And Now For A Commercial Message

Well, it's about 2-1/2 hours after the Super Bowl telecast ended. From just before kickoff until just after the trophy presentation, I saw every play, every commercial and what I thought was the best half-time show ever. Paul McCartney singing great songs, and sounding pretty good doing so. I thought it was great. But as for the commercials, by and large, they again seemed like a person (guy or girl) who just tries way too hard. Even wanting to comment on them, I really can't recall very many of them. And even if you laugh, or are somewhat surprised by a commercial, that doesn't make it good. I mean, I know Mike Ditka, Jim McMahon, William Perry and Dennis Rodman were in a commercial. I think it was for countertops of some sort, but I have absolutely no idea what the brand was. And I doubt you do either.

I thought the best commercial, though I doubt many pundits tomorrow will concur, was the Blockbuster spot. It actually debuted previously and wasn't laugh out loud funny, but in a clever way introduced you to a new service of theirs (videos by mail, to compete with NetFlix). It did what I think a commercial should: add to the brand identity while also selling a product, cleverly but also clearly.

The FedEx Kinko's spot making fun of Super Bowl commercials was pretty astute.

And what's with all the chimpanzees? I don't see any, ever, except for on Super Bowl ads. The Verizon (?) ad was cute, I guess, but CareerBuilder's ads were a bit dim. I may have a chip on my shoulder since I've had various dalliances with joining CareerBuilder in some sort of marketing role that have never gone anywhere, but aren't there better ways of showing a bad job than using Chimps? I would've used Donald Trump (as much as I hate him) saying "I'm hiring again, apply through CareerBuilder.com" Then at least people would go to the site. But who am I to say.

And those are just the commercials I remember. Oh yeah, there was some stupidity with Puff Daddy and Carson Daly for Diet Pepsi (I think I'll keep with my Diet Coke) and more stupid animals for Budweiser. But maybe stupidity sells more than I think. I just visited GoDaddy.com (seemingly a perfectly mundane web domain buying site), despite it probably having the most egregious commercial of the night.