If your dick joke lasts longer than 60 seconds, consult a physician

Remember: this cost Fiat nine million dollars.



It's sort of an interesting counterpoint to Chevy's "drive a truck or never get laid ever" pitch that small car makers often seem to go in a similar direction, especially when marketing their slightly larger models. During the 2011 Super Bowl, for instance, Mini ran an ad that winkingly compared the trunk space in its four-door Countryman model to anal sex. A year later, Fiat explicitly cast its Fiat 500 Abarth model as a sexy Italian woman. And here we have Fiat again, inviting you to think of its four-door 500X as the product of an erection pill falling into a smaller model. (Less obliquely, of course, it also shows you several women purring over it.) The pitch, it seems, is this: really tiny cars aren't sexy. But we also make SLIGHTLY larger cars! And those are TOTALLY sexy.

Per the Chicago Tribune, subcompact crossovers - the vehicle subsegment in which the 500X is classed - are the hot thing in the automobile world. With that in mind, an ad that pushes them as sexy - when "practical" seems more their speed - feels like an odd play. I understand that "practical" is usually reserved for cars that are being sold to parents, and this type of car is apparently chasing younger urban dwellers... but still. Sexy? The whole point is a car that's small but not TOO small. Easy to drive and park but you don't hear this in your head every time you see one go by. Useful. Not sexy.

Here's a five-year-old ad for the Nissan Juke, one of the first subcompact crossovers to hit the market (here sold as a "sport-cross"):



It's true that that ad also felt the need to have multiple women act impressed by our hero. But it does at least show a few things that the car, you know, can do - the turbo boost, the fact that it can fit into small parking spaces while still having some power (a concern that a lot of people have with small cars, clearly), Bluetooth and pop-up navigation. Even as the ad has plenty of... well, if not jokes per se, at least bits that are intended to be amusing, it still gets across the key points about the Juke.

Meanwhile, what do we know about the 500X after watching that Fiat ad? For one thing, the car doesn't show up for 40 seconds of a 60-second spot; by comparison, the Juke is literally the first thing we see in the Nissan ad. And in fact, the car that shows up at the 40-second mark ISN'T the 500X - we don't see that in full until the 49-second mark, after the smaller Fiat has had a chance to, uh, become engorged with... look, forget this. The point is, I count fewer than three seconds of seeing the car driving in the Fiat ad, and none of them are in an American city, which is a little odd considering that this car is presumably being marketed to urban Americans. (On the bright side, I'm very confident I'll be able to maneuver the 500X should I ever find myself driving one in Tuscany.)

I've never been a big fan of car ads that don't show the car driving (like the middle ad from that Dodge post, which is far too busy calling you gay to show you what you'd actually be getting if you succumbed to their sales pitch). Unless what you're really desperate to sell me on does not involve the driving experience itself - like that Mini ad, which really is just focused on the trunk space - you should probably try to show the car in motion for more than a couple seconds. I mean, this ad features an ersatz Viagra pinging around some Italian town for fully twenty seconds. It spends twenty more seconds just on horny old people. The car itself? Eh, who cares.

This isn't a really terrible ad by any means, but Fiat could easily have saved themselves $4.5 million and cut it down to 30 seconds by trimming the fat from the opening 45. Maybe they would have had room for a few more shots of the car actually driving? Or, I don't know, a second joke?

Colorado, why don't you come to your senses

A few years ago, Dodge ran a campaign that I tore into on this here blog. The premise of that campaign was, predominantly, that Dodge cars were manly cars for men. (The kind of cars you could drink a Dr. Pepper Ten while driving, perhaps.) The ads were laughably inconsistent - when marketing the Charger, Dodge implied that it was unmanly to drive a minivan, but as soon as it had to sell the Grand Caravan, suddenly driving a minivan was the manliest thing on God's green earth. It was really kind of pathetic. Fortunately, Dodge has backed down from this embarrassing stance. Unfortunately, here comes Chevy to fill the void.



A version of this ad, though perhaps not the exact same one, aired during the Super Bowl. And Chevy's pitch is right there on the table: buy a truck or you're a loser.

Announcer: "Can a truck change how people feel about a guy?"

Maybe? People feel different ways about people for all sorts of reasons. The real question is whether said guy should make important purchasing decisions based exclusively on that.

Announcer: "We talked to real people. Not actors."

