Oh hey there.
You may (probably not) have noticed we haven't posted in a while. But if there was one thing that was going to drag us out of retirement, it was another Super Bowl with its terrible, terrible "event" advertising. So of course here we are.
The Apple 1984 Memorial Award for Least Shitty Ad
Winner: BMW
Celebrity cameos are rarely inspiring. And it's slightly annoying for BMW to compare its electric car to the entire internet. But despite that, this ad is pretty clever. The Gumbel/Couric clip is infamous for how hilariously tone-deaf it sounds twenty years later (let's face it, it sounded tone-deaf five years later), and BMW does a pretty good job playing it off against the continuing struggle that people have with getting into the concept of electric cars. (While no one is quite as confused about them as this ad, or that old Chevy Volt one, would imply, it's certainly true that they have not gained the traction they probably should.) Also, this is an ad that is VERY direct about its product, a relative rarity during the Super Bowl. Credit where credit is due.
Most Overproduced Ad
Winner: Mophie
Mophie should also probably win an award that we don't give out (although the Cheapest Budget award gets halfway there) called "Who knew that was something that could afford to advertise during the Super Bowl?" But really, just look at this thing. All that CGI. All those apocalyptic sets. They had to build at least one set that could rotate, by the looks of it. And for what? A mediocre joke about God's phone battery running low. (And they didn't even go for the bonus "Me darn it" joke! What's up with that?) Also, doesn't God live up there? Like, he has a power cord, right? This premise isn't even internally consistent.
Cheapest Budget/Clumsiest Execution Award
Winner: Chevrolet
Frankly, Chevy's "You know you want a truck" pitch annoyed me all night. This probably wasn't the worst of their ads, but considering that nearly all of it is a black screen with text on it? It's a shoo-in for Cheapest Budget. Also, the suggestion that I go sit in a car to watch the Super Bowl is entirely comical. Why wouldn't I just go out somewhere at that point? What if I'm hosting a Super Bowl party? Complete nonsense. I suppose it gets its point across - this truck has built-in wi-fi! - but it does so in the laziest fashion possible.
Worst Use of "Humor" Award
Winner: Pizza Hut
This one actually aired before the Super Bowl, but it came on again during the game, so here it is. I must admit I don't totally hate this ad, but it makes several key mistakes. For one thing, I find it strange that the ad makes a completely unattributed reference to the Dez Bryant non-catch in the NFC Divisional round game between the Cowboys and Packers yet thinks you WON'T know who Rex Ryan is. (If you need to have a character say your celebrity cameo's name out loud, you should not be using that celebrity for your cameo. Also, if you don't know who Rex Ryan is, will hearing his name help you? It's like this is just to impress the non-football fans. "I don't know who that dude is, but he must be a famous coach because they said his name out loud! Pizza Hut is obviously great!") But the simple reason it ends up in this spot? The utterly gratuitous nut-shot, which is only there in an attempt for the cheapest possible joke. You didn't have to go there, Pizza Hut.
Flimsiest Pretense Award
Winner: Game of War
Word to the wise: "Free to play" means very little coming from an ad for a game that evidently had FOUR AND A HALF MILLION BUCKS to drop on this ad (and that's just for the ad space itself). But seriously, look at the "game play" at the end of the ad. That's what the game looks like. It doesn't look like a complex battle on a movie set. And it SURE doesn't have anything to do with Kate Upton's heaving bosom. But, give it to these guys: they know who they're marketing to.
The Carlos Mencia Book Prize for the Most Egregious Use of B-List Celebrities
Winner: T-Mobile
This is always one of the most competitive categories, because advertisers seem convinced that as long as you vaguely recognize a person in their ad, you're more likely to buy their product. Snickers inserting Danny Trejo and Steve Buscemi into the Brady Bunch - a double "Hey I know those things/people!" - was a strong contender, especially since that "You're not you when you're hungry" gimmick is wearing super thin. Lindsay Lohan's appearance in an Esurance ad was also right up there (and man, Lohan is looking rough). But I had to go with T-Mobile because "egregious" is right there in the name of the award. And why did these mildly famous people need to be in this ad? At least the Snickers ad is dependent on having famous people in it. The only joke here that is even remotely dependent on these women being sort of famous is the idea that they MIGHT have mansions (albeit not actually having them). But it's still not necessary. Any two commercial actresses could have handled this and probably would have come cheaper. Maybe they wrote this ad themselves? That's about the only explanation I can think of.
The Bad Idea Jeans Award for Most Epic Miscalculation
Winner: Nationwide
If you were on Twitter during the game, you would have noticed that this almost immediately became one of the most talked-about ads. And not in a good way. I'm actually reminded quite a bit of the ad we started this category for: that Groupon ad from a few years ago that actually ran in the opposite fashion. That one pretended to be serious, then pulled the rug out and made a joke out of its subject. This ad, meanwhile, starts with a whimsical premise and then rug-pulls into abject horror. The bigger problem, of course, is that this is an insurance company - in other words, you give them money to cover your losses if something bad happens. You know, something like your KID DYING. Nationwide claims that this was just about "starting a conversation," but conversations aren't normally started by warning someone about their child dying and then staring at them until they back away uncomfortably.
SkyMall Championship Trophy
Winner: TurboTax
As always, the SkyMall trophy goes to the weirdest attempt to sell a product. And as always, you could frankly give this to almost any Super Bowl ad. Skittles is pretty much a lifetime WTF achievement winner at this point, for example. But I had to go with TurboTax here, because... um. The premise of this ad is that if TurboTax had existed in 1776, the American Revolution wouldn't have happened. Which, uh, means we would all be living as British subjects right now. Was this ad written by Benedict Arnold? Bonus points for how overdone this ad is. You went to all that trouble and literally the only message is "TurboTax makes doing your taxes easier," which is a message I think most people get simply from hearing the name TurboTax. Coulda saved you NINE MILLION BUCKS since apparently this ad was sixty seconds long? This ad also sucks because of how weirdly glib it is. "Sure the US tax code is notoriously byzantine, but at least we don't charge you to file!" Way to clear the lowest possible bar, dudes.
Worst Super Bowl Ad of 2015
Winner: Bud Light
Plenty of strong contenders for this one as well. Could've been the Fiat ad that was basically a nine-million-dollar dick joke. Could've been the Mercedes-Benz ad that rewrites the ending of the Tortoise and the Hare so that the tortoise not only wins but also gets to fuck the hare's wife for some reason. Could've been the Fifty Shades of Grey or Ted 2 trailers just on principle because I can't fucking believe EITHER of those movies exists. Or it could have been the mawkish claptrap that was McDonald's pretending it cares about you as anything other than a revenue stream. But in the end, I had to go with Bud Light.
As I tweeted, "Bud Light: the perfect beer for when you are so clearly an actor it's painful." I don't know why they even bothered saying "Hidden cameras!" at the beginning as if the way the commercial proceeds is going to lead me to think I'm actually watching events that just spontaneously unfolded. Well, obviously they didn't - even if this were real, Bud Light had to set them up. But you know what I mean. Listen to that guy's incredibly unconvincing response when he comes across a giant quarter sitting on the sidewalk. But then, when you're tasked with being handed a Bud Light and selling the line "This is all I've wanted all day," I can see where it would be hard to convince. Look, this concept was kind of funny (if similarly unconvincing) the first time they tried it, with that dude bouncing from one random encounter to the next. But this is literally one thing - Human Pac-Man - being played by a guy who isn't famous but also does not come across as a convincingly real person who was actually just thrown into this weird situation. Also, Human Pac-Man isn't that funny or interesting. Also this ad is NINETY SECONDS LONG. Bud Light spent $13.5 million to remind me that their product exists and that there are people out there who are so desperate for shitty beer that they'll leave a bar they just walked into, walk down the street, blunder into a human-sized video game that Anheuser-Busch could get the rights to, and then act super excited because as their prize for having to go through all this rigmarole they received ONE BOTTLE of shitty beer. Congrats, Bud Light: your tedious slog through a fake urban wonderland was the worst Super Bowl ad of 2015.
Showing posts with label are you ready for some football(-related shills)?. Show all posts
Showing posts with label are you ready for some football(-related shills)?. Show all posts
Monday, February 2, 2015
Monday, February 6, 2012
Super Bored Awards V
Four years ago, the Giants and Patriots met in the Super Bowl, and we published our first Super Bored Awards. This year, the Giants and Patriots met in the Super Bowl again, and here we are with the fifth installment of our yearly look at the worst of the Super Bowl ads. It was sort of a dull year for Super Bowl ads, but I feel like I say that every year, so let's just dispense with the pleasantries. Even if this year's crop of ads wasn't thrillicious, it sure didn't leave us wanting.
The Apple 1984 Memorial Award for Least Shitty Ad
Winner: Pepsi Max
Quivering: Well, we named this award "Least Shitty Ad" for a reason. And this year, perhaps more than ever, it was a real struggle to find an ad we didn't hate. Pepsi has had quite a few of these Pepsi/Coke delivery guy ads (and they've used "Your Cheating Heart" before, too). It's not a bad idea - at least it has a product-based message. This particular version speaks to product benefits as well as product differentiation (lots of Pepsi taste, no calories, better than Coke Zero). The ending is relatively funny - the cameo with Regis is a little over the top, but given the fact that this is the Super Bowl, you have to expect something like that. Overall, it's a fine effort. The Camry Effect commercial was well done, but not quite believable, and the brown M&M commercial was okay, but still goofy (and we're just not fans of that whole M&Ms as living creatures concept). Overall, Pepsi Max edged out the weak competition to win Least Shitty Ad - but don't feel too good for PepsiCo until you read all the way to the end.
Most Overproduced Ad
Winner: Chevrolet
Windier: In the run-up to the Super Bowl, Ford got pissed and demanded that NBC and/or GM pull this ad, though it obviously didn't happen. You can see why they might have been upset. You can also see what makes this ad overproduced. Look at how much must have been spent on set design. And to what end? The commercial really says nothing about Chevy trucks. I know they describe themselves as "the most dependable and longest-lasting" but anyone can toss out adjectives like that, especially when it depends on what standard you're applying (in its beef, Ford claimed that it had more trucks with 250,000+ miles on them still on the road than any other automaker). It basically comes down to Chevy calling its trucks apocalypse-proof (a silly, unsupportable assertion) and taking a cheap shot at Ford. Was that really worth the effort?
Also, where are the wives/children? Or is there just something else going on here that I don't really want to know about? "Where's Dave? He knew we needed six guys for the ideal post-apocalyptic circle-jerk! Man, now I'm going to have to stand all funny."
Cheapest Budget/Clumsiest Execution Award
Winner: TaxACT
Quivering: Around 30 years ago, a young Will Shortz (well before he was crossword editor at the New York Times) submitted a puzzle he had constructed to the NYT editor at the time, a stodgy, mustachioed relic named Eugene T. Maleska. Shortz's crossword was rejected because it had the word "belly button" in the grid. Maleska felt that people doing the crossword puzzle while sipping their morning coffee would find the mental image of a belly button to be objectionable. Well, times have changed and now the navel plays a much more agreeable role in our society. But do you know what doesn't play an agreeable role in our society? Urine. Urine isn't fun to think about at any time. Which is why TaxACT's concept for this commercial is such a head-scratcher.
This commercial certainly looked cheap, but it was its crude toilet humor that sealed its selection for clumsiest execution. I just can't believe that there wasn't a better idea for a commercial about a tax filing website. What people will remember about TaxACT, if they remember anything at all, will be "Oh yeah, the kid who peed in the pool." It won't be "free tax return" or "no restrictions, rebates or gimmicks", or "TaxACT is the best tax site." It'll just be "piss." Please tell me how that's going to help anyone.
Worst Use of "Humor" Award
Winner: Acura
Windier: Several years ago, my (now infrequent) co-author Quivering wrote one of my favorite posts on this site, about maybe the worst ad we've ever covered: the Jerry Seinfeld/Bill Gates laugh-a-minute extravaganza for Microsoft. A decade removed from his heyday, Seinfeld was excruciatingly unfunny in the ad, leading me to write the following in the comments:
"I can't decide whether Seinfeld himself has become impossibly unfunny over the last ten years... or whether it was the brilliant, brilliant minds at CPB who wrote the awful Seinfeld-style ersatz comedy in this ad that makes him sound like a terrible parody version of himself."
Well, having seen Seinfeld in this year's Acura ad, I think we have our answer, and for once, Crispin Porter & Bogusky aren't to blame. Don't get me wrong, I don't think Seinfeld wrote this commercial himself. But there's something extremely sad about watching him try to relive past glories with graying hair and a delivery that simply lacks the pop it had when he was doing a pretty good series of American Express commercials in the late 90s. Also, when an ad has "web extras," that's almost never a good sign.
Why, just look at all the hilarious quips that had to be cut - CUT! - from the final product! I'm pretty sure Seinfeld's laugh at the end of that video is one of the few this spot earned from anyone, anywhere. You have to do more than trot out ancient pop culture references to be funny - just ask Matthew Broderick and Honda. The cherry on top of this bowl of shit masquerading as a sundae, however, is the sudden appearance of Jay Leno, a man who has actually gone longer since last being funny than Seinfeld himself has. Why is he there, anyway? I know he's a car buff, but does anyone care about that? If Seinfeld was going to echo the "Newman!" line, wouldn't it have been at least as funny to have Wayne Knight show up? I'm pretty sure he would have come more cheaply than Leno.
All right, enough about this garbage. Ah, one more.
Frankly, Seinfeld probably did come up with most/all of this material himself. And it's terrible. The best part is that NO ONE IN THE COMMERCIAL THINKS HE'S FUNNY, and he's trying to impress them. Meanwhile, I'm sitting at home, getting more and more tired of him. Money well spent, Acura. I guess when you're selling a car that doesn't really exist yet, there's only so much you can do.
Flimsiest Pretense Award
Winner: TeleFlora
Quivering: The reason this goes to Teleflora, and not Fiat (which basically ran the same ad), is that Fiat at least had a modicum of irony (at the very end). Teleflora's commercial is just a balls-to-the-wall fuckfest. "Give and you shall receive," "Happy Valentine's night," images of lipstick application and stilettos - this is the commercial equivalent of a porno that starts with a pizza delivery guy knocking at the door. Teleflora's subtlety reminded me of this recent South Park. Even within the context of Super Bowl ads, Teleflora makes GoDaddy commercials look like Bronte novels. And also? Everyone knows that diamonds are the only surefire way to get that blow job.
