Reid Beels

Continuing with the critique of television advertising, I just finished watching the playlist of super bowl advertising on Google Video. Overall, I think that I’ve been more impressed in years past, but there were definately a few high points. Some things that I noticed:

1. Jerome Bettis for asthma control test
   (okay, admittedly, this is nit-picky and nerdy, but it stood out and I’m posting it) This ad is sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline and urges people with asthma to talk to their doctor about ways to control it. While I do have problems with this recent trend of drug companies advertising their products to a mainstream audience, that’s not my problem with this advertisement. My problem is that when they show a screenshot of their website it’s being displayed in the IE 5 for Mac. This technology is dead and abandoned folks, get over it. Now, the only excuse I can think of for it is that the scroll bar in the screen shot looks green and the last time that was an option was in Mac OS 9. The window details are a bit blurry in this video capture, but it still shocks me that any self-respecting media-production company would still be using that system and browser.
2. I wasn’t very impressed by the inevitable cornucopia of beer ads, but my favorite was this one (Bud Light - Secret Fridge). Another ad from Budweiser, ‘The Wave‘ seems to me like a pale imitation of Carlton United’s ‘Big Ad’.
3. Burger King’s entry ‘Whopperettes‘ seemed like an interesting way to continue their current over the top advertising strategy, but was fairly poorly executed in my opinion.
4. Degre’s ‘Stunt City‘ is a cool ad, but isn’t new.
5. Emerald Nuts. Their terrible wordplay never fails to amuse me. Greatly. Probably too much.
6. Having driven a car that gets between 25 and 28 MPG for most of my driving life, I’m wasn’t all that impressed by the fact that the Ford Escape hybrid gets 30 MPG. However, I suppose all steps taken to get SUV owners to not be such a bane to existance is a good step. Still, I had hoped Kermit had better standards.
7. GoDaddy.com, your ads annoy me. Sure, you got banned from last year for being overly racy. Sure, you have cheap domain names. Using these two things as the basis for an entire campaign seems uncreative. Also, your logo sucks and your website is ugly. You’d think when advertising a web-based service, you’d put a little bit more money into getting a design that doesn’t scream 1999 quite so much. 305 validation errors on HTML 4.01 Transitional! 606 for XHTML 1.0 Transitional! Grrrrr. Stupid web economics where profit != quality. Grrrr.
8. Hummer’s ‘Monsters‘ ad for the H3 has me a bit confused. It’s well-produced and sends a message that I sort of agree with: “The only way the H3 could be produced is as the ill-conceived lovechild of those bent on destroying the world.” Somehow, I think that might my Ashland upbringing and personal views talking and not the message they wanted to convey…
9. Pepsi’s ‘Hip Hop Can‘ wasn’t all that new of a concept, but stuck with me because we had been discussing the person who brokers a lot of cross promotional deals between products and musicians. It’s interesting to see this process simplified and played out (admittedly with added anthromorphization) on screen.
10. Scott Tissue’s ad, featuring Mike Ditka, bothered me no end. Maybe they’re trying to appeal to a certain redneck aesthetic that I don’t understand, but the production quality of this spot looked like something that we would have shot in the WAMS studio and put together before we started using nonlinear editing. No, strike that, it looked worse.
11. The United Airlines ‘Dragon‘ spot was by far the highlight for me. The animation was amazingly beautiful. It’s one of those styles that I really wish I could acheive myself but haven’t been able to when I’ve tried. Wow. Just wow.
12. GM’s ‘Live Green, Go Yellow‘ kind of seems like it’s an automaker trying to portray themselves as greener than they actually are because it’s the cool thing to do. While E85 is cool, I’d like to see them move beyond that.
13. FedEx’s offering ‘Stick‘ was well done and had an interesting concept behind it. I think I’ve seen them do better, but it still stuck with me.
14. Last, but certainly not least, Dove’s spot promoting The Campaign for Real Beauty , a project that’s working with several global organizations to combat harmful stereotypes for girls, intregued me. While it may be clever marketing on the part of a multinational corporation (Dove->Unilever->boo, animal testing) to improve their image, the campaign seems to be actively doing some good things.
15. Update: Also, there’s this MacGyver MasterCard ad which didn’t make it on to Google Video’s list but is rather amusing.

The rest of the ads made up the middle ground. Not great nor poor enough to get mentioned in detail.