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02/7 2011

Call of the Day: The Top And Bottom Five Super Bowl Commercials

Posted by Dan Levy.

For someone who watches as much TV as I do, the Super Bowl has usually been more about the commercials than the game. In recent years, however, the game has been fantastic and the commercials have been way too safe, making the Super Bowl actually about football again.

This year, we were treated (?) to a host of questionable (and certainly not safe) commercials, including a British game show that simulated having anal sex with a car, a coupon company insulting…everyone, a guy licking another guy’s finger (and sniffing someone else’s pants), plastic Joan Rivers and a dude re-animating a dead man’s ashes by sprinkling salty snacks on him.

Try explaining THAT to a three-year old.

Maybe the ad wizards have broken out of their shell a little with the Super Bowl ads this year. Did it work? Here are our top five, followed by our bottom five. Let us know your favorites too. (Quick note: we are not including any ads for FOX shows — including the very good House spoof of Mean Joe Greene — and don’t ever consider movie ads on these lists because movie trailers are basically all the same.)

The Best of the Best

Here are the top five on our list, with some others that were right there with them.

Doritos: House Sitting

This wins the night for me. Lazy dude stuck on a couch for a week forgets to do everything and solves all his problems by sprinkling some Doritos on it? Gold. Re-animating gramps was a great ending, even if it did leave me with some explaining to do with a three-year old asking where the old guy came from.

Audi: Old Luxury

First, making fun of rich people is always fun. Second, the self-awareness of Kenny G is a nice touch and everything was done so well, from the “I’ll bring the dodo” to the froofy “hounds” to the one guy getting duped by a Mercedes (with a driver). Jolly good show.

Volkswagen: The Force

Why do companies release their Super Bowl commercials on YouTube before the game? This ad has more than 14.5 million hits, while some others have less than 100,000 as of Monday morning. Sure, this is one of the best ads of the night, but getting it out well before the game got all the Star Wars nerds to send it to everyone they know.

One note to all the people who think it’s cuter because Darth Vader might be a girl…it’s not. It’s a boy who was trying to use The Force to screw with his sister’s dolls. What self-respecting Sith lord would screw with his or her own toys?

Chevy Volt: Discovery

Chevy may have won the night overall with five ads (not including the Glee ad) that all hit their mark to some extent. Well, the Camaro “let’s make a Camaro commercial” was kinda lame. But the Facebook status update was cute, the “Tommy fell down a well” truck ad was really well done and the old people not understanding the commercial about the green car was really hilarious (“Forty Two Wild Italians!”). Still, the Discovery ad was their best, on a night in which the car maker may have been the best overall sponsor.

NFL

The NFL probably got their ad space for free, but likely spent a fortune making this ad. It’s awesome…even though the Panthers didn’t exist until 1995 and Alf was off the air in 1990 and there’s no way in hell that Norm Peterson would be caught dead in a Wes Welker jersey. Logan Mankins, maybe.

Honorable Mention

Some commercials totally worth mentioning as the best were the Bridgestone ads with the gopher and the Reply All, which was probably a top-five commercial if not for the fact that it really had nothing to do with tires. Seriously, the ad was great, but there were probably nine other products that commercial was better for.

The VW Beetle ad was very good, as was the CarMax kid in a candy store ad. I really enjoyed that one. Cars.com was good, the Motorola rip on Apple was smartly done and the Chrysler ad would have been the best of the night had it not been for the fact that Eminem was already in an ad where he talks about how he hates doing ads while pimping canned iced tea.

The Worst of the Worst

Here’s a quick list of five ads that totally tanked.

Groupon

Did you know they have a whole campaign around this premise: actors faking sincerity for a cause then showing how superficial they are when they can save a buck? And yes, the company donates money to these causes, but it doesn’t make the ad campaign any less terrible. Still, we’re talking about them, so…good job?

Pepsi Max – First Date

See it’s funny because dudes only think about sex…until a soda shows up. Just awful.

Telaflora

See it’s funny because dudes only think about boobs.

