Let me begin by saying that I love football—college football. Pro football is fun as long as my fantasy football team is still in the hunt (which didn’t happen this year, but I digress)…
This year’s Super Bowl wasn’t as interesting from an advertising perspective as the synergy-orgy that was Fox’s Super Bowl from two years ago. Nor was it as glamorous as last year’s 3D fest. But there still was some interesting points. The ads that I looked at only occurred during the game (I catalogued the commercials starting after the coin toss, but I stopped during the halftime show, because I figured that The Who’s performance of music that was used on three CBS shows was advertising enough).
- 13 drink commercials (none were healthy drinks—even Lance Armstrong was shilling Michelob Ultra.) 3 were for soda, the rest for beer.
- 7 food commercials (most were Dorito’s, but there were some for candy and Taco Bell); I didn’t include the ones for Denny’s—more on that later.
- 5 movie trailers.
- 11 commercials for internet businesses (specifically companies who advertised with “.com” at the end of their title, but not including Intel or Dockers.com in this number, even though the Dockers commercial urged the public to go to their website for free pants.
- 9 car commercials (most were for the Hyundai Sonota). This also included the Green Police commercial.
- 26 CBS show promos. Granted some were short, but still…
- 2 Bridgestone tire commercials
- 2 Sketchers commercials. These urged the wearer to forego exercise and just wear the shoes to lose weight. This goes well with all of the bad-for-you food and drinks advertised…
- 3 ads for free Grand Slam breakfast at Denny’s. I can’t even begin to think about how much money this whole campaign cost Denny’s. I hope it works out for them—that’s a huge chunk of change.
- During the first part of the 2nd quarter, there were two commercials that focused on pants-less men. In the same ad block. I wonder if there was some sort of coordination before hand on that…
- There was a Charger commercial that was narrated by Michael C. Hall. What’s interesting about this little bit of synergy is that he is Dexter on Showtime (owned by CBS), and the Charger is almost a character on NCIS. I wonder how much Dodge underwrites NCIS…
- There was a commercial for the census. With actual stars… Yeah…
- The Boost Mobile “shuffle” commercial was a meta-play on the old Super Bowl shuffle… That being said, McMahon hasn’t aged well…
- Tim Tebow advertised for Focus on the Family. I’m not touching that. Although, Tim’s going to be lucky if he gets drafted by the Jaguars…
- Homeaway.com had a spoof on National Lampoon’s Vacation. It broke my heart.
Like I said—nothing too terribly interesting here in the end; everybody knows that the focus of the Super Bowl has moved away from the game, and more on to commercials. But I think that there is a good reason: in this day of DVR and Tivo, big spectacle, time-based television has got to be a premium.
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