Week Five EOC -- Super Bowl Ads Good and Bad

It has happened, the biggest advertising event of the year came and passed this past weekend.  All around the country friends and family gathered around their obnoxiously large televisions and watched the Super Bowl.  This is like the Olympics for advertising, new campaigns and brands have been made or broken by a good or bad ad in the Super Bowl.  This year the ads were mostly unimpressive.  There were a few standouts such as the Volkswagon Darth Vader spot and some other effective amusing ads that were run by the usual suspects, ie Doritos and Budweiser.  Its amusing to note that on the list of most like and most recalled ads that was compiled by Neilsen only two ads, both for Doritos, made the top 10.  One of these commercials, Man Licks Cheese Crumbs off of Co-Workers Fingers was quite effective.  First, they made the ad memorable by making it amusing, and even if people were enjoying some beers and don’t remember much else, we usually remember things that make us laugh.  I think it was also so effective because they built upon a familiarity with the company that all Doritos consumers are familiar with, the orange dust that is a byproduct of enjoying the salty treat.  Doritos took that idea further by saying that their chips are SO good that one would go so far as eating the crumbs off of their co-workers fingers just to get a taste of that chip. 

The beer commercials which normally are a highlight for the event were quite disappointing this year.  I particularly did not enjoy the Kitchen Makeover ad.  I think that the idea was clever, what with America’s current obsession with makeovers and makeover shows but the ad just did not work for me.  I don’t think that it was wise of Budweiser to say oh look, we bought you a bucket of Bud Light, yay your kitchen is now so much better.  Yes, they may make decent beer, but it is nowhere near good enough to be considered a makeover for a drab kitchen, the wife could just have easily painted the walls and she would have been much happier.  I know that the ad was in jest and meant to be humorous but it just did not appeal to me at all.