The lady doth protest too much, methinks. But let's assume these are real people; who gives a shit? Real people are just as likely to give you the answer they know you want to hear as an actor you've handed a script. Especially when giving the right answer is going to get them on television.

Announcer: "We showed them two pictures of the same guy in the same location."

Right away you can see the problem with this, right? People aren't stupid. You think they didn't know this was the same guy? You think they didn't know the only difference in the photos was that one guy was standing in front of your truck and one was standing in front of a Honda Civic or whatever? So with that in mind, how much weight do you REALLY want to put in their answers? Oh, all of it? Okay.

Interviewer: "Which man is sexier?"
Women: "Truck."
Woman: "That one has way more sex appeal."

That's right, guys: unless you drive a Chevy Colorado, no woman will EVER want to fuck you. Mark it down!

Woman: "This [car] guy is definitely the guy your mom wants you to marry, and this [truck] is the guy you're gonna run off to, and leave him, to be with him."

I'm thinking car guy dodged a real bullet on this one. Seriously, though, am I supposed to be taking any of this seriously? These women know why they're there. Fuck, the truck has a prominent Chevy logo while the car isn't even marked. We're here to talk about a truck. And then they get asked an insipid question like judging the sex appeal of two identical guys based solely on the vehicle photoshopped in behind them. What are they gonna say?

Announcer: "You know you want a truck."

I hated it when Kraft tried to use this kind of slogan, and I hate it now. Trying to tell me, the consumer, what I want is just the most embarrassing kind of desperation. You can't just encourage me to buy your product? You have to try and be like, "I know you don't think you want this. But you do! Secretly you do. Chevy sees into your dreams and we know your darkest fears. Buy a Colorado... unless you want people to find out what happened at summer camp in 1994?"

Here's the thing about this when it comes to the Colorado (or any truck) in particular. If you need a truck, go ahead and get a truck. Like, do you have a boat you need to haul out to the lake and back? Great! Get a truck! No problem here. But you don't need to sell trucks to those people with this angle because (a) they probably already have a truck if they need it for real reasons and (b) they do know they want a truck and so don't need to be told that. So who is this marketing to? Guys in general. Guys who drive compact, or maybe midsize, cars like the total weenies that they are.

For instance, take a look at this spot:



This doesn't even make a ton of sense, really. So we have this one guy arriving at the office on what is presumably supposed to be a Monday morning, and he's driving what looks like a Honda Civic or similar. He gets to be represented by a Carpenters song. But then he crosses paths with our bad-ass hero, represented by AC/DC, who drives the Chevy Colorado. But what is the deal with his work schedule? Has he been there all night? All weekend? Or does he just get to come and go as he pleases, because... he drives a truck? Also, there's no visible reason in the ad for him to have or need a truck. He has one because he wants to, I guess. Which is fair enough. But is that really practical? Am I really supposed to be super impressed by a guy who drives a truck in the city for no reason?

Just to ram it home, here's Chevy's copy below that ad on YouTube:

"When you're behind the wheel of Motor Trend’s 2015 Truck of the Year, you sit differently and you walk differently. And suddenly the world is different. The world is yours for the taking."

Look, bullshit, okay? You walk differently? Come on. I know advertisers are pretty much obligated to pump the shit out of their products, but this is just nonsense.

(Oh, and lest we think that Chevy is not completely serious about pushing this angle to the limit, just check out some of the ancillary content they've got on YouTube, which includes "We gave this guy a truck and it improved his dating profile" and, no shit, "We made a fake deodorant and some people bought it, therefore trucks are cool." I really don't even have anything to add here.)

Let's get back to fundamentals for a second. Back when I wrote that Dodge post, I cited market research showing that women made more than 50% of all new vehicle purchases and influenced 80% of all vehicle sales overall. That was five years ago, but I can't imagine things have changed TOO much since then. In addition, according to this review of the 2015 Colorado by one of the editors at AutoGuide.com, the midsize truck segment has been "withering away for years." If you're trying to kickstart it, do you really want to market yourself so narrowly? You're pretty much ignoring women entirely! Of course, you're also marketing your truck almost exclusively to the kind of man who doesn't really need a truck but is worried about being seen as less sexy, or as the kind of pansy who owns birds instead of a German shepherd, or as soul patch guy instead of mutton chops guy. (Side note: holy FUCK these ads are embarrassingly reductive.) So, not really opening up a big segment of the market there, maybe?