The Carlos Mencia Book Prize for Most Egregious Use of B-List Celebrities
Winner: Skechers
Windier: There were a lot of potential candidates here, really - Century 21's use of Donald Trump, Apolo Ohno and Deion Sanders made for another good one - but I couldn't turn down Skechers solely for how gratuitous, pointless and just plain lame theirs was. Mark Cuban, really? That was your best idea for a coda? And "What do you mean you want a new contract?" is a crushingly unfunny joke. Having the chubby dog turn out to be owned by an actual athlete would have been more clever, though I guess most athletes already have shoe deals with companies whose athletic shoe brands are slightly more valuable than Skechers'. Then, of course, there's the idea that Skechers is comparing its customers to tubby bulldogs... but then we're no longer talking about pointless semi-celebrity cameos.
The Bad Idea Jeans Award for Most Epic Miscalculation
Winner: Bud Light
Knitwear: While this is nowhere near the level of the ad we created this award for (last year's Groupon disaster), it is kind of a bummer that Bud Light is championing a great cause like adopting a rescue dog by implying that the best thing to do with a free, mangy orphan puppy is to turn it into your personal beer slave, Manchurian Candidate-style. I know this ad is supposed to seem fun, but I just feel sad for the dog. He's been so heavily conditioned that he can't even tell the difference between someone calling "Here, Wego!" and someone just yelling out "Here we go," forcing him to roll in a keg at least twice his size just to accommodate the latest round of partygoers. Talk about a dog that could stand to be rescued!
SkyMall Championship Trophy
Winner: Toyota
Quivering: The Skymall Trophy is all about the weirdest attempt to sell a product. Toyota just blew everyone out of the water to take the crown this year. This commercial makes no sense, on any level. We learn not one thing about this "reinvented" Camry. Not one thing. After they show the car, the next 26 seconds are just nonsensical reinventions that A) are not funny (which was clearly the goal of this commercial) and B) have nothing to do with marketing an automobile. Here are just a few thoughts on the "reinvented" products Toyota made up:
* How is a baby that's also a time machine helpful (or funny)?
* The reinvented DMV is just a regular DMV, even staffed by surly, unhelpful federal employees - the only difference is that it's stocked with various time-wasting attractions. Shouldn't a truly reinvented DMV be one that is so efficient you could just walk in and walk right back out (without having to spend time on a mini golf course or at a petting zoo)? Or how about just putting the whole DMV online?
* Reinvented rain that makes you thin just has too many problems to enumerate.
Congratulations, Toyota, on making a commercial that is unfunny, painfully bizarre, and unrelated to your product. Hey, maybe you can start pitching some of those reinvented products to the SkyMall catalog - it might just be a perfect fit.
Worst Super Bowl Ad of 2012
Winner: Pepsi
Windier: If not for Ben Kingsley's appearance in The Love Guru, Elton John would have provided us with the most embarrassing acting role by someone knighted by the Queen of England. But it's not really his fault, aside from accepting the part, since this ad was clearly doomed from the start. What a mishmosh. Elton vamping, a bizarre use of the not-at-all-dated "Hot in Herre," a thoroughly pointless Halle Berry cameo (seriously, why is she even there), an excruciatingly unlistenable dance remix of "Respect" from some woman who won "The X Factor" last year, the nonsense premise of a monarchy based on Pepsi rationing, what seems like a weak homage to Apple's 1984 ad... this isn't an ad, it's like the physical manifestation of one of the clubs described by Stefon.
The icing on the cake is the Flavor Flav cameo that literally has nothing to do with anything. If Flavor Flav had been the first act in the ad, maybe his presence down there would make some sense. Instead it comes completely out of nowhere and clearly signifies Pepsi going for the cheapest laugh there is. (That's right - I hereby declare that "the pointless, otherwise joke-free presence of a goofy B-list celebrity" is a cheaper laugh than "the nut shot.") It's lame, it evidences no thought on the part of the people who wrote this ad, and most importantly, it isn't funny in spite of the fact that it's clearly supposed to be. I would rather hang out with the Coke polar bears and risk getting mauled than watch this shit again. Congratulations, Pepsi: your insane fever dream is the worst ad of the 2012 Super Bowl.
The Apple 1984 Memorial Award for Least Shitty Ad
Winner: Pepsi Max
Quivering: Well, we named this award "Least Shitty Ad" for a reason. And this year, perhaps more than ever, it was a real struggle to find an ad we didn't hate. Pepsi has had quite a few of these Pepsi/Coke delivery guy ads (and they've used "Your Cheating Heart" before, too). It's not a bad idea - at least it has a product-based message. This particular version speaks to product benefits as well as product differentiation (lots of Pepsi taste, no calories, better than Coke Zero). The ending is relatively funny - the cameo with Regis is a little over the top, but given the fact that this is the Super Bowl, you have to expect something like that. Overall, it's a fine effort. The Camry Effect commercial was well done, but not quite believable, and the brown M&M commercial was okay, but still goofy (and we're just not fans of that whole M&Ms as living creatures concept). Overall, Pepsi Max edged out the weak competition to win Least Shitty Ad - but don't feel too good for PepsiCo until you read all the way to the end.
Most Overproduced Ad
Winner: Chevrolet
Windier: In the run-up to the Super Bowl, Ford got pissed and demanded that NBC and/or GM pull this ad, though it obviously didn't happen. You can see why they might have been upset. You can also see what makes this ad overproduced. Look at how much must have been spent on set design. And to what end? The commercial really says nothing about Chevy trucks. I know they describe themselves as "the most dependable and longest-lasting" but anyone can toss out adjectives like that, especially when it depends on what standard you're applying (in its beef, Ford claimed that it had more trucks with 250,000+ miles on them still on the road than any other automaker). It basically comes down to Chevy calling its trucks apocalypse-proof (a silly, unsupportable assertion) and taking a cheap shot at Ford. Was that really worth the effort?
Also, where are the wives/children? Or is there just something else going on here that I don't really want to know about? "Where's Dave? He knew we needed six guys for the ideal post-apocalyptic circle-jerk! Man, now I'm going to have to stand all funny."
Cheapest Budget/Clumsiest Execution Award
Winner: TaxACT
Quivering: Around 30 years ago, a young Will Shortz (well before he was crossword editor at the New York Times) submitted a puzzle he had constructed to the NYT editor at the time, a stodgy, mustachioed relic named Eugene T. Maleska. Shortz's crossword was rejected because it had the word "belly button" in the grid. Maleska felt that people doing the crossword puzzle while sipping their morning coffee would find the mental image of a belly button to be objectionable. Well, times have changed and now the navel plays a much more agreeable role in our society. But do you know what doesn't play an agreeable role in our society? Urine. Urine isn't fun to think about at any time. Which is why TaxACT's concept for this commercial is such a head-scratcher.
This commercial certainly looked cheap, but it was its crude toilet humor that sealed its selection for clumsiest execution. I just can't believe that there wasn't a better idea for a commercial about a tax filing website. What people will remember about TaxACT, if they remember anything at all, will be "Oh yeah, the kid who peed in the pool." It won't be "free tax return" or "no restrictions, rebates or gimmicks", or "TaxACT is the best tax site." It'll just be "piss." Please tell me how that's going to help anyone.
Worst Use of "Humor" Award
Winner: Acura
Windier: Several years ago, my (now infrequent) co-author Quivering wrote one of my favorite posts on this site, about maybe the worst ad we've ever covered: the Jerry Seinfeld/Bill Gates laugh-a-minute extravaganza for Microsoft. A decade removed from his heyday, Seinfeld was excruciatingly unfunny in the ad, leading me to write the following in the comments:
"I can't decide whether Seinfeld himself has become impossibly unfunny over the last ten years... or whether it was the brilliant, brilliant minds at CPB who wrote the awful Seinfeld-style ersatz comedy in this ad that makes him sound like a terrible parody version of himself."
Well, having seen Seinfeld in this year's Acura ad, I think we have our answer, and for once, Crispin Porter & Bogusky aren't to blame. Don't get me wrong, I don't think Seinfeld wrote this commercial himself. But there's something extremely sad about watching him try to relive past glories with graying hair and a delivery that simply lacks the pop it had when he was doing a pretty good series of American Express commercials in the late 90s. Also, when an ad has "web extras," that's almost never a good sign.
Why, just look at all the hilarious quips that had to be cut - CUT! - from the final product! I'm pretty sure Seinfeld's laugh at the end of that video is one of the few this spot earned from anyone, anywhere. You have to do more than trot out ancient pop culture references to be funny - just ask Matthew Broderick and Honda. The cherry on top of this bowl of shit masquerading as a sundae, however, is the sudden appearance of Jay Leno, a man who has actually gone longer since last being funny than Seinfeld himself has. Why is he there, anyway? I know he's a car buff, but does anyone care about that? If Seinfeld was going to echo the "Newman!" line, wouldn't it have been at least as funny to have Wayne Knight show up? I'm pretty sure he would have come more cheaply than Leno.
All right, enough about this garbage. Ah, one more.
Frankly, Seinfeld probably did come up with most/all of this material himself. And it's terrible. The best part is that NO ONE IN THE COMMERCIAL THINKS HE'S FUNNY, and he's trying to impress them. Meanwhile, I'm sitting at home, getting more and more tired of him. Money well spent, Acura. I guess when you're selling a car that doesn't really exist yet, there's only so much you can do.
Flimsiest Pretense Award
Winner: TeleFlora
Quivering: The reason this goes to Teleflora, and not Fiat (which basically ran the same ad), is that Fiat at least had a modicum of irony (at the very end). Teleflora's commercial is just a balls-to-the-wall fuckfest. "Give and you shall receive," "Happy Valentine's night," images of lipstick application and stilettos - this is the commercial equivalent of a porno that starts with a pizza delivery guy knocking at the door. Teleflora's subtlety reminded me of this recent South Park. Even within the context of Super Bowl ads, Teleflora makes GoDaddy commercials look like Bronte novels. And also? Everyone knows that diamonds are the only surefire way to get that blow job.
The Carlos Mencia Book Prize for Most Egregious Use of B-List Celebrities
Winner: Skechers
Windier: There were a lot of potential candidates here, really - Century 21's use of Donald Trump, Apolo Ohno and Deion Sanders made for another good one - but I couldn't turn down Skechers solely for how gratuitous, pointless and just plain lame theirs was. Mark Cuban, really? That was your best idea for a coda? And "What do you mean you want a new contract?" is a crushingly unfunny joke. Having the chubby dog turn out to be owned by an actual athlete would have been more clever, though I guess most athletes already have shoe deals with companies whose athletic shoe brands are slightly more valuable than Skechers'. Then, of course, there's the idea that Skechers is comparing its customers to tubby bulldogs... but then we're no longer talking about pointless semi-celebrity cameos.
The Bad Idea Jeans Award for Most Epic Miscalculation
Winner: Bud Light
Knitwear: While this is nowhere near the level of the ad we created this award for (last year's Groupon disaster), it is kind of a bummer that Bud Light is championing a great cause like adopting a rescue dog by implying that the best thing to do with a free, mangy orphan puppy is to turn it into your personal beer slave, Manchurian Candidate-style. I know this ad is supposed to seem fun, but I just feel sad for the dog. He's been so heavily conditioned that he can't even tell the difference between someone calling "Here, Wego!" and someone just yelling out "Here we go," forcing him to roll in a keg at least twice his size just to accommodate the latest round of partygoers. Talk about a dog that could stand to be rescued!
SkyMall Championship Trophy
Winner: Toyota
Quivering: The Skymall Trophy is all about the weirdest attempt to sell a product. Toyota just blew everyone out of the water to take the crown this year. This commercial makes no sense, on any level. We learn not one thing about this "reinvented" Camry. Not one thing. After they show the car, the next 26 seconds are just nonsensical reinventions that A) are not funny (which was clearly the goal of this commercial) and B) have nothing to do with marketing an automobile. Here are just a few thoughts on the "reinvented" products Toyota made up:
* How is a baby that's also a time machine helpful (or funny)?
* The reinvented DMV is just a regular DMV, even staffed by surly, unhelpful federal employees - the only difference is that it's stocked with various time-wasting attractions. Shouldn't a truly reinvented DMV be one that is so efficient you could just walk in and walk right back out (without having to spend time on a mini golf course or at a petting zoo)? Or how about just putting the whole DMV online?
* Reinvented rain that makes you thin just has too many problems to enumerate.
Congratulations, Toyota, on making a commercial that is unfunny, painfully bizarre, and unrelated to your product. Hey, maybe you can start pitching some of those reinvented products to the SkyMall catalog - it might just be a perfect fit.
Worst Super Bowl Ad of 2012
Winner: Pepsi
Windier: If not for Ben Kingsley's appearance in The Love Guru, Elton John would have provided us with the most embarrassing acting role by someone knighted by the Queen of England. But it's not really his fault, aside from accepting the part, since this ad was clearly doomed from the start. What a mishmosh. Elton vamping, a bizarre use of the not-at-all-dated "Hot in Herre," a thoroughly pointless Halle Berry cameo (seriously, why is she even there), an excruciatingly unlistenable dance remix of "Respect" from some woman who won "The X Factor" last year, the nonsense premise of a monarchy based on Pepsi rationing, what seems like a weak homage to Apple's 1984 ad... this isn't an ad, it's like the physical manifestation of one of the clubs described by Stefon.
The icing on the cake is the Flavor Flav cameo that literally has nothing to do with anything. If Flavor Flav had been the first act in the ad, maybe his presence down there would make some sense. Instead it comes completely out of nowhere and clearly signifies Pepsi going for the cheapest laugh there is. (That's right - I hereby declare that "the pointless, otherwise joke-free presence of a goofy B-list celebrity" is a cheaper laugh than "the nut shot.") It's lame, it evidences no thought on the part of the people who wrote this ad, and most importantly, it isn't funny in spite of the fact that it's clearly supposed to be. I would rather hang out with the Coke polar bears and risk getting mauled than watch this shit again. Congratulations, Pepsi: your insane fever dream is the worst ad of the 2012 Super Bowl.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Super Bored Awards IV
Ah, the Super Bowl. For people in the ad world, or for those of us tangentially connected to the ad world, this is like our... World Series? Well, it's like some really big sporting event. You know what I'm talking about.
