By Tim Robertson
Fans often watch either a great Super Bowl game or fantastic Super Bowl commercials. Some years, both impress. Regrettably, Super Bowl XLI turned out different.
Sunday’s game, plagued by turnovers, bad snaps, lack of offense by the Bears, mediocre play by Indianapolis and an anti-climactic finish threw this game into the same heap as the Ravens-Giants game in 2001 and the Buccaneers-Raiders game in 2003. Forgettable.
What could have saved this game, and made four hours of sitting worthwhile, would have been the commercials.
Most years advertising departments come up with their best, funniest and most creative commercial for this night. With an estimated 90 million viewers and after writing a $2.6 million check, companies ought to come up with their best.
Translation: this means nothing viewers had already seen before and no boring car commercials talking about APR and down payments.
Citibank replayed a commercial off the bat about a man pretending to ride a bicycle. Viewers may have laughed a month ago, but like an episode of “Full House,” it gets old fast.
Creativity needs to be valued when developing a commercial. Viewers probably saw more ads with talking animals, from rabbits to lions, than any other year. Are talking animals still funny after all these years?
Despite some awful commercials, for instance the Blockbuster cartoon or the run-of-the-mill CBS spots, some ads caused a snicker here and there.
Having moved on from the “Hungry? Why Wait?” ads, Snickers’ commercial about two car mechanics kissing after mistakenly sharing the candy bar, then ripping hair out to show their “manliness” earned some laughs. For this year, it ranked pretty high, but nothing like the company’s classic “I’m Batman” spots from a few years back.
Again, Bud Light topped most online polls with their random commercials, in particular the “I throw rock” spot from the first half. Of course, with a Super Bowl-leading 10 advertisements, Budweiser sure as heck better come up with something good.
According to online voting sites Adbowl and Spotbowl, Anheuser-Busch had six and five commercials in the top 10, respectively, as of late Sunday night.
Surprisingly Pepsi, this year’s halftime show sponsor, didn’t feature its lead product and instead produced a few Sierra Mist commercials. The days of a kid stuck in a Pepsi bottle on the beach or the old-fashioned Pepsi music video ads seemed to have disappeared forever.
Meanwhile, Pepsi’s competitor advertised during the Super Bowl for the first time in 10 years, one of which paid homage to Black History Month and compared Bears coach Lovie Smith and Colts coach Tony Dungy to social black icons such as Jackie Robinson and Martin Luther King Jr. Dungy, with the 29-17 victory, became the first black coach to win a Super Bowl.
Whereas Snickers and Budweiser traditionally come up with impressive commercials, Careerbuilder.com’s “survive the work week” campaign served as this year’s commercial Cinderella. Jungle attacks and battles with office supplies proved creative, with trash cans bashed over heads and pens flying in all directions, but in the end ads like Budweiser’s “No speak English” ads with comedian Carlos Mencia proved too difficult to top.
Although the night showed a few bright spots (Devin Hester’s 92-yard opening kick-off return for six as well as Bud’s fist pound out, slap in commercial to name a few), disappointment ultimately filled the air.
Sheryl Crow’s Revlon advertisement became the epitome of a letdown and seemed to drag on far more than 30 seconds, unfortunately.
Garmin, a GPS navigation manufacturer, decided to feature a Power Rangers theme, certainly a waste of $2.6 million.
If a company wants to occupy multiple spots, then it needs to come up with different commercials. Offenders of the commercial repeat included Salesgenie.com and godaddy.com, although the latter’s ads avoided adding to its notorious Super Bowl resume with a surprisingly mellow commercial.
Just as Peyton Manning, the universal crowd favorite outside of New England, won the MVP simply because no one else earned it, Budweiser easily secured the 2007 commercial MVP award in a year of trite, disappointing advertisements.
Unfortunately for us, all we can do is, as Eagles fans always say: Wait till next year.