I'd guess the midsize truck market is kind of a tough sell. If you need a truck regularly, you might prefer a larger truck (like Chevy's Silverado, the GMC Sierra, the Dodge Ram, etc.) that can handle a wider range of activities. And if you rarely if ever need a truck, there's not much reason to buy a truck, is there? One can't help but wonder if GM's push here is based on the hope that plummeting gas prices will make people more willing to buy enormous, impractical cars again. (I mean: remember how ubiquitous Hummer was for a while? Did you know that brand became completely defunct five years ago? There's a reason for that.)

But of course, people aren't just going to buy big-ass trucks they don't have any need for, no matter how cheap gas is. So what's the next move? Try to make it about image. Sure, you may not NEED a pickup truck. But aren't they cool? Aren't they rugged? Wouldn't you feel like more of a man if you were driving one? Look, Chevy, I can get a German shepherd for a lot less than the cost of a truck that will apparently make children think I own one. Building a whole ad campaign around lazy stereotypes aimed at insecure single men in the 25-45 age range might work, I suppose. But you guys better pray that gas prices don't rebound any time soon.

What really kills me about the whole thing is that Chevy's first piece of Colorado-related content on YouTube (which I've never seen on TV, needless to say) is actually pretty good:



Like, that's an acceptable amount of swagger for a car commercial. And it actually shows the truck being used in places where I'd expect to need or want a truck. It shows some things it's good for. It shows people of both sexes using the truck! And most impressively, it doesn't bother trying to call you a wuss if you aren't interested. So, obviously, Chevy dumped it when it came time to truly market the Colorado. I mean, advertising that isn't insulting to the viewer's intelligence? Who'd want that?

The perfect beer for people with no tastebuds

The Budweiser ad with the dog and the horse was probably the most popular of the Super Bowl, for obvious reasons - people love cute dogs. Sure, those ads have nothing to do with Budweiser, but it doesn't matter. Fortunately for our purposes, Bud wasn't satisfied with just having a cute ad and getting out.



Remember: Bud spent nine million dollars to air this. Let's play a little game of Text/Subtext, shall we?

Onscreen text: "Budweiser - proudly a macro beer"

"Proudly produced in a giant factory. Proudly made by a soulless multinational. Proudly indifferent to craftsmanship."

Text: "It's not brewed to be fussed over"

"It's not brewed to taste good. It's not brewed to taste like ANYTHING. It's brewed to go down quickly and easily. It's brewed to get slammed. It's brewed to be sold in a 24-pack."

Text: "It's brewed for a crisp, smooth finish"

"It's brewed so you don't have to think about it. Down the hatch! Here comes the alcohol, bloodstream!"

Text: "This is the only beer beechwood-aged"

"Please don't ask what it means that no one else cares about beechwood-aging. Like, really, if that were so great someone else would probably do it, right?"

Text: "There's only one Budweiser - it's brewed for drinking, not dissecting"

"What kind of flavor profile are you getting?"
"Uh, absolutely zero."
"Yeah, me too. Basically just tastes like piss water."
"But hey! It's got alcohol in it! Let's just pound this shit and get wasted!"
"Aw yeah, bro!" *bottles clink*

Text: "The people who drink our beer are people who like to drink beer"

"The people who drink our beer are people who like to use beer as a way to wash down chicken wings."

Text: "Brewed the hard way"

"Just kidding. Brewed in enormous brewing plants that have been set up to streamline the creation of beer over years of mass production."

Text: "Let them sip their pumpkin peach ale"

"Beer isn't for SIPPING like some nancy boy! It's for CHUGGING! Swallowing by the GLUG. Finishing a bottle in UNDER THIRTY SECONDS. Because this is about taste! And how we lack it entirely."

(Also, as has been pointed out in many places already, Anheuser-Busch recently bought a microbrewery that makes a beer almost identical to the supposedly hyperbolic concoction they're making fun of here. Awkward!)

Text: "We'll be brewing us some golden suds"

"Our beer looks and tastes like it came out of a mop bucket that someone pissed in! THIRSTY?"

Text: "This is the famous Budweiser beer"

"Proving vaguely acceptable to millions of palates, truly enjoyed by none."

Text: "This Bud's for you"
Tiny fucking text: "Enjoy responsibly"

"Budweiser! Produced in huge quantities so you can DRINK IT in huge quantities! But uh, you know, don't have TOO many. We guess. Someone made us write this. So we wrote it as small as possible. Just keep drinking."

