2.06.2006

super bowl commercial review

First of a couple posts (if I get around to both) expanding upon and/or organizing thoughts already expressed on The Message Board. Please forgive me for treating ads here as something to be taken for granted and not looked at with a harshly critical eye. To be honest, I hate the fact that we look to advertising as one of our main sources of "art" or whatever you might call it in mainstream pop culture, but it's a fact right now, and I'm dealing with it as such. I'll save the paradigm-shift shit for another day.

Without further ado:

- I was pretty disappointed that there was only one King appearance. For the first two-thirds or so of the BK commercial I wasn't into it, but then when all the chorus girls were stacked up as a sandwich, and the King appeared, I will admit, I chortled.

- My impression is that Godaddy drained their advertising budget on two Super Bowl spots and couldn't afford to go out of house for the actual ad, and consequently their spot didn't really make sense at all. I get the reference, but there seemed to be no actual plot?

- The Budweiser Spots were "cute" but not that impressive. I thought the one with the zebra doing the call review a couple weeks ago (perhaps originally aired last Super Bowl?) was a lot better than the ones they showed during this game.

- The fedex spot at the beginning probably wasn't worth the amount it cost to make, but the dude getting crushed by a mammoth (or whatever) after he was fired and kicked a lizard was pretty funny.

- The Ameriquest ads in which the doctor kills a fly and says "that killed him" while the patient's family walks into the room, and the one with the man and woman on the plane were pretty good -- I liked the first one better, I guess for shock value?

- The new razor with a total of five blades is intimidating and scary, and the ad was so long and built so much suspense, we had time to guess what it was for before we were introduced to the product. I said Icy Hot, or maybe the Miami Hurricanes, others guessed Quizno's. We were all sadly mistaken.

- "Brown and Bubbly"?!?!?! Clearly an attempt at self-deprecation and in-joke style anti-advertising (like the Uncola), but one that I can't see lasting long. The first Diddy spot came around to be pretty funny, though.

- The monster/robot breeding spot for the Hummer was disgusting and incensing but, as Joe Deefer points out, completely apropos.