Manserisms

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Monday, February 07, 2005
Superbowl Ads: Political Correctness takes its toll

It used to be that even though the game might be a boring blowout, you could always count on the commercials for entertainment during the Superbowl.   Seems like the tables turned this year, as except for some highlights, the ads this year just didn't live up to par.  I blame this on Janet Jackson's warddrobe malfunction.  Only GoDaddy.com took a shot at making fun at last year's lapse in judgement and gave a full frontal (literally) assault on the "sex sales" adage.  Most everyone else played it extremely safe.  The NFL's pendulum swung the hardest trying to sell Sir Paul's aging star power to the masses.  At least us Baby Boomers enjoyed the show. 

What happened to the level of ads that gave us Bud Light's talking gecko's or models wrestling in fountains?

As to the ads, Ameriquest was the big winner in my book, spending 5 million dollars on a minute's worth of advertising space (that's 2.5 million for every 30 second spot).  With a tag line of "don't judge too early", the visuals of a boyfriend holding the girlfriends cat with a knife was hysterical.  The mace in the face of the store owner thinking he was being held up also scored high.  There was a Anheuser-Busch's great tribute to the troops and the cute kid that tricked his Mom into making a Valentine's cake for her.   It was nice to see that the Hammer still has the moves during the Frito Lay spot.   

But, what was with Napster's complete lack of originality (some guy wearing a cat head in the stands), those annoying singing bottles, the frozen guy in the convertible (which ran twice within 5 minutes of each other).  What a waste of $5 million.  The CareerBuilder monkey ads were a cheap shot as everybody loves crazy monkeys.  There were some bright spots in there, but most of it was annoying.  What's with animals in most of these spots anyway?  And Gladys Knight at a rugby contest?  How random is that?

At least the game was interesting for most of it.  Too bad the Eagles lost interest in trying to win it with 5 minutes left.  Is it too cool to hustle and play a little no-huddle when you're down 10 with less than 5 to go?

There were 50+ ads, so which did I miss and deserve praise or a little mud slung there way?

Posted at 10:58 am by john_manser

 

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