Ad Age published some quotes from Budweiser VP Brian Perkins that, much like this ad itself, are almost hilariously clueless. Perkins claims the ad is not an attack on craft beer - which I suppose he'd have to claim, given that Anheuser-Busch now owns a number of craft breweries. It's an attack on pretentiousness! The pretentiousness of wanting your beer to have character, I guess, and not be made to wash down without a second thought. Soooo snobbish.

We've talked about this kind of ad a number of times over the years: the ad that markets itself only to people who already use the product. It's like a high-five to the dude who's tossing cases of Bud into the back of his truck in the middle of Nebraska, or whatever. Which of course is ironic because the ad primarily shows people drinking Buds in upscale urban bar settings, which is probably the last place in America where a group of friends comes in and asks for a round of Budweiser. In fact, that Ad Age article reveals that Bud has had trouble gaining traction in the under-30 set, and suggests that going back to the old "This Bud's for you" slogan is actually a way of turning their focus back to older people. Older people who, I guess, just want to throw back a few.

But you can see why Bud would go on the attack. This is a very political way of selling something - if you're not with us, you're against us. Should we try to win over new customers? Nope. And that's not wrong - if you're a "pumpkin peach ale drinker" (excuse me, "sipper"), you're not seeing a Budweiser ad and thinking, "You know, I'm really getting bored with drinking interesting beer! How about the single most boring, mass-produced lager on the planet instead?" It's like McDonald's running an ad that makes fun of molecular gastronomy. The Venn diagram was already two perfect circles. This isn't a conversion exercise. It's the beer ad equivalent of Donald Trump demanding to see President Obama's birth certificate - red meat to try and fire up the base.

Bud claims this is still about winning over new customers, but no. If you had a bunch of friends but knew a few people who didn't like you, would you spend time trying to make those people into your friends? Or would you hang out with your actual friends and talk shit about those people? Most people would do the latter, and that's what this is. Bud isn't reaching a hand out to non-Bud drinkers. It's flipping them the bird. "This Bud's not for you. Because you don't want it anyway. So fuck you." I guess that was worth nine million dollars.

Shh, don't tell 'em

Do you think Nissan actually knows what "Cat's in the Cradle" is about?



A quick refresher: "Cat's in the Cradle" is a song about a father who never has any time for his kid. The kid nevertheless talks about wanting to grow up to be like his father - and then, lo and behold, he does, growing into a man who is constantly busy and never has time to spend with his father, who has aged into a regretful old man upset with himself for ignoring his son all those years. That song is BRUTAL AS FUCK. That it's somehow turned into a fatherhood anthem just because the word "Dad" is in the lyrics is right up there with "Born in the USA" in the all-time "no one listened to these lyrics besides the chorus" rankings.

The question is what Nissan is even trying to do here. The plot of this ad: race car driver has a kid. He's never at home because he's off nearly getting killed in his race car. Then at the end he actually shows up for a change! And he gets a hug. The end.

This could have been a contender for the SkyMall Championship Trophy in our Super Bored Awards. Because what the fuck. The dad is a race car driver in a Nissan car. So, in other words, all the anguish and emotional distance being experienced by this family is at least partly Nissan's fault! "Yeah, sorry I missed your birthday, son, but I was off driving around in my sweet-ass Nissan race car!"

I suppose Nissan has to know what "Cat's in the Cradle" is about since the plot of the ad basically dovetails exactly with the plot of the song (though really just the first two and a half verses). But how did they think this was going to sell cars? This is one of those "the only important thing is getting our name out there" ads, which I've never thought made a lot of sense coming from companies whose names are already well known. If you're Nissan, I don't think there's a ton you can do to boost your Q rating compared to, say, Mophie. But you can probably screw it up! And one way to do that is by making a weird, depressing ad that has nothing to do with your actual products. I guess we see a new-looking Nissan at the end. You need eagle eyes to spot the model name, though. Worth it.

In case you think that Nissan really gave any significant thought to this "#withdad" campaign they're running, check out this thing that supposedly was intended as a "teaser" for their Super Bowl ad:



Setting aside the fact that this barely constitutes a "prank," this video of an apparently stay-at-home dad having fun with his kids is literally as far as possible from the plot of Nissan's Super Bowl ad as I can even imagine.