I had really anticipated, based on descriptions of the ads I read before the game, that we were in for the worst year yet. But in fact, as I tweeted afterward, this was a surprisingly non-terrible group of ads from a mean standpoint. But were there still plenty of bad ones to fill out the Super Bored Awards? Oh, of course there were. In fact, we ended up creating a new category just to get them all in. Without further ado...
The Apple 1984 Memorial Award for Least Shitty Ad
Winner: Coca-Cola
Windier: As I mentioned, this was a surprisingly bad year for unbearably shitty ads. That doesn't mean it was an incredible year for great ads, though. Still, there were a few contenders for this spot, more than I can say about some years previous. Eminem's Chrysler ad has seemed popular - and it's pretty good, but it's also two minutes long and only finally names its product in the last ten seconds, so I'll be a little unconventional and go with this Coke ad instead, which I enjoyed. We figured Coke (which also won this award in 2009) was good for a decent ad, and they were - although only one (see below). I sometimes find Coke's insistence on treating its product as some sort of magical elixir a little grating, but it's nicely underplayed here (I could go for a Coke if my job were pacing in the desert for hours, too) and the wordless acting from the two soldiers is handled well. The bit at the end where the one soldier drags his sword on the ground to re-establish the official border is outstanding, recalling famous temporary truces like the 1914 Christmas Truce during the first World War. Too heady for a Coca-Cola Super Bowl ad? Probably. But it's a classy spot nonetheless.
Most Overproduced Ad
Winner: Coca-Cola
Quivering: I saw this one live, and I was shocked to find out later that it was only a 60 second spot. That's how bored I was while watching it -- time almost stopped. Not only was it long and boring, it was also really overdone. This is one of the few spots that probably cost more to make than it did to buy the ad time to air it. Dragons, beasts, Planet of the Apes-like creatures -- this definitely took a while to conceive and produce. Was Coke trying to make a commercial or pitching a movie idea to Pixar? It's dull, bad, and entirely deserving of Most Overproduced. Congratulations, Coke, on managing to crank out one good ad and one terrible one.
Cheapest Budget/Clumsiest Execution Award
Winner: E*TRADE
Quivering: Last year's overall winner of Worst Ad, E*TRADE is back and this time we're honoring it with Cheapest and Clumsiest. These commercials are probably supposed to look shoddily made -- it's not like they go to great lengths to nail the CGI on the baby's mouth or anything. But these are also clumsy -- they just go for lowest common denominator humor, and then shoehorn in a comment or two about investing. This campaign has dragged on and on, with no end in sight. Maybe E*TRADE likes it because it's cheap to execute. Maybe they think it works. Who knows. Let's just hope this baby does us all a favor and retires in Tuscany with Enzo.
Worst Use of "Humor" Award
Winner: Doritos
*sniffffffff* Lawsuuuuuit! Workplace lawsuit.
Knitwear: Doritos: Like cocaine, but orange! Here's the line of logic that I see people having brainstormed for this commercial. Doritos are good. (They are.) They're so good, they're addictive. (Unfortunately, they really are.) Addictive, like drugs? And I mean, like, hardcore drugs? (That's pretty crazy.) So crazy it's... brilliant? (More like the real crazy.) Crazy like the kind of crazy that people expect from their Super Bowl ads?
I think that's the point we're getting to here. If you want your ad to be a classic Super Bowl ad, it must be so brilliant that it stands on its own as art (see: 1984, Google's Parisian Love). But brilliant is difficult to do. So instead, you can make it controversial with one or any combination of those old chestnuts - sex, drugs, rock n' roll - and even rock n' roll is starting to show its age- or make it crazy. You wouldn't be able to get away with introducing this ad at any other time of year, but now that it's made its entry into the mainstream, you can continue to reuse it.
Flimsiest Pretense Award
Winner: Sealy
Quivering: Hey, how about we take the most awkward, least fun part of sex and then represent it over and over in a commercial? That'll move some product!
From an article I found about the new Sealy campaign: "'Our research found people do much more in bed than sleep; there’s a whole lot of living going on in bed,' said Jodi Allen, Chief Marketing Officer at Sealy." I love that they had to do research to find that out. "Hey, people just sleep in bed, right? Nothing else at all? Hmm, better get a focus group together..." And here's Susan Credle, the Chief Creative Officer at Leo Burnett (an agency adept at hemorrhaging business and staff): "This campaign will get people talking about Sealy and saying, finally a mattress company who gets what I do... in bed." Thank you, Susan, for being precisely as much of an adult as I thought the creator of this ad would be when I first watched it.
The Carlos Mencia Book Prize for Most Egregious Use of B-List Celebrities
Winner: Snickers
Windier: This was a pretty easy one to call - all you have to do is say "Richard Lewis and Roseanne." How much more out of date can you be? How many people even remember who Richard Lewis is at this point? This is also a pretty weak attempt at recapturing the magic of the Betty White ad that took last year's game by storm and eventually helped land White on Saturday Night Live - let's just say Lewis shouldn't expect a call from Lorne Michaels any time soon. Although Lewis' transformation into a beefy logger with a heroic beard is passably amusing, his "whiny" lines themselves are dull at best, and that should be the best part of the ad. Roseanne's appearance, featuring her nails-on-a-chalkboard voice and some of the worst CGI of the night, merely puts the capper on the half-assed job (although kudos to Snickers for recognizing that most people would love to see Roseanne get hit by a log). It seems like almost no effort went into this ad beyond the initial step of coming up with "What if it was about being whiny this time and we got Richard Lewis and Roseanne?" If your entire ad hangs on the presence of Richard Lewis, and you're not selling Boku in 1991, something is probably wrong.
The Bad Idea Jeans Award for Most Epic Miscalculation
Winner: Groupon
Windier: We had to create a new category just for this one, because wow. Crispin Porter strikes again. How badly did this ad misfire? Well, Groupon spent most of Monday apologizing and attempting to explain it. Another example? As of this writing, its like/dislike count on YouTube was 144 likes and 669 dislikes. 669 dislikes! It's virtually impossible to post something on YouTube with that many votes and that kind of ratio (82% disapproval!). But can you blame people? This ad isn't funny enough to pull the crap it does. "Sure, Tibet is being crushed under the iron fist of an authoritarian regime that seeks to assimilate it... but hey, cheap food, everyone!" Sorry. You can't possibly expect that to work in 30-second form.
I understand Groupon's ostensible joke. But how do you not see something like this coming? Start the ad by pretending it's a serious PSA about the hardships of life in Tibet... then yank that away to reveal your pitch? Groupon later revealed that the ads (including Cuba Gooding Jr. for saving the whales and Elizabeth Hurley on deforestation) are also intended to raise money for the causes mentioned. Okay. I know 30 seconds isn't a lot of time, but wouldn't it have made a lot more sense to slip that in at the end or something? There's no way anyone would know that by just watching this ad, and what potential philanthropist would go to Groupon's site to find out after seeing it? Also, did you know Christopher Guest directed this ad? Money well spent, I'm sure. Too bad it comes off more like it was directed by Hu Jintao.
SkyMall Championship Trophy
Winner: Chevrolet
Windier: The reason Chevy's pitch for the Cruze gets the SkyMall trophy - for weirdest attempt to sell a product - is made painfully apparent by watching the ad. Hey, should we air a commercial for our car? Or should we show three seconds of it and then have the next 27 taken up by old people repeating the few things we said, only incorrectly? I have no idea what Chevy was hoping to accomplish here - I mean, clearly they were hoping it would be funny (it is not), but it lacks any real relevance, has no connection to the Cruze's target audience (or any automotive target audience, save Hoverounds), and is incredibly difficult to watch. By the time the ad is over, it's easy to forget what it was ever trying to sell in the first place, and equally hard to care.
Worst Super Bowl Ad of 2011
Winner: Best Buy
Quivering: 42: Number of seconds of this ad you have to watch before you know what company the commercial is advertising.
3: Number of technological generations that are supposedly created within the span of one minute.
0: Number of amusing jokes in this commercial.
11: Seconds of Osbourne arguing/screaming you need to endure during this ad.
Infinite: Number of times you would have to watch this commercial to have it finally make sense.
One Trillion: Amount in dollars that Best Buy should be fined for airing this minute of torture.
Negative One Trillion: Amount in Canadian dollars that Justin Bieber should be worth after appearing in this ad.
1: Number of guesses we needed to predict the overall worst ad would be Best Buy's once we found out that Crispin Porter was directing their Super Bowl commercial.
I had really anticipated, based on descriptions of the ads I read before the game, that we were in for the worst year yet. But in fact, as I tweeted afterward, this was a surprisingly non-terrible group of ads from a mean standpoint. But were there still plenty of bad ones to fill out the Super Bored Awards? Oh, of course there were. In fact, we ended up creating a new category just to get them all in. Without further ado...
The Apple 1984 Memorial Award for Least Shitty Ad
Winner: Coca-Cola
Windier: As I mentioned, this was a surprisingly bad year for unbearably shitty ads. That doesn't mean it was an incredible year for great ads, though. Still, there were a few contenders for this spot, more than I can say about some years previous. Eminem's Chrysler ad has seemed popular - and it's pretty good, but it's also two minutes long and only finally names its product in the last ten seconds, so I'll be a little unconventional and go with this Coke ad instead, which I enjoyed. We figured Coke (which also won this award in 2009) was good for a decent ad, and they were - although only one (see below). I sometimes find Coke's insistence on treating its product as some sort of magical elixir a little grating, but it's nicely underplayed here (I could go for a Coke if my job were pacing in the desert for hours, too) and the wordless acting from the two soldiers is handled well. The bit at the end where the one soldier drags his sword on the ground to re-establish the official border is outstanding, recalling famous temporary truces like the 1914 Christmas Truce during the first World War. Too heady for a Coca-Cola Super Bowl ad? Probably. But it's a classy spot nonetheless.
Most Overproduced Ad
Winner: Coca-Cola
Quivering: I saw this one live, and I was shocked to find out later that it was only a 60 second spot. That's how bored I was while watching it -- time almost stopped. Not only was it long and boring, it was also really overdone. This is one of the few spots that probably cost more to make than it did to buy the ad time to air it. Dragons, beasts, Planet of the Apes-like creatures -- this definitely took a while to conceive and produce. Was Coke trying to make a commercial or pitching a movie idea to Pixar? It's dull, bad, and entirely deserving of Most Overproduced. Congratulations, Coke, on managing to crank out one good ad and one terrible one.
Cheapest Budget/Clumsiest Execution Award
Winner: E*TRADE
Quivering: Last year's overall winner of Worst Ad, E*TRADE is back and this time we're honoring it with Cheapest and Clumsiest. These commercials are probably supposed to look shoddily made -- it's not like they go to great lengths to nail the CGI on the baby's mouth or anything. But these are also clumsy -- they just go for lowest common denominator humor, and then shoehorn in a comment or two about investing. This campaign has dragged on and on, with no end in sight. Maybe E*TRADE likes it because it's cheap to execute. Maybe they think it works. Who knows. Let's just hope this baby does us all a favor and retires in Tuscany with Enzo.
Worst Use of "Humor" Award
Winner: Doritos
*sniffffffff* Doritooos!
*sniffffffff* Lawsuuuuuit! Workplace lawsuit.
Knitwear: Doritos: Like cocaine, but orange! Here's the line of logic that I see people having brainstormed for this commercial. Doritos are good. (They are.) They're so good, they're addictive. (Unfortunately, they really are.) Addictive, like drugs? And I mean, like, hardcore drugs? (That's pretty crazy.) So crazy it's... brilliant? (More like the real crazy.) Crazy like the kind of crazy that people expect from their Super Bowl ads?
I think that's the point we're getting to here. If you want your ad to be a classic Super Bowl ad, it must be so brilliant that it stands on its own as art (see: 1984, Google's Parisian Love). But brilliant is difficult to do. So instead, you can make it controversial with one or any combination of those old chestnuts - sex, drugs, rock n' roll - and even rock n' roll is starting to show its age- or make it crazy. You wouldn't be able to get away with introducing this ad at any other time of year, but now that it's made its entry into the mainstream, you can continue to reuse it.
Flimsiest Pretense Award
Winner: Sealy
Quivering: Hey, how about we take the most awkward, least fun part of sex and then represent it over and over in a commercial? That'll move some product!
From an article I found about the new Sealy campaign: "'Our research found people do much more in bed than sleep; there’s a whole lot of living going on in bed,' said Jodi Allen, Chief Marketing Officer at Sealy." I love that they had to do research to find that out. "Hey, people just sleep in bed, right? Nothing else at all? Hmm, better get a focus group together..." And here's Susan Credle, the Chief Creative Officer at Leo Burnett (an agency adept at hemorrhaging business and staff): "This campaign will get people talking about Sealy and saying, finally a mattress company who gets what I do... in bed." Thank you, Susan, for being precisely as much of an adult as I thought the creator of this ad would be when I first watched it.
The Carlos Mencia Book Prize for Most Egregious Use of B-List Celebrities
Winner: Snickers
Windier: This was a pretty easy one to call - all you have to do is say "Richard Lewis and Roseanne." How much more out of date can you be? How many people even remember who Richard Lewis is at this point? This is also a pretty weak attempt at recapturing the magic of the Betty White ad that took last year's game by storm and eventually helped land White on Saturday Night Live - let's just say Lewis shouldn't expect a call from Lorne Michaels any time soon. Although Lewis' transformation into a beefy logger with a heroic beard is passably amusing, his "whiny" lines themselves are dull at best, and that should be the best part of the ad. Roseanne's appearance, featuring her nails-on-a-chalkboard voice and some of the worst CGI of the night, merely puts the capper on the half-assed job (although kudos to Snickers for recognizing that most people would love to see Roseanne get hit by a log). It seems like almost no effort went into this ad beyond the initial step of coming up with "What if it was about being whiny this time and we got Richard Lewis and Roseanne?" If your entire ad hangs on the presence of Richard Lewis, and you're not selling Boku in 1991, something is probably wrong.
