What if...? #6

Special early edition of What if?  With the Super Bowl completed and our Exclusive Feature, The Future of Podcasting starting on Monday, What if? makes a Sunday night appearance.

What if...you were a Super Bowl commercial armchair quarterback?

I know its not original, but there were some good thoughts I had while watching the commercials of this year's Super Bowl.  My quick hit list:

• definitely was "toned down" this year due to the threat of the FCC
• Budweiser makes a ton of money selling beer (how many were there?)
  
  • I was captivated by the soldiers returning home in the airport commercial
  • none of the others really stuck with me (skydiver, animals and others)
• Thank you Visa for bringing back Underdog!
• I really like the way McDonald's branded its fries with a theme, albeit odd with Abraham Lincoln shaped fry (laugh out loud funny to me when they cut to the guy bidding on-line for the fry..).  However, if this was their way of being hip, why not push the fact they have WiFi in the restaurants?
• Olympus' "groove" commercial made me rewind my TiVo
• Honda wants to be a major force in the pickup truck category with their new Ridgeline
• Fed Ex/Kinkos was a favorite of mine for the simple fact that their commercial referenced Smokey and the Bandit
• I love the way Cadillac pushed an emotional "connect" with the 3 Cars:  0 to 60 Under 5 Seconds campaign.  I want to test drive them!
• Ameriquest wasted their money.  I guess they wanted to "cut through" by using disturbing images with their Don't Judge too Quickly campaign.  They were the Half-Time sponsor as well, but got hardly any logo's or prepromotion

OK armchair quarterbacks, what are your thoughts on the ads?  Leave me your thoughts in the comments.

UPDATE
Matt has a good post on a Fox opinion survey highlighting the top 5 commercials from the Superbowl

[read] via

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tags:  superbowl | advertising | budweiser

Comments

[Christopher Bailey]

I figure the commercials I remember the next day are the ones that have some kind of staying power. Bonus points if I actually remember what they are pushing...

By far, my favs have to be the Fed-Ex Kinko commercial (hell, seeing Burt get kicked in the groin by a bear sent my tivo rewinding at least five times) and the Careerbuilder.com commercial with the monkeys (how many times have we thought we worked with a bunch of monkeys?).

I'm also a bit partial to the Bud Light commercials. They don't make me want to drink the beer (sort of a beer snob), but they're usually good for a laugh. Two noteworthy ones are:
Cedric's fantasy about the two gorgeous women and a Bud light only to quickly exchange the harpies for a dog and grill.
The guys at the game rubbing it in on their buddy back home who just happens to be getting one of the dude's beer and girlfriend.

Who wasted their money? I'm with you on the AmeriQuest ads. I guess I'm fickle - kicks to the groin = funny; baseball bat to the upper torso = not so funny. And the fact that I'm still not sure what the point of the commercials were means that they spent way too much money to sell me something I easily forgot the next day.

I also thought the GoDaddy.com commercial was just embarrassing for everyone involved. I know they were trying to be clever, but [wow] did it ever come off as crap. And I really have no inclination to visit the website. Yet, I get the feeling I'll be in the minority on this one.

BTW, anyone know where I can introduce my girls to Underdog? I'm already helping them out with Rocky and Bullwinkle and Underdog would be icing on the cake :)

[K. Todd Storch]

Its amazing how the topic of these commercials completely captivates everyone!

GoDaddy.com is probably the big "winner" from all of the media its getting talking about the 2nd spot that got pulled, etc. Great PR for them.

The Cedric commercials to me were very "been there/done that" and I didn't find them appealing at all. But that probably explains why I also love the kick in the crotch humor of the bear...!

Todd

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