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and a ball-filled room
When ya comin' home dad, I'm home right now
I don't have an actual job, son, so I'm here all the time

Also: the idea of filling a non-ball-pit room with balls? Not new. I'm sure your wife appreciates how annoying you've made her life after her 40-minute commute, though.



And here's another video (this one part of a series on YouTube) about the Matthews family, who have been playing in the NFL for three generations. This isn't bad for like, a SportsCenter piece. But what value does it have as Nissan content? Oh, but there are dads in it! So hashtag that shit up, man!

This is just incoherent, right? It has nothing to do with anything. Nissan wants to make a bunch of branded content with dad stuff because... what? Are dads their key demo now? "Nissan! The perfect boring mid-size car for your boring middle-age dad life!" I guess it's a change of pace from the usual push to market everything to the 18-to-34 demographic, but linking a bunch of totally unrelated stuff together with a dad-related hashtag is super uninspiring. You can practically see the marketing meeting in which this was conceived.

Exec 1: "Okay, here's the pitch: dads."
Exec 2: "What do you mean, dads?"
Exec 1: "Dads! Hashtag, 'dads.' 'Nissan: the boring car for boring dads.'"
Exec 3: "Yeah, we're not gonna-"
Exec 1: "Okay, forget the boring part. But trust me: dads. What do you think of when you think of dads?"
Exec 2: "Um... football?"
Exec 1: "Great! What about you?"
Exec 3: "Miserable absentee bastards."
Exec 1: "Oh! That's, uh, that's very specific..."
Exec 3: "Lousy, no-good, never home, never said he loved me, missed all my soccer games, rat-fu-"
Exec 1 [jotting down notes]: "Yeah, no, this is good stuff, Phil. I think we can make this work."
Exec 2: "And this is going to sell Nissans?"
Exec 1 [shrugging]: "I mean... it might?"

Super Bored Awards VI

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.

Repulsion comes standard

How about another supplemental award? This one we'll call The Creepiest, Most Off-Putting CGI Award. And the winner is... Cars.com!



This ad is supposed to be funny and/or appealing.

Salesman: "Have you decided which vehicle you want to go with today?"
[horrifying CGI monstrosity version of the customer emerges from his back; music plays]
CGI horror: [singing] "Hey baby, I want that car / Hey baby, I really want that car / Let's get that car..."
Customer: "Yeah, that's my confidence, it's been coming out of me ever since I went on Cars.com."

I can think of many, many ways to depict someone as being confident. Cars.com has used at least a couple of them in earlier ads. This is... not one of the ones I would have picked.

Customer: "I compared gas mileage using their side-by-side comparison tool, and uh, this one would be great."
CGI horror: "Hoo! Yeah baby, let's get those keys and go!"
Salesman: "I'll get the keys."
CGI horror: "Woo!"

Quivering and I were talking about this earlier, actually. Why is it that so many ads try to be funny and so few of them are? We came to the conclusion that most people who are funny enough to write successful jokes for a national ad campaign probably have better things to do with their joke-writing talent than write commercials. There's a reason why Will Ferrell's Old Milwaukee spots have captured attention, and it has a lot to do with the fact that Will Ferrell is way too talented of a comedian to be doing spots for Old Milwaukee.

This ad thinks it is funny. There's no disputing that. But the only thing in the ad that is supposed to be funny is the horrible "confidence" singing. And it's not. I know that humor for most people follows the old Potter Stewart line about pornography - "I know it when I see it" - and so maybe it's futile for me to ask people who think this is funny (and, amazingly, they are out there) why they think it's funny. But I can't for the life of me figure out why this is funny or how it even is supposed to be. It's a creepy bit of CGI singing in falsetto that it wants a car. Who fucking cares? That's really what passes for a joke here?

Here's Ad Age's take on the spot, which they rated as one of the best of the Super Bowl - for real:

The first response to this commercial, in which a second head is singing that he wants this particular car, will be this: WTF? The second will be, "Wait, let's watch that again." Ultimately, this polarizing ad will push viewers into "love it" or "hate it" land with no room in between. The spot is made by the facial expressions of the main head and the singing of the second head—and that song, which will become this year's "Give me back that Filet of Fish." Me? I'm loving it.

