunno. It was fun noodling the idea of it. Probably too much risk involved for all the work required to pull it off.

* * * *

SO, HERE'S A TAKEAWAY FOR YOU.

This has to do with online advertising, and specifically Facebook. Did you know you can turn off ads that appear on your Facebook page? Or at least restrict them somewhat. Here are your written instructions.

1. Open your Facebook page and click “settings,” and then “ads.”

2. Click on the “ads based on my use of websites and apps” setting and press the “choose setting” button and select “off.”

3. Enjoy.

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Follow me on Twitter. @ennyman3 

Super Bowl Advertising: The Rules Have Changed

For more than two decades the one USA Today that I go out of my way to purchase is the Friday edition leading up to Super Bowl Sunday. Not because I'm trying to get acquainted with the teams and make predictions about the game, but because I’m an ad man and I pretty much live for those expensive commercials.

Don’t blink. At $3.5 million per 30-second spot, you’re missing $116,667 per second of ad space that was purchased for this weekend’s big game, Super Bowl XLVI.

But this year, something amazing has happened. The rules have changed. It used to be that commercials were kept under wraps until their very brief moment in the sun. Like a rare bird, you had to be paying attention in order to catch those Clydesdales or flying monkeys or those GoDaddy girls. This year things have been turned on their heads. The advertisers have been falling all over themselves to get us to see those super-expensive spots ahead of the game. Now wouldn’t it be funny if this actually turned out to be detrimental to NFL Football? How many millions who already saw the commercials skip the game itself?

As the New York Times put it, “The one thing missing from this year’s commercials: Surprise. That’s because advertisers are looking for Green in advance by taking advantage of social media to make their stories go viral.”

Most, if not all, the advertisers have been releasing their spots on YouTube well in advance of the coin toss. The Camaro spot was released on January 19, seventeen days before Sunday’s game. And Kia began showing its spot in 18,000 theaters around the country yesterday. Oof da.
I myself have watched several of the spots, and as usual they are not all Oscar winners. The Vampires spot by Audi was sort of clever even if a bit dark, but I never saw Ferris Bueller’s Day Off so I didn’t really fasten on to the parody by … who was it? Honda?

And this is what I don’t get. I owned a Honda, and the engineering is great. Tell me something about the car. How do you make such great cars? When you hire a movie star like Matthew Broderick, all you’re doing is saying, “We don’t have a story, so we will position ourselves like all the other car makers who don’t have a story.” What’s with that? But then again, Super Bowl commercials don't seem to be about educating customers. It's entertainment. The obligation seems to be to get people to talking about it afterwards. Well, that used to be the goal. Now it seems to be to get people talking about it before the game.

I liked the Seinfeld ad for Acura titled Transactions. It makes the car something desirable, something to crave.

You might say that all these pre-game ads are becoming the big story of the week… except there’s still another big story overshadowing even this. Where will Peyton Manning be playing when the 2012 season begins? He’s been a great QB, but you’d think he could walk on water the way the sports show talking heads are gobbling about him. He’s here, he’s there… he’s everywhere.

Meanwhile, in just over 48 hours we’ll see the only real showdown that matters. “Eli’s Coming” has to be the Manning anthem. We’ll soon see how quick and accurate Brady’s guns are.

Top right: The pundit, yours truly, ennyman.