The Bad Idea Jeans Award for Most Epic Miscalculation
Winner: Groupon
Windier: We had to create a new category just for this one, because wow. Crispin Porter strikes again. How badly did this ad misfire? Well, Groupon spent most of Monday apologizing and attempting to explain it. Another example? As of this writing, its like/dislike count on YouTube was 144 likes and 669 dislikes. 669 dislikes! It's virtually impossible to post something on YouTube with that many votes and that kind of ratio (82% disapproval!). But can you blame people? This ad isn't funny enough to pull the crap it does. "Sure, Tibet is being crushed under the iron fist of an authoritarian regime that seeks to assimilate it... but hey, cheap food, everyone!" Sorry. You can't possibly expect that to work in 30-second form.
I understand Groupon's ostensible joke. But how do you not see something like this coming? Start the ad by pretending it's a serious PSA about the hardships of life in Tibet... then yank that away to reveal your pitch? Groupon later revealed that the ads (including Cuba Gooding Jr. for saving the whales and Elizabeth Hurley on deforestation) are also intended to raise money for the causes mentioned. Okay. I know 30 seconds isn't a lot of time, but wouldn't it have made a lot more sense to slip that in at the end or something? There's no way anyone would know that by just watching this ad, and what potential philanthropist would go to Groupon's site to find out after seeing it? Also, did you know Christopher Guest directed this ad? Money well spent, I'm sure. Too bad it comes off more like it was directed by Hu Jintao.
SkyMall Championship Trophy
Winner: Chevrolet
Windier: The reason Chevy's pitch for the Cruze gets the SkyMall trophy - for weirdest attempt to sell a product - is made painfully apparent by watching the ad. Hey, should we air a commercial for our car? Or should we show three seconds of it and then have the next 27 taken up by old people repeating the few things we said, only incorrectly? I have no idea what Chevy was hoping to accomplish here - I mean, clearly they were hoping it would be funny (it is not), but it lacks any real relevance, has no connection to the Cruze's target audience (or any automotive target audience, save Hoverounds), and is incredibly difficult to watch. By the time the ad is over, it's easy to forget what it was ever trying to sell in the first place, and equally hard to care.
Worst Super Bowl Ad of 2011
Winner: Best Buy
Quivering: 42: Number of seconds of this ad you have to watch before you know what company the commercial is advertising.
3: Number of technological generations that are supposedly created within the span of one minute.
0: Number of amusing jokes in this commercial.
11: Seconds of Osbourne arguing/screaming you need to endure during this ad.
Infinite: Number of times you would have to watch this commercial to have it finally make sense.
One Trillion: Amount in dollars that Best Buy should be fined for airing this minute of torture.
Negative One Trillion: Amount in Canadian dollars that Justin Bieber should be worth after appearing in this ad.
1: Number of guesses we needed to predict the overall worst ad would be Best Buy's once we found out that Crispin Porter was directing their Super Bowl commercial.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
2011 Super Bored Awards Preview
I swear the Super Bowl ads get worse every year. We did have one of the best of all time last year with Google's entry, but it's not just the infrequency of the best ads. The middle class of passable, acceptable but generally forgettable ads, ones that won't win any awards but simply don't annoy the hell out of us, seems to be getting smaller every year, as more and more companies watch their millions swirl into a howling vortex of crap. Don't believe me? Take a look at our preliminary guesses for this year's Super Bored Awards - as well as the slew of potential runners-up - and tell me this isn't one of the most dire-looking crops you've seen. It's going to take a lot of overachieving to make 2011 a banner year in the megabucks ad world.
The Apple 1984 Memorial Award for Least Shitty Ad
Explanation: I don't know if we actually need to keep explaining these given that this will be our fourth year handing these awards out... but whatever. This award, pretty evidently, goes to the least awful ad that airs during the game. Sometimes these ads are legitimately great (Google), sometimes they're more just decent and inoffensive (Coke in 2009, Gatorade in 2008), but either way we're just hoping we see at least one worth giving the award to.
Prediction: Scrolling through Ad Age's list of this year's buys, as I said earlier, makes for pretty dismal reading. There are a few that look like they could be undistinguished, but that would give them the win on a technicality, which sucks. Quivering's suggestion was Coke because they're the only major corporation we can trust to make a passable ad, especially with stalwarts like Nike and Gatorade apparently off the game entirely. Mercedes-Benz and BMW (the latter buying an ad for the first time in ten years) are both options to class up the joint, but car commercials these days always seem to be at least a little stupid.
Most Overproduced Ad
Explanation: You can understand, I guess, why advertisers feel the need to try to make their commercials these larger-than-life affairs - spend millions on a 30-second ad and it damn well better be memorable. But the best ads aren't always the ones that go utterly for broke. The worst ones often are.
Prediction: Here's Ad Age's summary of SalesForce.com's campaign: "Ads were developed with help from Will.i.am, part of half-time show act the Black Eyed Peas. The spots happen to feature animated characters called the 'Baby Peas.'" Anyone who was watching CNN on Election Night 2008 saw Will.i.am manage to overproduce the political process, and if you've heard any of the Black Eyed Peas' recent hits, you know that they go hand in hand with overproduction. As Quivering put it, sounds like we have the makings of a spot that would make Liberace blush.
Worst Use of "Humor" Award
Explanation: Another one that could easily go to two-thirds of the ads on the broadcast, this simply "honors" the ad that tried to be funny and failed the hardest.
Prediction: E-Trade. The E-Trade baby will apparently never die, because if there's one thing funnier than womanizing, cheating, boozing and generally being an asshole, it's when babies womanize, cheat, booze and generally behave like assholes. E-Trade has bought into the babies so much that their commercials don't even always mention trading anymore, which is never a good sign.
The Carlos Mencia Book Prize for Most Egregious Use of B-List Celebrities
Explanation: Shelf life is not a common concern for Super Bowl advertisers, since a hugely expensive 30-second spot is the ad equivalent of blowing your load and then rolling over (especially for companies that either rarely advertise during the rest of the year or just run their Super Bowl spot over and over again). Nothing makes this more apparent than the title of this award - I mean, remember when Carlos Mencia was a noteworthy name? Seems like a million years ago. So this award goes either to a weak use of current minor celebrities or, alternately, a weak and embarrassing use of people who maybe were briefly A-listers, except it was two decades ago. Whichever is more desperate.
Prediction: Snickers' famous Betty White ad didn't win any awards with us last year, but it wasn't awful and was certainly one everyone remembered. Then Snickers did another one with Aretha Franklin and Liza Minnelli. This year... they're doing another one. The people representing who you are when you're hungry that isn't you? Roseanne Barr and Richard Lewis. Apparently this commercial was shot at the Improv in 1987. Keep your finger on that mute button, folks - it's going to be painful.
Flimsiest Pretense Award
Explanation: This one goes to the commercial with either the most inappropriate use of sex or the one that does the worst job of justifying it. You could easily stick GoDaddy.com in front of this since their entire schtick is using sex appeal to sell, of all things, domain name services... but at least they're consistent. It's the companies who suddenly bust it out that we're really worried about.
Prediction: Skechers. Shape-Ups are already in the recently-growing category of shoes designed to tone your physique - in particular, your butt, if you are a woman. Skechers' spokesperson of choice? Kim Kardashian. I think we can all see where this is going.
Cheapest Budget/Clumsiest Execution Award
Explanation: Pretty much what it sounds like. Does your ad look like you had three million and one dollars to spend and the first three million had to go to buying the 30 seconds? Then you'll probably win this award.
Prediction: Doritos and Pepsi are both running "Crash the Super Bowl" contests again this year where users submit homemade ads, thereby costing the companies nothing except the ad space. And because they're user-submitted, they usually look pretty cheap and/or awkward. Plus while we're sure there are some pretty decent user-generated spots out there, you have to bear in mind that Pepsico executives will be choosing at least one of them.
SkyMall Championship Trophy
Explanation: You know how when you flip through SkyMall on an airplane, you find yourself looking largely at weirdly specific products that probably don't need to exist, and the pitches for most of them are totally insane? That's kind of what we're going for with this award - the product that has no business running a Super Bowl ad (like the Census Bureau last year) or simply the weirdest overall attempt to sell a product.
Prediction: Volkswagen. The Ad Age description says that the spot for the new 2012 Beetle "will make use of a 'Black Beetle' character jumping along to the song 'Black Betty' by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion." Um, okay. Was this just the result of some weird train of thought brainstorming exercise that the ad agency had? It will be interesting to see how that ad comes together. If it does.
The GoDaddy.com/SalesGenie.com/Bud Light/Miller Lite/Emerald Nuts Award for Worst Super Bowl Ad
Explanation: No real explanation necessary - when you get beyond all the particular reasons to hate an ad that feed into the other categories, which was simply the worst? This year's winner will join luminaries such as SoBe LifeWater (2008), CareerBuilder (2009), and E-Trade (2010).
Prediction: If you look through that Ad Age list, you know there are at least half a dozen candidates. But one that stands out as a possibility is Best Buy. Why? Three words: Crispin. Porter. Bogusky. Just do a search for that agency on this site and you'll see what we mean - note in particular the plethora of Burger King ads, but don't forget that they were also the geniuses behind the ill-fated Jerry Seinfeld/Bill Gates pairing of 2008. This is also Best Buy's first-ever Super Bowl buy, so they'll probably be on board with all kinds of ridiculous shit just to make a splash - Ad Age gently warns us that "a celebrity or two could also be in the mix." God only knows what that means.
The Apple 1984 Memorial Award for Least Shitty Ad
Explanation: I don't know if we actually need to keep explaining these given that this will be our fourth year handing these awards out... but whatever. This award, pretty evidently, goes to the least awful ad that airs during the game. Sometimes these ads are legitimately great (Google), sometimes they're more just decent and inoffensive (Coke in 2009, Gatorade in 2008), but either way we're just hoping we see at least one worth giving the award to.
Prediction: Scrolling through Ad Age's list of this year's buys, as I said earlier, makes for pretty dismal reading. There are a few that look like they could be undistinguished, but that would give them the win on a technicality, which sucks. Quivering's suggestion was Coke because they're the only major corporation we can trust to make a passable ad, especially with stalwarts like Nike and Gatorade apparently off the game entirely. Mercedes-Benz and BMW (the latter buying an ad for the first time in ten years) are both options to class up the joint, but car commercials these days always seem to be at least a little stupid.
Most Overproduced Ad
Explanation: You can understand, I guess, why advertisers feel the need to try to make their commercials these larger-than-life affairs - spend millions on a 30-second ad and it damn well better be memorable. But the best ads aren't always the ones that go utterly for broke. The worst ones often are.
Prediction: Here's Ad Age's summary of SalesForce.com's campaign: "Ads were developed with help from Will.i.am, part of half-time show act the Black Eyed Peas. The spots happen to feature animated characters called the 'Baby Peas.'" Anyone who was watching CNN on Election Night 2008 saw Will.i.am manage to overproduce the political process, and if you've heard any of the Black Eyed Peas' recent hits, you know that they go hand in hand with overproduction. As Quivering put it, sounds like we have the makings of a spot that would make Liberace blush.
Worst Use of "Humor" Award
Explanation: Another one that could easily go to two-thirds of the ads on the broadcast, this simply "honors" the ad that tried to be funny and failed the hardest.
Prediction: E-Trade. The E-Trade baby will apparently never die, because if there's one thing funnier than womanizing, cheating, boozing and generally being an asshole, it's when babies womanize, cheat, booze and generally behave like assholes. E-Trade has bought into the babies so much that their commercials don't even always mention trading anymore, which is never a good sign.
The Carlos Mencia Book Prize for Most Egregious Use of B-List Celebrities
Explanation: Shelf life is not a common concern for Super Bowl advertisers, since a hugely expensive 30-second spot is the ad equivalent of blowing your load and then rolling over (especially for companies that either rarely advertise during the rest of the year or just run their Super Bowl spot over and over again). Nothing makes this more apparent than the title of this award - I mean, remember when Carlos Mencia was a noteworthy name? Seems like a million years ago. So this award goes either to a weak use of current minor celebrities or, alternately, a weak and embarrassing use of people who maybe were briefly A-listers, except it was two decades ago. Whichever is more desperate.
Prediction: Snickers' famous Betty White ad didn't win any awards with us last year, but it wasn't awful and was certainly one everyone remembered. Then Snickers did another one with Aretha Franklin and Liza Minnelli. This year... they're doing another one. The people representing who you are when you're hungry that isn't you? Roseanne Barr and Richard Lewis. Apparently this commercial was shot at the Improv in 1987. Keep your finger on that mute button, folks - it's going to be painful.
Flimsiest Pretense Award
Explanation: This one goes to the commercial with either the most inappropriate use of sex or the one that does the worst job of justifying it. You could easily stick GoDaddy.com in front of this since their entire schtick is using sex appeal to sell, of all things, domain name services... but at least they're consistent. It's the companies who suddenly bust it out that we're really worried about.
Prediction: Skechers. Shape-Ups are already in the recently-growing category of shoes designed to tone your physique - in particular, your butt, if you are a woman. Skechers' spokesperson of choice? Kim Kardashian. I think we can all see where this is going.
Cheapest Budget/Clumsiest Execution Award
Explanation: Pretty much what it sounds like. Does your ad look like you had three million and one dollars to spend and the first three million had to go to buying the 30 seconds? Then you'll probably win this award.
Prediction: Doritos and Pepsi are both running "Crash the Super Bowl" contests again this year where users submit homemade ads, thereby costing the companies nothing except the ad space. And because they're user-submitted, they usually look pretty cheap and/or awkward. Plus while we're sure there are some pretty decent user-generated spots out there, you have to bear in mind that Pepsico executives will be choosing at least one of them.
SkyMall Championship Trophy
Explanation: You know how when you flip through SkyMall on an airplane, you find yourself looking largely at weirdly specific products that probably don't need to exist, and the pitches for most of them are totally insane? That's kind of what we're going for with this award - the product that has no business running a Super Bowl ad (like the Census Bureau last year) or simply the weirdest overall attempt to sell a product.
Prediction: Volkswagen. The Ad Age description says that the spot for the new 2012 Beetle "will make use of a 'Black Beetle' character jumping along to the song 'Black Betty' by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion." Um, okay. Was this just the result of some weird train of thought brainstorming exercise that the ad agency had? It will be interesting to see how that ad comes together. If it does.
The GoDaddy.com/SalesGenie.com/Bud Light/Miller Lite/Emerald Nuts Award for Worst Super Bowl Ad
Explanation: No real explanation necessary - when you get beyond all the particular reasons to hate an ad that feed into the other categories, which was simply the worst? This year's winner will join luminaries such as SoBe LifeWater (2008), CareerBuilder (2009), and E-Trade (2010).