Well, he nailed my initial response. And he was right that this is likely to be a love it or hate it ad, though it's still not clear to me why anyone would love it. But watch it again? I could barely stomach watching it a second time to transcribe it for this post. As for the song becoming this year's "Give me back that Filet of Fish" - apparently that's supposed to be a compliment? That singing fish ad made me want to stick my head in an oven. I guess there's no accounting for taste.

This commercial isn't even sure what it's saying, because it's too busy falling all over itself trying to force a terrible joke. So if you go to Cars.com you'll become confident! And that's a good thing! Except that the "facial expressions of the main head," by which "the spot is made," give every indication of being embarrassed by, and somewhat exasperated with, the "confident" singing head. I'm expected to think the creepy second head is a good thing? I don't.

A lot of ads have this problem. They want to make what they hope will be a funny joke, but then apparently they decide to hedge their bets by having the characters in the ad seem weirded out by, or somehow upset with, the source of the joke. IT DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY. If you're going to do this shit, you have to sell it. If you want an ad where a guy feels more confident after going on Cars.com and using their comparison tool - great! Do that. If you want an ad where you just do some wacky shit, fine, I guess. Jamming them together is super pointless. Especially when all the comparison tool told the guy is which car gets better gas mileage, which last time I checked is usually one of the first pieces of information stamped on any showroom car anywhere. All we end up with here is an ad where the guy is really confident for no good reason but seems to feel ashamed of that fact. This was supposed to make sense? This was supposed to sell me on Cars.com? It's a lousy pitch even if this spot didn't feature creepy-ass CGI and a "song" that makes me want to stick knitting needles in my ears.

Last year's Cars.com ad, for those of you lucky enough not to remember it, was four "jokes" in thirty seconds. This year's ad is one joke, and it's even less funny than any of those four, all of which were awful. Give Cars.com some credit: they're getting more efficient at making bad jokes.

This ad deserves the death sentence on twelve systems

While the "Darth Vader Kid" ad did not win our Least Shitty Ad award during the 2011 Super Bowl, it certainly was in no danger of winning one of the bad awards. Nor was this year's follow-up, which for most of its length is actually pretty good and might have contended for Least Shitty Ad. Then it takes a turn. Thus, we present:

The Ian Malcolm Memorial "Your Scientists Were So Preoccupied with Whether or Not They Could, They Didn't Stop to Think If They Should" Award

And your winner... that's right, it's Volkswagen!



This ad is a minute long. For the first, oh, 42 seconds, it is at least passably amusing and certifiably adorable. The fat dog is getting himself into shape! It's cute. Sure, it's barely an ad for the car, but we at least see the car, and VW is really counting on the fact that people are generally familiar with the Beetle anyway. Really, so far, so good.

Unfortunately, ads aren't 42 seconds long. It's at this point that we pull out to reveal that the first 42 seconds were actually being watched on a TV in the Mos Eisley cantina from Star Wars (I guess ads are 42 seconds long in galaxies far, far away). And then we get this nonsense:

Evazan: "That was great!"
Ponda Baba: [grunting noises]
Evazan: "No, the dog is funnier than the Vader kid." [begins to choke]
[Darth Vader, across the way, is Force-choking Evazan; finally he relents]
Evazan: "Sorry."
[Vader storms out]

And, scene.

Look, I like Star Wars. I only had to look up one of those character names, even. But what was the point of this? The ad with the dog has nothing to do with Star Wars, nor did it need to. And make no mistake about it, Volkswagen wants you to associate this ad with dogs AND Star Wars - just look at the teaser they put out a couple weeks before the Super Bowl:



Volkswagen is hardly the first advertiser to call back to a commercial of theirs that was popular in a previous year. Really, it happens all the time. But that doesn't make it funny when there's no legitimate tie-in anywhere to be found. All I get from this ad is that VW thought, "Hey, we've already got the rights to use the Star Wars characters in our ads... let's do it again!" But then they couldn't think of anything else to do with them, so they just had two super-fringe characters step in to editorialize on the unrelated ad they'd already created.

Hence why VW gets this additional, made-up award: for doing something that they COULD do without apparently ever stopping to ask whether they SHOULD do it. As much as I like Star Wars, it isn't inherently funny. Volkswagen would do well to remember that.

Baby, baby, baby, no

As usual, there were other ads from the Super Bowl that we easily could have mentioned, and just didn't quite have room for. That doesn't mean they're off the hook. Over the next few days, I've got a few additional "awards" to hand out.