E*Trade Baby

Has an ad campaign ever has as precipitous a fall as the E*Trade baby? I cannot believe they’re still throwing out the baby on these ads (they’re on baby number five by my count). Ooh, look, this baby makes a funny Italian accent! No, viewer, it’s a dude pretending to be a baby pretending to be the creepy Italian guy who makes baby suits. It’s not funny. Stop already.

Mini USA

I guess you have to applaud the car company for trying to be edgy, but an entire commercial centered around an anal sex prop gag is just not going to help you sell cars, is it? Maybe there’s an audience for this bit, but I can’t believe it’s America.

Dishonorable Mention

The Coca-Cola ad offended me in that they just didn’t care enough to try and make a good ad. A CGI dragon that shoots fireworks after drinking a Coke? How is that selling soda? How is that selling anything?!?

Not only did Cellular South steal adidas’ logo and throw a dot on the bottom of it, but they made an ad that basically goes, “get this device and piss off an entire bar. Everyone will hate you, but at least you’ll have a cool phone.”

There are about 10 other bad ads, including the hideous Go Daddy ads that you just have to ignore at this point (they want you to rank them on the worst lists) the mediocre Kia ad, the lame Sealy ad where they try to tell us that their mattress is good for sex (what is your target audience…college kids and newlyweds…because it’s not real married couples), but the two creepiest ads are the Home Away ad with the test baby (and way too many other bells and whistles just for that gag) and the Doritos ad where the dude licks another guy’s fingers then sniffs another guy’s pants. There’s funny/gross and then there’s just gross.

Agree? Disagree? Did I forget something?

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Posted on February 7, 2011 at 9:00AM
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  1. Jack Pierce
    02/7 2011

    From a “not trying to make the room bray like donkeys with forced laughter” standpoint, I really liked the “Imported from Detroit” Chrysler ad. Other than that, agree with your thoughts, quite frankly.

  2. Press Coverage – DL520: Super Bowl, Commercials & Do People Just Hate Joe Buck Because It’s Trendy?
    02/7 2011

    [...] So, Nick and I focus on the commercials a lot. Plus, why does everyone pile on Joe Buck so much? Is it a, pardon the pun, pack mentality or is Buck really that terrible an announcer? Doesn’t it feel like ripping Joe Buck just makes people think they’re cool. He’s not that bad, and he’s much better suited for a big game situation than some other announcers who repeatedly make it all about them with over-the-top calls. He’s not the best, but Joe Buck is fine. At some point everyone is going to have to start realizing that. The hair is obnoxious, sure, and the “I’m Joe, he’s Troy” line is pretentious in that it’s trying too hard to not sound pretentious, but for calling a game, Buck is actually not terrible. He might even be pretty good. He lets the action speak, he gives his analyst time to analyze and he’s always on top of the major storylines in the game. [...]

  3. On the DL with Dan Levy » Blog Archive » DL520: Super Bowl, Commercials & Do People Just Hate Joe Buck Because It’s Trendy?
    02/7 2011

    [...] So, Nick and I focus on the commercials a lot. Plus, why does everyone pile on Joe Buck so much? Is it a, pardon the pun, pack mentality or is Buck really that terrible an announcer? Doesn’t it feel like ripping Joe Buck just makes people think they’re cool. He’s not that bad, and he’s much better suited for a big game situation than some other announcers who repeatedly make it all about them with over-the-top calls. He’s not the best, but Joe Buck is fine. At some point everyone is going to have to start realizing that. The hair is obnoxious, sure, and the “I’m Joe, he’s Troy” line is pretentious in that it’s trying too hard to not sound pretentious, but for calling a game, Buck is actually not terrible. He might even be pretty good. He lets the action speak, he gives his analyst time to analyze and he’s always on top of the major storylines in the game. [...]

  4. Kevin McGuire
    02/7 2011

    I actually enjoyed the other Coca-Cola commercial at the border patrol stations. Much better than the WoW style commercial.

  5. Jaundalynn
    02/7 2011

    Phneoenaml breakdown of the topic, you should write for me too!