Prediction: If you look through that Ad Age list, you know there are at least half a dozen candidates. But one that stands out as a possibility is Best Buy. Why? Three words: Crispin. Porter. Bogusky. Just do a search for that agency on this site and you'll see what we mean - note in particular the plethora of Burger King ads, but don't forget that they were also the geniuses behind the ill-fated Jerry Seinfeld/Bill Gates pairing of 2008. This is also Best Buy's first-ever Super Bowl buy, so they'll probably be on board with all kinds of ridiculous shit just to make a splash - Ad Age gently warns us that "a celebrity or two could also be in the mix." God only knows what that means.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Super Bored Awards III
I think it's finally time to just come out and say it: Super Bowl ads have jumped the shark. Whether it's the economy, a general dearth of creativity, the pressure of wanting to clear a higher bar every year, or whatever else, I don't know - but the time when the game was really a showcase for new marketing has come and gone. Maybe in the early 1990s, when the Super Bowl was routinely a shitty game, it might have been reasonable to say "I watch the game for the ads!" or "The ads are the best part of the game!" Lately? If you like football, the game has regularly been better than the ads, and if you don't like football, you've probably been really, really upset at wasting all that time. If anything, people have talked themselves into still liking the ads only because they think they're supposed to. If the majority of these ads were dumped during a rerun of "Two and a Half Men," no one would even blink.
With that little rant out of the way, let's get on with it: the best, and mostly worst, of Super Bowl XLIV.
The Apple 1984 Memorial Award for Least Shitty Ad
Winner: Google
Windier: We said in the preview post that there's a reason we use "least shitty" here and not "best." But there's no getting around it: this ad is an absolute tour de force, for any number of reasons. The biggest of those is this: we've all seen the awful Bing "search overload" ads that treat the end-user like a complete moron. Recently, noted terrible ad maker KGB has gotten in on the act, claiming that "KGB is a better way to answer any question." They also ran an ad during the Super Bowl suggesting that KGB can tell you how to say "I surrender" in Japanese faster than a web search. I could point out that the very first Google hit is the correct answer and that the odds of KGB texting you back faster than that are approximately nil, or that KGB is probably just using Google on their end anyway... but this isn't about KGB. The point is that in one fell swoop, Google has demolished both the Bing and KGB ads.
Knitwear: Agreed. The Google ad clearly demonstrates how the average Internet user would use a search engine. This includes realistic errors (such as misspelling "Louvre"), as well as the immediate presentation of the obvious answer ("You're very cute") to a clearly phrased request ("translate tu es très mignon"), rather than forcing you to comb through a list of links to dictionaries or blog entries. Google trusts the consumer to use its product correctly, rather than likening you to a caricature of the average Internet user who needs his or her hand held by the benevolent Bing and KGB overlords. "You are clearly too stupid to be trusted with your own search. Give us 99 cents to handle the heavy lifting."
Windier: Google probably doesn't need to advertise - their name has entered the lexicon as the default verb to indicate a web search. They also don't need to call out their competitors - and they haven't; the destruction is entirely implicit. They've just run a classy, understated ad, which even in its bare-bones simplicity comes as close to the idea of ads being miniature movies as any of the loud, obnoxious spots that surround it. All that and it actually sells its product. No wonder I get chills every time I watch it.
Most Overproduced Ad
Winner: Emerald Nuts
Quivering: It was a category with any number of potential winners this year, but Most Overproduced had to go to Emerald Nuts' frenzied, panicked spot. Not only are the human dolphin show visuals nonsensical and upsetting, but so is the branding in the commercial itself. Emerald Nuts and Pop Secret? I guess. Don't really see the point of combining those two distinct brands into one commercial, except maybe to save money. Those products are hardly what economists would call perfect complements.
But the real tragedy is the offensive-on-every-possible-level tagline "AWESOME+AWESOME=AWESOMER." This is obviously stupid. But it's also LAZY. All you can say about combining nuts and popcorn is that it's some degree of "awesome"? How horrifyingly uninteresting.
Cheapest Budget/Clumsiest Execution Award
Winner: Focus on the Family
Windier: Remember how controversial this ad was supposed to be? Yeah. After seeing the actual spot, I feel like Focus on the Family would have come out just as well by backing out of the game - they'd still have gotten their publicity in the lead-up, and they wouldn't have had to spend three million dollars to air an ad about... well, what is this ad about? Tim Tebow's mom explains that her pregnancy was hard (okay) and that she still worries about her son's health (okay) and that her family needs to be tough (whatever). And then she gets "tackled" by Tim in a really bad CGI scene that must have cost at least half of this ad's $20 budget. And... that's pretty much the entire thing!
Yes, I guess you could argue that Focus on the Family played it safe. They made no mention of the fact that they are - as their website says - "a global Christian ministry that helps build thriving marriages that reflect God’s design, and equips parents to raise their children according to morals and values grounded in biblical principles." They certainly didn't use Tebow's story to pitch a pro-life stance as everyone expected (aside from the "Celebrate life" tagline at the end), although they've done so elsewhere. They must have figured this wasn't the right forum - though I might argue that if you're not willing to promote your values in an ad, but rather slow-play it to try and trick people who don't already know what you are into visiting your website, that's a pretty weak cop-out. What if this were an ad for Oreos? "Hi, I'm Tim Tebow's mom. You know, when he was a kid, he loved Oreos. These days, we could all use more Oreos in our lives. Oh, you haven't heard of Oreos? To find out what they are, visit Oreos.com." Really, you were too afraid to just tell us? Feh. All that hand-wringing over nothing.
Worst Use of "Humor" Award
Winner: Bridgestone
Quivering: An unfunny amalgam of an old Jack Benny joke and any Henny Youngman joke. Bridgestone spent three million dollars on half-a-century-old humor. Now that's thumbing your nose at the recession. It's also not selling tires.
Flimsiest Pretense Award
Winner: Motorola
Windier: It would have been easy to give this to GoDaddy.com for the third year in a row. At least Megan Fox is legitimately hot; Danica Patrick's credentials in that department are questionable at best. Still, this commercial is particularly weak in justifying itself. There's no reason to have Fox in a bathtub other than that it's appealing; the copy certainly makes no attempt to put it in some form of context (and frankly the writing is just awful and hard to even follow). But it's what comes afterward that really puts the icing on the cake: the second post-tub scene is a mother banging on her son's bedroom door and demanding, "Timmy, what are you doing?" Really, Motorola? That's what you're doing with your Super Bowl ad - masturbation jokes? Way to class up the joint.
The Carlos Mencia Book Prize for Most Egregious Use of B-List Celebrities
Winner: Boost Mobile
Quivering: Kind of a weird one, because it's not really the 25th anniversary of the 1985 Bears, but rather the 24th (they won the Super Bowl in January of 1986). So this basically came out a year too early. And also, the Bears were not even in playoff contention this season. So this comes out of nowhere. Since Walter Payton isn't around to be a part of the commercial, you get a host of B-listers in this one, all deserving of the Mencia Book Prize. The most famous is either the former punky QB Jim McMahon, or perennial attention whore Mike Ditka (who just started his own line of wines!).
Also, be warned: do not "go online to find the rest of (their) jam." It's just more half-rhymes, and more old white man in a cheetah print thong than you care to see. I challenge anyone to remember that this commercial was for a cell phone company.
SkyMall Championship Trophy
Winner: The United States Census Bureau
Windier: To say that this ad - directed by Christopher Guest, by the way - features the weirdest attempt to sell a product doesn't even get at the root of the problem. I'm not even sure you could say that this ad is selling a product. The Census isn't a product, after all - the idea, I guess, is that people need to be encouraged to fill out their census forms. So, with that said... how in God's name does this ad do that? If you go on to YouTube, there is a wealth of related content, which probably explains the full concept if you actually bother to watch all of it (I watched about a minute and then got bored). But not everyone is going to check out your ancillary content on YouTube. The premise needed to be distilled down into a 30-second spot for mass consumption, and this ad does not do that. It features characters we don't know or care about (and makes no attempt to explain them), dialogue that's so vague it's virtually nonsensical, and one of the worst integrations of a brand name into an otherwise unrelated script that I've ever seen. John McCain (on his Twitter feed) called the ad a waste of money... and he's right. Not because the Census has no business advertising during the Super Bowl, but because the Census has no business making a bizarre, meaningless ad that almost fails to get even the bare minimum of its point across. You're not Bud Light, Census Bureau. If anyone should be making a straight-faced, non-hilarious ad, it's you. Instead, we got this mess.
Worst Super Bowl Ad of 2010
Winner: eTrade
Quivering: eTrade - it's been a long time comin'. You've been annoying us with these cheaply edited voiced-over babies for years, and it's high time you get recognized for it. Consider this a kind of career accomplishment for all the torture you've unleashed upon the innocent American viewing public. This award is kind of like Martin Scorsese's Oscar for The Departed, except that we're trying to tell you that we hate you.
I've been wondering - what is it that's so darned funny about babies cheating on their baby girlfriends and lying about it? Ahh, right - nothing. And what is it about jealousy-fueled baby cat fights and references to infant "milk addiction" that makes me want to sign up for an online stock trading account? Hmm... oh yeah, I didn't do that, because I have a brain. There have been many head-scratching installments to this campaign, but the sheer shock factor in this one really has me wondering how this could possibly appeal to the practical-minded investor.
Oh, and eTrade? Now that you've won, please let these babies grow up and stop the campaign.
With that little rant out of the way, let's get on with it: the best, and mostly worst, of Super Bowl XLIV.
The Apple 1984 Memorial Award for Least Shitty Ad
Winner: Google
Windier: We said in the preview post that there's a reason we use "least shitty" here and not "best." But there's no getting around it: this ad is an absolute tour de force, for any number of reasons. The biggest of those is this: we've all seen the awful Bing "search overload" ads that treat the end-user like a complete moron. Recently, noted terrible ad maker KGB has gotten in on the act, claiming that "KGB is a better way to answer any question." They also ran an ad during the Super Bowl suggesting that KGB can tell you how to say "I surrender" in Japanese faster than a web search. I could point out that the very first Google hit is the correct answer and that the odds of KGB texting you back faster than that are approximately nil, or that KGB is probably just using Google on their end anyway... but this isn't about KGB. The point is that in one fell swoop, Google has demolished both the Bing and KGB ads.
Knitwear: Agreed. The Google ad clearly demonstrates how the average Internet user would use a search engine. This includes realistic errors (such as misspelling "Louvre"), as well as the immediate presentation of the obvious answer ("You're very cute") to a clearly phrased request ("translate tu es très mignon"), rather than forcing you to comb through a list of links to dictionaries or blog entries. Google trusts the consumer to use its product correctly, rather than likening you to a caricature of the average Internet user who needs his or her hand held by the benevolent Bing and KGB overlords. "You are clearly too stupid to be trusted with your own search. Give us 99 cents to handle the heavy lifting."
Windier: Google probably doesn't need to advertise - their name has entered the lexicon as the default verb to indicate a web search. They also don't need to call out their competitors - and they haven't; the destruction is entirely implicit. They've just run a classy, understated ad, which even in its bare-bones simplicity comes as close to the idea of ads being miniature movies as any of the loud, obnoxious spots that surround it. All that and it actually sells its product. No wonder I get chills every time I watch it.
Most Overproduced Ad
Winner: Emerald Nuts
Quivering: It was a category with any number of potential winners this year, but Most Overproduced had to go to Emerald Nuts' frenzied, panicked spot. Not only are the human dolphin show visuals nonsensical and upsetting, but so is the branding in the commercial itself. Emerald Nuts and Pop Secret? I guess. Don't really see the point of combining those two distinct brands into one commercial, except maybe to save money. Those products are hardly what economists would call perfect complements.
But the real tragedy is the offensive-on-every-possible-level tagline "AWESOME+AWESOME=AWESOMER." This is obviously stupid. But it's also LAZY. All you can say about combining nuts and popcorn is that it's some degree of "awesome"? How horrifyingly uninteresting.
Cheapest Budget/Clumsiest Execution Award
Winner: Focus on the Family
Windier: Remember how controversial this ad was supposed to be? Yeah. After seeing the actual spot, I feel like Focus on the Family would have come out just as well by backing out of the game - they'd still have gotten their publicity in the lead-up, and they wouldn't have had to spend three million dollars to air an ad about... well, what is this ad about? Tim Tebow's mom explains that her pregnancy was hard (okay) and that she still worries about her son's health (okay) and that her family needs to be tough (whatever). And then she gets "tackled" by Tim in a really bad CGI scene that must have cost at least half of this ad's $20 budget. And... that's pretty much the entire thing!
Yes, I guess you could argue that Focus on the Family played it safe. They made no mention of the fact that they are - as their website says - "a global Christian ministry that helps build thriving marriages that reflect God’s design, and equips parents to raise their children according to morals and values grounded in biblical principles." They certainly didn't use Tebow's story to pitch a pro-life stance as everyone expected (aside from the "Celebrate life" tagline at the end), although they've done so elsewhere. They must have figured this wasn't the right forum - though I might argue that if you're not willing to promote your values in an ad, but rather slow-play it to try and trick people who don't already know what you are into visiting your website, that's a pretty weak cop-out. What if this were an ad for Oreos? "Hi, I'm Tim Tebow's mom. You know, when he was a kid, he loved Oreos. These days, we could all use more Oreos in our lives. Oh, you haven't heard of Oreos? To find out what they are, visit Oreos.com." Really, you were too afraid to just tell us? Feh. All that hand-wringing over nothing.
Worst Use of "Humor" Award
Winner: Bridgestone
Quivering: An unfunny amalgam of an old Jack Benny joke and any Henny Youngman joke. Bridgestone spent three million dollars on half-a-century-old humor. Now that's thumbing your nose at the recession. It's also not selling tires.
Flimsiest Pretense Award
Winner: Motorola
Windier: It would have been easy to give this to GoDaddy.com for the third year in a row. At least Megan Fox is legitimately hot; Danica Patrick's credentials in that department are questionable at best. Still, this commercial is particularly weak in justifying itself. There's no reason to have Fox in a bathtub other than that it's appealing; the copy certainly makes no attempt to put it in some form of context (and frankly the writing is just awful and hard to even follow). But it's what comes afterward that really puts the icing on the cake: the second post-tub scene is a mother banging on her son's bedroom door and demanding, "Timmy, what are you doing?" Really, Motorola? That's what you're doing with your Super Bowl ad - masturbation jokes? Way to class up the joint.