The Chris Hansen "What are You Doing Here?" Award for Most Inappropriate Use of Underage Characters

And the award goes to... E*TRADE!



This is a fairly innocuous commercial - certainly by E*TRADE's low standards - but oh boy, then it gets to the end.

Dad: "I look at her, and I just wanna give her everything."
E*TRADE Baby: "Yeah, you know, 'everything' can cost upwards of [whistle]."
Dad: "I did not wanna think about that."

It really sucks the way stuff costs money and stuff.

E*TRADE Baby: "Relax, relax, relax - look at me, look at me. Three words, Dad: E*TRADE financial consultants."
Dad: "So I can just go talk to 'em?"
E*TRADE Baby: "Just walk right in and talk to 'em. Dude, those guys are pros. They'll hook you up with a solid plan... they'll-"

So far, so boring. Hey, the commercial's almost over! We're 21 seconds in! What could possibly ruin this?

E*TRADE Baby: "Wait, wait, wait a minute. Bobby? Bobby, what are you doing, man?"
Bobby: "I'm speed-dating!"

See, it's funny, because... um... there's a bunch of newborn girl infants lying prone in their bassinets, and this older boy infant is walking around... like... trying to hit on them? That's the... joke...

OH MY GOD THIS IS SO FUCKING DISGUSTING.

E*TRADE, what the fuck is wrong with you? I can maybe forgive babies watching animal mating videos, but you've already had an ad featuring a baby cheating on his baby girlfriend with a slutty, "milkaholic" baby, and now this shit. Given that the girl babies in this ad don't get to talk or move, and that this is happening in full view of one of their fathers, I'm going to go ahead and call this the worst one yet. How much lower can they even go? Anything worse than this I don't think you could even show on television. I'm no big fan of M.I.A. and I had no use for her flipping the bird during the halftime show, but how is that more offensive than E*TRADE implicitly discussing the sex life of babies year after year??? Time to step in, FCC.

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.

I like ample cargo space and I cannot lie

Should I have expected better from Mini?



Host: "This is 'Cram It in the Boot!' Where we take the four-door, all-wheel-drive Mini Countryman and... cram it in the boot!"
[Model makes suggestive pushing gesture]

Really? Really.

Host: "Josh! Have you ever crammed it in the boot before?"
Josh: "Um."

This, of course, is the point at which it becomes literally impossible to think that this commercial isn't referring to anal sex. At first you're like, well, maybe this is just supposed to be a funny-sounding title. No. Look at Josh's face as he considers the question. This ad is about butt-fucking. (It's even more blatant in the 60-second version which didn't air during the Super Bowl when the host says to Josh, "Your fiancée Ashley says you can really cram a boot!" and Josh just stammers and looks uncomfortable.)

Host: "Cram it!!!"
Audience: "Cram it! Cram it!"
Host: "Golf clubs, cram it in the boot! Cram that robot in! Yeeeees! Cram it in there!"
[Josh crams a giant sub sandwich into the trunk, featuring an extremely suggestive angle on the "Cram Cam"]



Ha ha! Yeah, Josh! Go! Um... fuck that car with your party sub strap-on! Wait, what? Why the fuck is this happening?

Host: "Whoa!!!"

"He sure fucked that car in the ass! Daaaaamn!"

Announcer: "The bigger all-new Mini Countryman, with plenty of room to cram!"

I'm sorry, I just do not understand this angle at all. Why are they alluding to anal sex? Are they discreetly (a word I use very loosely in this case) trying to suggest that the larger Mini allows you to have sex in your car the way you couldn't in the original Mini without it being extremely uncomfortable (you know, like the back of a Volkswagen)? Are they really only trying to talk about trunk space but for some reason thought that making the car look like the recipient of anal sex would be a hilariously naughty joke to "slip out" to 100 million people?

Call me a square, but I'm of the opinion that if you're going to make your commercial "secretly" filthy, it had better be really hilarious. And this just isn't. It's one joke - "talking about packing the trunk of a car with stuff kind of sounds like you're talking about anal!" - that is at best mildly amusing to begin with, repeated ad nauseam for 30 seconds. (Or 60 seconds in the case of the extended version which, I assure you, has nothing new to contribute to the scenario.) I get trying to be edgy for the sake of being memorable, but I just don't think it worked. There's edgy funny, and then there's edgy repulsive, and this lands far too firmly on the side of the latter.

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* 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.

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.

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.