The Carlos Mencia Book Prize for Most Egregious Use of B-List Celebrities
Winner: Boost Mobile
Quivering: Kind of a weird one, because it's not really the 25th anniversary of the 1985 Bears, but rather the 24th (they won the Super Bowl in January of 1986). So this basically came out a year too early. And also, the Bears were not even in playoff contention this season. So this comes out of nowhere. Since Walter Payton isn't around to be a part of the commercial, you get a host of B-listers in this one, all deserving of the Mencia Book Prize. The most famous is either the former punky QB Jim McMahon, or perennial attention whore Mike Ditka (who just started his own line of wines!).
Also, be warned: do not "go online to find the rest of (their) jam." It's just more half-rhymes, and more old white man in a cheetah print thong than you care to see. I challenge anyone to remember that this commercial was for a cell phone company.
SkyMall Championship Trophy
Winner: The United States Census Bureau
Windier: To say that this ad - directed by Christopher Guest, by the way - features the weirdest attempt to sell a product doesn't even get at the root of the problem. I'm not even sure you could say that this ad is selling a product. The Census isn't a product, after all - the idea, I guess, is that people need to be encouraged to fill out their census forms. So, with that said... how in God's name does this ad do that? If you go on to YouTube, there is a wealth of related content, which probably explains the full concept if you actually bother to watch all of it (I watched about a minute and then got bored). But not everyone is going to check out your ancillary content on YouTube. The premise needed to be distilled down into a 30-second spot for mass consumption, and this ad does not do that. It features characters we don't know or care about (and makes no attempt to explain them), dialogue that's so vague it's virtually nonsensical, and one of the worst integrations of a brand name into an otherwise unrelated script that I've ever seen. John McCain (on his Twitter feed) called the ad a waste of money... and he's right. Not because the Census has no business advertising during the Super Bowl, but because the Census has no business making a bizarre, meaningless ad that almost fails to get even the bare minimum of its point across. You're not Bud Light, Census Bureau. If anyone should be making a straight-faced, non-hilarious ad, it's you. Instead, we got this mess.
Worst Super Bowl Ad of 2010
Winner: eTrade
Quivering: eTrade - it's been a long time comin'. You've been annoying us with these cheaply edited voiced-over babies for years, and it's high time you get recognized for it. Consider this a kind of career accomplishment for all the torture you've unleashed upon the innocent American viewing public. This award is kind of like Martin Scorsese's Oscar for The Departed, except that we're trying to tell you that we hate you.
I've been wondering - what is it that's so darned funny about babies cheating on their baby girlfriends and lying about it? Ahh, right - nothing. And what is it about jealousy-fueled baby cat fights and references to infant "milk addiction" that makes me want to sign up for an online stock trading account? Hmm... oh yeah, I didn't do that, because I have a brain. There have been many head-scratching installments to this campaign, but the sheer shock factor in this one really has me wondering how this could possibly appeal to the practical-minded investor.
Oh, and eTrade? Now that you've won, please let these babies grow up and stop the campaign.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
2010 Super Bored Awards Preview
The Super Bowl is more than just the NFL championship. It's the one time of year where people get together and pretend, for a few hours at least, that they don't hate advertising. And for deep-pocketed advertisers, it's a great chance to waste a reported $2.5 to $2.8 million dollars on a commercial -- that's as much as $93,000 a second. Giddy-up!
In keeping with tradition, we present to you our preview of our Super Bored Awards (to be posted sometime early next week), where we recognize the worst (and the slightly less horrible) commercials set to air during Sunday's Super Bowl. And since it would be ridiculous to view these commercials as marketing per se, and in the absence of actual data, we'll review them for what they are: half-a-minute long, branded mini movies that marketing narcissists create to feel a little bit better about themselves. Here are the categories and the projected winners (thanks to AdAge for posting this great list of Super Bowl ad buys):
Worst Use of "Humor" Award
Explanation: So many Super Bowl ads try to be funny. It's fairly subjective as to whether you think they succeed or not. As we've said before, commercials make for poor entertainment, so we think we'll have a tough choice to make again this year.
Prediction: Boost Mobile. We've seen their horrible recent efforts, and their Super Bowl spot will be a remake of the 1985 Chicago Bears "Super Bowl Shuffle." Why does that need to be remade? Isn't the original's kitsch value alone funny enough? Not only does it sound painful, but it's wildly unoriginal. (Also, odd timing. Next year would have been the 25th anniversary. Why now?)
The Carlos Mencia Book Prize for Most Egregious Use of B-List Celebrities
Explanation: Who the hell is Carlos Mencia, and why did we name this award after him? Oh, that's right, he was some guy in a Bud Light spot 3 years ago. Well, I guess that just goes to show you that when you spend money on non-name-brand celebs, you're not getting your money's worth.
Prediction: GoDaddy.com will be back with Danica Patrick a-fucking-gain. She was a bit of phenomenon on the Indy racing scene a few years ago, but at this point she has to be considered B-list. Come on, tell me she's still nationally famous outside of these commercials. There may be other B-listers in ads this year, but we're just so tired of seeing the same "let's pretend she's hot!" premise in ad after depressing ad.
And since this is a Book Prize, this year's winner will receive a signed copy of the biography of Carlos Mencia. It's one of Carlos Mencia's favorites.
Flimsiest Pretense Award
Explanation: In the simplest terms, this award goes to the commercial with the least appropriate use of sex. We can only hope there won't be any inter-species action this year.
Prediction: We'll just have to go with GoDaddy.com again, because none of the other descriptions really indicate anything about possible sex scenes. Maybe advertisers just wanted to tone it down this year since Tim Tebow's mom is going to be watching.
Cheapest Budget/Clumsiest Execution Award
Explanation: Remember SalesGenie? They had their CEO write their ads and then used animation that looked like it was done in Microsoft Paint. That's the kind of effort that wins this award.
Prediction: Doritos is, for the second consecutive year, doing their "Crash the Super Bowl" thing, where people can submit their own Doritos ads and the winner gets the Super Bowl air time. Last year's winners won a lot of "Best Ad" polls (although we didn't care for it), and even got on the Tonight Show. That certainly says something about the professional ad agencies.
In keeping with tradition, we present to you our preview of our Super Bored Awards (to be posted sometime early next week), where we recognize the worst (and the slightly less horrible) commercials set to air during Sunday's Super Bowl. And since it would be ridiculous to view these commercials as marketing per se, and in the absence of actual data, we'll review them for what they are: half-a-minute long, branded mini movies that marketing narcissists create to feel a little bit better about themselves. Here are the categories and the projected winners (thanks to AdAge for posting this great list of Super Bowl ad buys):
Apple 1984 Memorial Award for Least Shitty Ad
Explanation: The day we say a three million dollar, thirty second video deserves to be voted "Best Ad" is the day we shut down this blog. That's why we prefer "Least Shitty."
Prediction: A few possibilities: Coca-Cola is doing something with The Simpsons. That might actually be funny. Universal Studios will be advertising its new Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park land, and that might be interesting (but maybe that's just my interest in theme parks.) Also, CareerBuilder, last year's winner of Worst Ad here on the site, is doing a user-submitted commercial contest, where you can vote on your favorite of three ads. This is different from Doritos' contest, because winners were selected based on their scripts, and then the ads were produced professionally. One of the ads is all right, another is kind of gross, and the third is childishly disgusting. If the Fairy ad wins, I might vote for that just because, why reward an ad agency for a mediocre effort when some random guy can do just as mediocre a job?
Explanation: The day we say a three million dollar, thirty second video deserves to be voted "Best Ad" is the day we shut down this blog. That's why we prefer "Least Shitty."
Prediction: A few possibilities: Coca-Cola is doing something with The Simpsons. That might actually be funny. Universal Studios will be advertising its new Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park land, and that might be interesting (but maybe that's just my interest in theme parks.) Also, CareerBuilder, last year's winner of Worst Ad here on the site, is doing a user-submitted commercial contest, where you can vote on your favorite of three ads. This is different from Doritos' contest, because winners were selected based on their scripts, and then the ads were produced professionally. One of the ads is all right, another is kind of gross, and the third is childishly disgusting. If the Fairy ad wins, I might vote for that just because, why reward an ad agency for a mediocre effort when some random guy can do just as mediocre a job?
Most Overproduced Ad
Explanation: When you're talking about $3 million just to get a commercial on the air, the commercial itself better be good. Unfortunately most marketing execs seem to think "good" means "costs a ton of money." And that's how we end up with so many manic, over-produced pieces of crap. Oh, how to pick just one.
Prediction: Here's the Honda spot description:
Ad's focus will be on the launch of an entirely new model, the Accord Crosstour, a wagon-sedan crossover. And an animated squirrel. And Kool & the Gang's "Funky Stuff."
You don't suppose it will be a dancing animated squirrel, do you?
Explanation: When you're talking about $3 million just to get a commercial on the air, the commercial itself better be good. Unfortunately most marketing execs seem to think "good" means "costs a ton of money." And that's how we end up with so many manic, over-produced pieces of crap. Oh, how to pick just one.
Prediction: Here's the Honda spot description:
Ad's focus will be on the launch of an entirely new model, the Accord Crosstour, a wagon-sedan crossover. And an animated squirrel. And Kool & the Gang's "Funky Stuff."
You don't suppose it will be a dancing animated squirrel, do you?
Worst Use of "Humor" Award
Prediction: Boost Mobile. We've seen their horrible recent efforts, and their Super Bowl spot will be a remake of the 1985 Chicago Bears "Super Bowl Shuffle." Why does that need to be remade? Isn't the original's kitsch value alone funny enough? Not only does it sound painful, but it's wildly unoriginal. (Also, odd timing. Next year would have been the 25th anniversary. Why now?)
The Carlos Mencia Book Prize for Most Egregious Use of B-List Celebrities
Explanation: Who the hell is Carlos Mencia, and why did we name this award after him? Oh, that's right, he was some guy in a Bud Light spot 3 years ago. Well, I guess that just goes to show you that when you spend money on non-name-brand celebs, you're not getting your money's worth.
Prediction: GoDaddy.com will be back with Danica Patrick a-fucking-gain. She was a bit of phenomenon on the Indy racing scene a few years ago, but at this point she has to be considered B-list. Come on, tell me she's still nationally famous outside of these commercials. There may be other B-listers in ads this year, but we're just so tired of seeing the same "let's pretend she's hot!" premise in ad after depressing ad.
And since this is a Book Prize, this year's winner will receive a signed copy of the biography of Carlos Mencia. It's one of Carlos Mencia's favorites.
Flimsiest Pretense Award
Explanation: In the simplest terms, this award goes to the commercial with the least appropriate use of sex. We can only hope there won't be any inter-species action this year.
Prediction: We'll just have to go with GoDaddy.com again, because none of the other descriptions really indicate anything about possible sex scenes. Maybe advertisers just wanted to tone it down this year since Tim Tebow's mom is going to be watching.
Cheapest Budget/Clumsiest Execution Award
Explanation: Remember SalesGenie? They had their CEO write their ads and then used animation that looked like it was done in Microsoft Paint. That's the kind of effort that wins this award.
Prediction: Doritos is, for the second consecutive year, doing their "Crash the Super Bowl" thing, where people can submit their own Doritos ads and the winner gets the Super Bowl air time. Last year's winners won a lot of "Best Ad" polls (although we didn't care for it), and even got on the Tonight Show. That certainly says something about the professional ad agencies.
SkyMall Championship Trophy
Explanation: This award does need a bit of explanation. SkyMall sells weird shit, but it's the weird way they choose to sell their shit, and their eager, misplaced enthusiasm, that really gets us. So this award goes to the ad that best exemplifies the notion of selling a product in a way it just should not be sold.
Prediction: Here's the Snickers spot's description:
Actors Betty White and Abe Vigoda will appear in a spot that reminds viewers that Snickers helps allay food cravings.
This could easily qualify for the Carlos Mencia Book Prize, but it sounds so outlandish that we might as well predict it to land here. Also, note to Snickers -- maybe the reason you help allay food cravings is that you are food. Don't kid yourselves, you're not a diet pill here.
The GoDaddy.com/SalesGenie.com/Bud Light/Miller Lite/Emerald Nuts Award for Worst Superbowl Ad
Explanation: What commercial will join the vaunted ranks of CareerBuilder (2009's winner) and SoBe Lifewater (2008)? This one's always a toss-up, but we'll be sure to post another poll to get everyone's opinion on which ad truly stood out.
Prediction: If you haven't already heard about Focus on the Family's spot with Tim Tebow, you can read about it here. We could give this award to just another unwatchable corporate offering, but I think anytime you manage to piss off half the population, you're airing an historically bad ad.
Explanation: This award does need a bit of explanation. SkyMall sells weird shit, but it's the weird way they choose to sell their shit, and their eager, misplaced enthusiasm, that really gets us. So this award goes to the ad that best exemplifies the notion of selling a product in a way it just should not be sold.
Prediction: Here's the Snickers spot's description:
Actors Betty White and Abe Vigoda will appear in a spot that reminds viewers that Snickers helps allay food cravings.
This could easily qualify for the Carlos Mencia Book Prize, but it sounds so outlandish that we might as well predict it to land here. Also, note to Snickers -- maybe the reason you help allay food cravings is that you are food. Don't kid yourselves, you're not a diet pill here.
The GoDaddy.com/SalesGeni
Explanation: What commercial will join the vaunted ranks of CareerBuilder (2009's winner) and SoBe Lifewater (2008)? This one's always a toss-up, but we'll be sure to post another poll to get everyone's opinion on which ad truly stood out.
Prediction: If you haven't already heard about Focus on the Family's spot with Tim Tebow, you can read about it here. We could give this award to just another unwatchable corporate offering, but I think anytime you manage to piss off half the population, you're airing an historically bad ad.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Super Bored Awards II
In the mid-eighties, the marketing world pulled one of the great snow jobs on the American television audience. They somehow convinced people not to change the channel during Super Bowl commercial breaks. They told us that commercials aren't just 30-second sales pitches, but entertainment, something to look forward to, the "best" "part" "of" the "Super Bowl." It's kind of like how financial services companies somehow convinced us over the last 15 years that our 401(k)s were totally safe, and that the money was not at all entirely fictional and tied up in worthless housing debt. I guess Americans are just suckers for big, faceless corporate bullshit.
Super Bowl commercials, as you should know by now, are poor entertainment. If you watched the Super Bowl for the ads and not for the game, I'm sorry. You should have watched a movie, read a book, spent time with your loved ones - anything else, really. And not only were the commercials not entertaining, many of them didn't even succeed in their actual job of, y'know, selling something. Here, then, are our picks for the worst commercials, by category, of Super Bowl XLIII.
The Apple 1984 Memorial Award for Least Shitty Ad
Winner: Coca-Cola
Windier: All right, it's questionable how well this ad really "sells" Coke. But there are only a few companies that can actually get away with making ads almost wholly off-message, and Coke is one of them. It's a nicely-designed ad, the music works well, and the butterflies faking the Coke bottle is priceless. And if just one Coke drinker is educated about the serious risks of insect-related beverage theft, it was worth the millions the ad cost to create and broadcast.
Most Overproduced Ad
Winner: SoBe Life Water
Quivering: Oh, SoBe. So predictable. You won this coveted award last year, and you did not disappoint in 2009.
If you think you know what's going on in this commercial, you are probably either seven years old, really high, or the person who directed the ad. It starts out with the stale joke of football players doing ballet, then clumsily segues into poorly-animated lizards, then shoehorns in characters from the upcoming Dreamworks movie Monsters vs. Aliens, and then - okay, I have no idea what happens after that, because I was on the floor twitching by then. It's stimulation overload. And totally painful and creepy. Maybe the whole thing paid off if you wore 3-D glasses (for the version that aired last night). Somehow, I doubt that.
(Note from Windier: It did not. And my eyes were on fire by the time it was over.)
Cheapest Budget/Clumsiest Execution Award
Winner: Vizio
Windier: Man, Vizio TVs must be inexpensive. How else can you explain an ad like this, which screams "We are absolutely blowing our entire budget on the cost of airing the ad, so we need to be able to make it for $7.50 and a box of cookies"? The whole thing looks like it was created in PowerPoint for a shareholders' meeting. Throw in a clunky joke involving the economy and the actual specs of the TV zooming past at light speed and you've got yourself an ad that manages to live up to both aspects of this award. And who chose that moving background? I think I'm going to be sick.
Worst Use of "Humor" Award
Winner: eTrade
Quivering: This one really chaps my hide. They manipulate you with babies, and then use goofy humor to make light of the economic plight that they helped create.
Baby: "You know, it's times like these that eTrade can really help you replan your investments."
Oh, yeah, sure. Just go open an online trading account and jump right into the stock market! Hey, just because professionals with years of experience and Ivy League MBAs lost a third or more of their wealth in one year doesn't mean you won't come up a big winner! And you may lose a few bucks now and then, or possibly your retirement, savings and house. But so what?! At least those babies were funny, right? (As we all know, tired references to songs that stopped being popular 20 years ago = comedy gold.)
Dishonorable Mention: Doritos
We would be remiss if we did not call out Doritos for some really bad commercials this year. This one in particular was part of the consumer-generated "Crash the Super Bowl" campaign, where people sent in their own Doritos ads. I wish I could say that regular people were better at making ads than many of the hacks who do it for a living, but, well, maybe not. This commercial combines hamfisted acting with cheap crotch-hitting jokes. I'll bet you anything that better ads were submitted, but the Doritos people just wouldn't know a good TV spot if it were hurled at their junk from point-blank range. Hey, I just got an idea for a follow-up commercial!
The Carlos Mencia Book Prize for Most Egregious Use of B-List Celebrities
Winner: Cash4Gold
Windier: I'll admit that this nonsense is an improvement over the normal Cash4Gold ads, which mostly feature elderly women with facial expressions suggesting that a positive testimonial is the only thing that will get the gun pointed away from their heads. On the other hand, are we sure they aren't doing mostly the same thing here? Hammer and Ed McMahon have both had significant financial troubles in recent years, and while they might be satisfied customers as a result, I'm guessing Cash4Gold was able to use this fact to hire them. Why else would anyone recognizable be caught dead in a Cash4Gold ad? (Negative bonus points for forcing Ed McMahon to deliver a bastardized version of his most famous catchphrase.)
Flimsiest Pretense Award
Winner: GoDaddy.com
Quivering: Danica Patrick wasn't hot last year. And a year of not winning the Indy 500 didn't make her suddenly hotter (or a better actress). The internet domain name purveyor won this award in 2008, and we predicted it again this year based on the spot-on Ad Age description. Let's just say there wasn't an easier bet to be had on Sunday.
Let me try to capture the strategy behind this commercial:
Step 1: Objectify women;
Step 2: Make men look like primates;
Step 3: Use a sports celebrity completely out of context;
Step 4: Sell internet domain names.
Rock solid, don't you think?
Dishonorable Mention: Castrol
Inter-species makeout session alert! Man, I can't believe how hilarious that commercial is, or how much it makes me want to buy motor oil. Right after I finish vomiting.
(Side note to Castrol: Chimpanzees are not monkeys. They are apes.)
SkyMall Championship Trophy
Winner: Pepsi
Quivering: Let me preface this by saying: I get it. I get what Pepsi is doing - the whole "we're appealing to the young, hip demographic before they get too addicted to Coke products" thing. The new billboard/print campaign is interesting, and the logo looks a lot like Obama's campaign logo - I respect what they're trying to do.
But this ad is just an odd way to sell your product, and that's what the SkyMall award is for. First of all, the implication that will.i.am is the heir to Bob Dylan is a little odd. I know he had the Obama song, but let's not rush into this. Let him record a few more seminal albums before we refer to him as the voice of this generation or whatever. Also, it takes a damn long time to get to the point of this ad, or before Pepsi is mentioned. Not sure how a minute-long hodgepodge of random pop culture symbols (VWs, Gumby, Shrek, etc.) sells me on a can of cola, either.
(Addendum from Windier: If the guy whose group was responsible for "My Humps" is the next Dylan, then watch this: "Dip dop a ringy dingy doo!" I'm the next Charles Dickens, motherfuckers.)
Worst Super Bowl Ad of 2008
Winner: CareerBuilder
Windier: What makes this ad the worst of its Super Bowl class? What gives it the enduring shittiness to ring through the ages as the most painful example of advertising from a night filled with painful examples of advertising? Why do I hate it so, so much?
First of all, it uses the by-now hackneyed "list" premise, which should have been permanently retired after the classic FedEx spot from a few years ago. More importantly, it combines the list idea with droning, tiresome, and eventually quite painful repetition. How much footage did they even have to shoot for that minute-long ad, 25 seconds' worth? You say economical, I say really fucking annoying. It doesn't help that none of those things are more than vaguely funny. Woman yelling? Not funny. Guy getting called a dummy? Certainly not laugh-out-loud funny, but perhaps slightly amusing. Woman riding a seal? Not funny. (By the way, if you can't make a woman riding a seal look convincing, don't fucking use it in your ad. Do you have any idea how many people are going to see this thing, most of them in high-definition?) Fat guy crying? Not funny. Cheap-looking koala puppet getting punched? Not funny. Gross bald guy in a Speedo? Guess. So if none of those things is funny once, why should any of them be funny by the third or fourth time I'm forced to sit through them? Answer: they're not.
Furthermore, the whole thing is just counterproductive. I don't see how ugly half-naked people sell things, whether used to imply the consequences of not using the item/service being promoted or not. (One of these years I'm going to save up a couple million bucks and buy an ad that's just 30 seconds of a hairy guy in a thong, and at the end he holds up a sign that says "TheAdWizards.com" for four seconds. How many hits do you think this site would get the next day? Negative a jillion?) But even beyond that, if I weren't watching the whole ad because I write for this blog and thus felt compelled to do so, I would have changed the channel before the 30-second mark (not even seeing the Speedo guy), as any sane person should have. And that's 30 whole seconds before we actually find out what company the ad was promoting. Sure, it might have been CareerBuilder, but it might also have been HotJobs, or SimplyHired, or Monster. (Monster actually ran an ad during the game, and it was half as long, to the point, and really not annoying in any way.)
Congratulations, CareerBuilder. When you make an ad this unwatchable and bury your company name in the last three seconds, it's probably time. To hire a new fucking agency.
Super Bowl commercials, as you should know by now, are poor entertainment. If you watched the Super Bowl for the ads and not for the game, I'm sorry. You should have watched a movie, read a book, spent time with your loved ones - anything else, really. And not only were the commercials not entertaining, many of them didn't even succeed in their actual job of, y'know, selling something. Here, then, are our picks for the worst commercials, by category, of Super Bowl XLIII.
The Apple 1984 Memorial Award for Least Shitty Ad
Winner: Coca-Cola
Windier: All right, it's questionable how well this ad really "sells" Coke. But there are only a few companies that can actually get away with making ads almost wholly off-message, and Coke is one of them. It's a nicely-designed ad, the music works well, and the butterflies faking the Coke bottle is priceless. And if just one Coke drinker is educated about the serious risks of insect-related beverage theft, it was worth the millions the ad cost to create and broadcast.
Most Overproduced Ad
Winner: SoBe Life Water
Quivering: Oh, SoBe. So predictable. You won this coveted award last year, and you did not disappoint in 2009.
If you think you know what's going on in this commercial, you are probably either seven years old, really high, or the person who directed the ad. It starts out with the stale joke of football players doing ballet, then clumsily segues into poorly-animated lizards, then shoehorns in characters from the upcoming Dreamworks movie Monsters vs. Aliens, and then - okay, I have no idea what happens after that, because I was on the floor twitching by then. It's stimulation overload. And totally painful and creepy. Maybe the whole thing paid off if you wore 3-D glasses (for the version that aired last night). Somehow, I doubt that.
(Note from Windier: It did not. And my eyes were on fire by the time it was over.)
Cheapest Budget/Clumsiest Execution Award
Winner: Vizio
Windier: Man, Vizio TVs must be inexpensive. How else can you explain an ad like this, which screams "We are absolutely blowing our entire budget on the cost of airing the ad, so we need to be able to make it for $7.50 and a box of cookies"? The whole thing looks like it was created in PowerPoint for a shareholders' meeting. Throw in a clunky joke involving the economy and the actual specs of the TV zooming past at light speed and you've got yourself an ad that manages to live up to both aspects of this award. And who chose that moving background? I think I'm going to be sick.
Worst Use of "Humor" Award
Winner: eTrade
Quivering: This one really chaps my hide. They manipulate you with babies, and then use goofy humor to make light of the economic plight that they helped create.
Baby: "You know, it's times like these that eTrade can really help you replan your investments."
Oh, yeah, sure. Just go open an online trading account and jump right into the stock market! Hey, just because professionals with years of experience and Ivy League MBAs lost a third or more of their wealth in one year doesn't mean you won't come up a big winner! And you may lose a few bucks now and then, or possibly your retirement, savings and house. But so what?! At least those babies were funny, right? (As we all know, tired references to songs that stopped being popular 20 years ago = comedy gold.)
Dishonorable Mention: Doritos
We would be remiss if we did not call out Doritos for some really bad commercials this year. This one in particular was part of the consumer-generated "Crash the Super Bowl" campaign, where people sent in their own Doritos ads. I wish I could say that regular people were better at making ads than many of the hacks who do it for a living, but, well, maybe not. This commercial combines hamfisted acting with cheap crotch-hitting jokes. I'll bet you anything that better ads were submitted, but the Doritos people just wouldn't know a good TV spot if it were hurled at their junk from point-blank range. Hey, I just got an idea for a follow-up commercial!
The Carlos Mencia Book Prize for Most Egregious Use of B-List Celebrities
Winner: Cash4Gold
Windier: I'll admit that this nonsense is an improvement over the normal Cash4Gold ads, which mostly feature elderly women with facial expressions suggesting that a positive testimonial is the only thing that will get the gun pointed away from their heads. On the other hand, are we sure they aren't doing mostly the same thing here? Hammer and Ed McMahon have both had significant financial troubles in recent years, and while they might be satisfied customers as a result, I'm guessing Cash4Gold was able to use this fact to hire them. Why else would anyone recognizable be caught dead in a Cash4Gold ad? (Negative bonus points for forcing Ed McMahon to deliver a bastardized version of his most famous catchphrase.)
Flimsiest Pretense Award
Winner: GoDaddy.com
Quivering: Danica Patrick wasn't hot last year. And a year of not winning the Indy 500 didn't make her suddenly hotter (or a better actress). The internet domain name purveyor won this award in 2008, and we predicted it again this year based on the spot-on Ad Age description. Let's just say there wasn't an easier bet to be had on Sunday.
Let me try to capture the strategy behind this commercial:
Step 1: Objectify women;
Step 2: Make men look like primates;
Step 3: Use a sports celebrity completely out of context;
Step 4: Sell internet domain names.
Rock solid, don't you think?
Dishonorable Mention: Castrol
Inter-species makeout session alert! Man, I can't believe how hilarious that commercial is, or how much it makes me want to buy motor oil. Right after I finish vomiting.
(Side note to Castrol: Chimpanzees are not monkeys. They are apes.)
SkyMall Championship Trophy
Winner: Pepsi
Quivering: Let me preface this by saying: I get it. I get what Pepsi is doing - the whole "we're appealing to the young, hip demographic before they get too addicted to Coke products" thing. The new billboard/print campaign is interesting, and the logo looks a lot like Obama's campaign logo - I respect what they're trying to do.
But this ad is just an odd way to sell your product, and that's what the SkyMall award is for. First of all, the implication that will.i.am is the heir to Bob Dylan is a little odd. I know he had the Obama song, but let's not rush into this. Let him record a few more seminal albums before we refer to him as the voice of this generation or whatever. Also, it takes a damn long time to get to the point of this ad, or before Pepsi is mentioned. Not sure how a minute-long hodgepodge of random pop culture symbols (VWs, Gumby, Shrek, etc.) sells me on a can of cola, either.
(Addendum from Windier: If the guy whose group was responsible for "My Humps" is the next Dylan, then watch this: "Dip dop a ringy dingy doo!" I'm the next Charles Dickens, motherfuckers.)
Worst Super Bowl Ad of 2008
Winner: CareerBuilder
Windier: What makes this ad the worst of its Super Bowl class? What gives it the enduring shittiness to ring through the ages as the most painful example of advertising from a night filled with painful examples of advertising? Why do I hate it so, so much?
First of all, it uses the by-now hackneyed "list" premise, which should have been permanently retired after the classic FedEx spot from a few years ago. More importantly, it combines the list idea with droning, tiresome, and eventually quite painful repetition. How much footage did they even have to shoot for that minute-long ad, 25 seconds' worth? You say economical, I say really fucking annoying. It doesn't help that none of those things are more than vaguely funny. Woman yelling? Not funny. Guy getting called a dummy? Certainly not laugh-out-loud funny, but perhaps slightly amusing. Woman riding a seal? Not funny. (By the way, if you can't make a woman riding a seal look convincing, don't fucking use it in your ad. Do you have any idea how many people are going to see this thing, most of them in high-definition?) Fat guy crying? Not funny. Cheap-looking koala puppet getting punched? Not funny. Gross bald guy in a Speedo? Guess. So if none of those things is funny once, why should any of them be funny by the third or fourth time I'm forced to sit through them? Answer: they're not.
Furthermore, the whole thing is just counterproductive. I don't see how ugly half-naked people sell things, whether used to imply the consequences of not using the item/service being promoted or not. (One of these years I'm going to save up a couple million bucks and buy an ad that's just 30 seconds of a hairy guy in a thong, and at the end he holds up a sign that says "TheAdWizards.com" for four seconds. How many hits do you think this site would get the next day? Negative a jillion?) But even beyond that, if I weren't watching the whole ad because I write for this blog and thus felt compelled to do so, I would have changed the channel before the 30-second mark (not even seeing the Speedo guy), as any sane person should have. And that's 30 whole seconds before we actually find out what company the ad was promoting. Sure, it might have been CareerBuilder, but it might also have been HotJobs, or SimplyHired, or Monster. (Monster actually ran an ad during the game, and it was half as long, to the point, and really not annoying in any way.)
Congratulations, CareerBuilder. When you make an ad this unwatchable and bury your company name in the last three seconds, it's probably time. To hire a new fucking agency.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
2009 Super Bored Awards Preview
Super Bowl XLIII is coming up next week, and excitement's in the air. Football fans in Arizona are giddy with anticipation, Steelers fans are confident their team is going to continue its postseason success, and, most importantly, eager fans of corporate advertising are gearing up for the single biggest day in all of marketing. So we continue with our tradition of handing out our Ad Wizards Super Bored Awards to those commercials that instantly earn a place here in Ad Wizards history.
After Sunday's game, we'll be writing up our reactions to the Super Bowl commercials and handing out the awards. Here's a rundown of the 8 categories, and our picks for possible "winners":
Worst Use of "Humor" Award
Explanation: Pretty self-explanatory, really. There are dozens of ads on TV each day that could win this award, but during the Super Bowl, when the stakes are raised, having a painfully unfunny ad really goes to another level of shittiness.
Prediction: It would be easy to call this one for Anheuser-Busch; we handed it to Bud Light last year and beer ads do tend to suck. But that seems like the coward's way out. Doritos is another possibility because they actually let the general public submit ads, but I'm leaning towards CareerBuilder, as its ad apparently features "a koala bear and a co-worker in a Speedo." You're already doubled over laughing, right?
The Carlos Mencia Book Prize for Most Egregious Use of B-List Celebrities
Explanation: Observe. Carlos Mencia fell off the map so rapidly, the joke in the name of this award is practically nonsense. Suffice it to say, this baby goes to the ad that shoe-horns in the silliest, biggest waste-of-money celebrity endorsement.
Prediction: AdAge doesn't list many celebrity appearances in this year's crop of ads, but I bet someone will surprise us. For now, we have to go with Coke Zero's tie-in with Troy Polamalu. Sure, he's a Steeler, and Pittsburgh is playing in the Super Bowl this year, but I reject the fact that he's that recognizable. Another consideration is that the Coke Zero spot will be produced by my personal favorite advertising agency, Crispin Porter + Bogusky.
Flimsiest Pretense Award
Explanation: Some people out there think sex can sell anything. These people are called "hacks," and they control a vast amount of advertising. This award goes out to the most inappropriately-placed sex appeal, the most nonsensical naked lady, or the least intuitive pairing of a product with T&A (read: food & sex). If the past is any indication, there will be plenty of qualifying ads to choose from for this award.
Prediction: GoDaddy.com was the winner last year with its laughable "Danica Patrick unzips her jacket and almost shows her boobs" spot. We see no reason to predict any other company this year, because Danica Patrick is back, and she's even less relevant. Here's the 2009 :30 spot description: "'Shower,' the current front-runner, features Patrick in a shower with another woman as three college students control the women's movements from a computer keyboard."
What about seeing a not-that-hot race car driver in the shower makes me want to purchase a domain name for my web site?
Cheapest Budget/Clumsiest Execution Award
Explanation: Again, fairly self-explanatory. Last year this went to SalesGenie, which allowed its CEO to write its ads and then used the worst-looking animation you've ever seen to get them on the air.
Prediction: As we mentioned earlier, Doritos is airing an ad that was created by the public; unless they have some ringers in there, the budget for this was probably about zero. Certainly a contender. If that's too easy, look to Teleflora, a flowers-delivery service that probably had to hold a bake sale just to raise the money to buy a 30-second spot.
After Sunday's game, we'll be writing up our reactions to the Super Bowl commercials and handing out the awards. Here's a rundown of the 8 categories, and our picks for possible "winners":
Apple 1984 Memorial Award for Least Shitty Ad
Explanation: Why "Least Shitty" and not "Best" ad? Check out the descriptions of this year's spots, and tell me which of those commercials sound like something you'd want to watch. Exactly.
Prediction: I know I've ragged on car commercials a lot over the past year and a half, but Hyundai's spot with Yo-Yo Ma playing a classical piece on his cello sounds safe enough. Their new Assurance Program which "allows new-vehicle buyers or leasees to return cars for up to a year after purchase if they lose their income due to a job loss" sounds like a cool and relevant promotion. Predicting this award is all about choosing the least of many evils.
Explanation: Why "Least Shitty" and not "Best" ad? Check out the descriptions of this year's spots, and tell me which of those commercials sound like something you'd want to watch. Exactly.
Prediction: I know I've ragged on car commercials a lot over the past year and a half, but Hyundai's spot with Yo-Yo Ma playing a classical piece on his cello sounds safe enough. Their new Assurance Program which "allows new-vehicle buyers or leasees to return cars for up to a year after purchase if they lose their income due to a job loss" sounds like a cool and relevant promotion. Predicting this award is all about choosing the least of many evils.
Most Overproduced Ad
Explanation: Super Bowl ads are expensive. Unfortunately, the way some companies respond to this is by going for a case of stimulus overload, throwing everything at the wall and seeing if something will stick in the public consciousness. Last year this award went to Sobe Life Water and their horrible dancing lizards ad, which attempted to combine Naomi Campbell (?), mediocre CGI, and several of the most pointless jokes you've ever seen into gold. Shockingly, it didn't work.
Prediction: Audi has brought in The Transporter's Jason Statham to do, well, exactly what he does in The Transporter - run around trying to get away from bad guys by driving a luxury car. Since I know this is a problem a lot of us have in real life, I'm sure this spot will resonate. What's that? He also flees bad guys through different eras? Well, I hope there are some hilarious wigs involved.
Explanation: Super Bowl ads are expensive. Unfortunately, the way some companies respond to this is by going for a case of stimulus overload, throwing everything at the wall and seeing if something will stick in the public consciousness. Last year this award went to Sobe Life Water and their horrible dancing lizards ad, which attempted to combine Naomi Campbell (?), mediocre CGI, and several of the most pointless jokes you've ever seen into gold. Shockingly, it didn't work.
Prediction: Audi has brought in The Transporter's Jason Statham to do, well, exactly what he does in The Transporter - run around trying to get away from bad guys by driving a luxury car. Since I know this is a problem a lot of us have in real life, I'm sure this spot will resonate. What's that? He also flees bad guys through different eras? Well, I hope there are some hilarious wigs involved.
Worst Use of "Humor" Award
Prediction: It would be easy to call this one for Anheuser-Busch; we handed it to Bud Light last year and beer ads do tend to suck. But that seems like the coward's way out. Doritos is another possibility because they actually let the general public submit ads, but I'm leaning towards CareerBuilder, as its ad apparently features "a koala bear and a co-worker in a Speedo." You're already doubled over laughing, right?
The Carlos Mencia Book Prize for Most Egregious Use of B-List Celebrities
Explanation: Observe. Carlos Mencia fell off the map so rapidly, the joke in the name of this award is practically nonsense. Suffice it to say, this baby goes to the ad that shoe-horns in the silliest, biggest waste-of-money celebrity endorsement.
Prediction: AdAge doesn't list many celebrity appearances in this year's crop of ads, but I bet someone will surprise us. For now, we have to go with Coke Zero's tie-in with Troy Polamalu. Sure, he's a Steeler, and Pittsburgh is playing in the Super Bowl this year, but I reject the fact that he's that recognizable. Another consideration is that the Coke Zero spot will be produced by my personal favorite advertising agency, Crispin Porter + Bogusky.
Flimsiest Pretense Award
Explanation: Some people out there think sex can sell anything. These people are called "hacks," and they control a vast amount of advertising. This award goes out to the most inappropriately-placed sex appeal, the most nonsensical naked lady, or the least intuitive pairing of a product with T&A (read: food & sex). If the past is any indication, there will be plenty of qualifying ads to choose from for this award.
Prediction: GoDaddy.com was the winner last year with its laughable "Danica Patrick unzips her jacket and almost shows her boobs" spot. We see no reason to predict any other company this year, because Danica Patrick is back, and she's even less relevant. Here's the 2009 :30 spot description: "'Shower,' the current front-runner, features Patrick in a shower with another woman as three college students control the women's movements from a computer keyboard."
What about seeing a not-that-hot race car driver in the shower makes me want to purchase a domain name for my web site?
Cheapest Budget/Clumsiest Execution Award
Explanation: Again, fairly self-explanatory. Last year this went to SalesGenie, which allowed its CEO to write its ads and then used the worst-looking animation you've ever seen to get them on the air.
Prediction: As we mentioned earlier, Doritos is airing an ad that was created by the public; unless they have some ringers in there, the budget for this was probably about zero. Certainly a contender. If that's too easy, look to Teleflora, a flowers-delivery service that probably had to hold a bake sale just to raise the money to buy a 30-second spot.
SkyMall Championship Trophy
Explanation: This award goes to the "worst overall attempt to sell a product," referring not so much to how bad the ad is as to how bad the specific pitch is. Last year this went to Planters for advertising its cashews by using an ugly woman's cleavage.
Prediction: Well, that depends. Is eTrade going to show a baby throwing up again? If their "sneak peek outtakes" video is anything to go by, the eTrade pitch is going to focus on babies puking, swearing, or doing inappropriately sexual things. I started five online trading accounts in the 30 seconds since I watched that ad because of the obvious connection. Or I didn't, because what the fuck.
The GoDaddy.com/SalesGenie.com/Bud Light/Miller Lite/Emerald Nuts Award for Worst Superbowl Ad
Explanation: The worst ad shall embody the qualities of tastelessness, stupidity, over-production, boorishness and the overall indecipherability that become the very worst commercials. This should be the kind of advertisement that, upon viewing, makes you never want to purchase the product. The kind of commerical that is so shockingly bad it reduces sales, gets the CMO fired, and generally annoys America until it's pulled from the airwaves.
Prediction: SoBe and their freaky lizard commercial won last year. And once again we're going to pick the same company to get our award. The AdAge blurb mentions a couple of important points about this year's SoBe commercial:
- It features the "popular" (?) SoBe lizards
- It will be 60 seconds of torture
- It will show both NFL stars and characters from the DreamWorks movie "Monsters vs. Aliens"
- The theme will be the ballet Swan Lake
- It has "Rhythmic Effects"
You've been warned. If you're going to attempt to watch the game, have a steady finger on that Mute button, keep a blindfold nearby, and place a cyanide tablet near you just in case everything backfires and you end up watching all 60 seconds of this commercial. Don't worry, we have your best interests in mind.
***
Last year the worst of the worst (outside of the Sobe spot) just didn't seem that egregrious. With the descriptions for 2009, you can't help but think we'll get some stand out offerings from advertisers this year. We may be in a recession, but that ain't stopping advertisers from putting on a really big, and really over-produced, show.
Explanation: This award goes to the "worst overall attempt to sell a product," referring not so much to how bad the ad is as to how bad the specific pitch is. Last year this went to Planters for advertising its cashews by using an ugly woman's cleavage.
Prediction: Well, that depends. Is eTrade going to show a baby throwing up again? If their "sneak peek outtakes" video is anything to go by, the eTrade pitch is going to focus on babies puking, swearing, or doing inappropriately sexual things. I started five online trading accounts in the 30 seconds since I watched that ad because of the obvious connection. Or I didn't, because what the fuck.
The GoDaddy.com/SalesGeni
Explanation: The worst ad shall embody the qualities of tastelessness, stupidity, over-production, boorishness and the overall indecipherability that become the very worst commercials. This should be the kind of advertisement that, upon viewing, makes you never want to purchase the product. The kind of commerical that is so shockingly bad it reduces sales, gets the CMO fired, and generally annoys America until it's pulled from the airwaves.
Prediction: SoBe and their freaky lizard commercial won last year. And once again we're going to pick the same company to get our award. The AdAge blurb mentions a couple of important points about this year's SoBe commercial:
- It features the "popular" (?) SoBe lizards
- It will be 60 seconds of torture
- It will show both NFL stars and characters from the DreamWorks movie "Monsters vs. Aliens"
- The theme will be the ballet Swan Lake
- It has "Rhythmic Effects"
You've been warned. If you're going to attempt to watch the game, have a steady finger on that Mute button, keep a blindfold nearby, and place a cyanide tablet near you just in case everything backfires and you end up watching all 60 seconds of this commercial. Don't worry, we have your best interests in mind.
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Last year the worst of the worst (outside of the Sobe spot) just didn't seem that egregrious. With the descriptions for 2009, you can't help but think we'll get some stand out offerings from advertisers this year. We may be in a recession, but that ain't stopping advertisers from putting on a really big, and really over-produced, show.
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