In the event that is, literally, the Super Bowl of advertising, it was an old school kind of Sunday. As the Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers kept interrupting the parade of creativity (and non-creativity), we learned that cars and celebrities are back in a big way and that easy vulgarity may never go away. Oh, and there’s now a car that will read your Facebook messages aloud, and Chicago-based Groupon ignited online controversy with an ad about Tibet.
Hail: Doritos powder
Premise:
In the best yet of the snack chip’s increasingly impressive public-competition ads, a young guy working in an office loves Doritos so much he’ll tear one co-worker’s pants off or suck on another’s orangey finger just to get a little more of that sweet flavor dust.
Why it works: The first move — the finger suck — is an outrageous surprise. The tearaway dress-pants move builds on the joke. And both highlight the essence of Doritos, the powder that turns ordinary tortilla chips into the powerhouse snack brand.
Hail: Snickers woodsman
Premise: Richard Lewis, playing a lumberjack says, “I’m just not feeling the wood-cutting thing today,” as he stands around at a busy job site. Then his boss hands him a Snickers, and he turns into his tree-chopping self again.
Why it works: We could quibble about the nutritional logic. But the comedian Lewis in his Hollywood suit giving Hollywood attitude to tree-cutting men is flat-out funny, and it’s funny again to see Lewis looking woodsy. The coda with Roseanne getting flattened by a log is maybe a notch too mean, but even there, the message is crystal clear.
Fail: Chevy Cruze Eco
Premise: People at an old folks’ home “comically” mis-hear the message about Chevy’s new compact car. “Forty-two miles per gallon” gets repeated as “42 wild Italians,” for instance. A candy striper comes in and gets fed up with these old people.
Why it doesn’t work: What’s stunning is that there’s no twist, no misdirect here. The only joke is that senior citizens are hard of hearing, and we, potential buyers of this vehicle, are invited to laugh at them. You’re killing me, Chevy — or killing something.
Fail: Audi A8, Kia Optima
Premise: Both car ads try for epic — Kia with its vehicle enduring a series of movie cliches, Audi with a breakout at a “luxury prison” — and deliver mostly muddle. In Audi’s case, it’s muddle with a Kenny G soundtrack.
Why it doesn’t work: These two spots are examples of lots of bucks spent to deliver very little bang. The Kia ad suggests a vehicle that you really don’t want to ride in, unless you want to end up amid the ancient Mayans. Audi’s takes a simple message — break out of the usual ideas about luxury — and turns it into a head-scratcher. Kenny G?
Hail: CarMax metaphors
Premise: A man at one of the company’s used-car lots says, “I feel like a kid in a candy store,” then we see a kid in a candy store who adds his own metaphor, a wrestler in a folding-chair factory, an acrobat at a mattress store, etc., right back to, “I feel like a customer at CarMax.”
Why it works: In a lovely marriage of words and visuals, every fresh metaphor the characters utter takes us someplace new. Yet every one of them reinforces the CarMax message of choice — and of suggesting that buying a used car doesn’t have to be a drag. The company was similarly sharp with a second-half spot.
Hail: Careerbuilder.com parking
Premise: An unhappy man in his company parking lot gets his car boxed in — so tightly that his car is scraped — by the ignorant simians with whom he works. His exasperation — and resignation — are evident.
Why it works: The dot-com company builds on its strong tradition of chimps subbing in for moron colleagues in past ads, this year finding yet another fresh metaphor for what it feels like to work a go-nowhere job
Hail: Bridgestone reply all
Premise: A co-worker tells his cubicle neighbor that he just sent out a message “reply all.” The guy goes into a panic, trying to kill the message by smashing smart phones of vacationing co-workers, pulling wires in IT, etc.
Why it works: Usually, we demand that our ads sell the product at least a little. But this one is so entertaining — at the end, the co-worker says he was mistaken — that we’ll forgive Bridgestone its failure to push the quality-tire message.
Hail: VW ‘Star Wars’ spot
Premise: A little kid in a full Darth Vader costume tries to use the Force on household objects. He has no luck, alas, and grows despondent — until the family VW miraculously starts up (thanks to dad’s pressing the remote from the kitchen).
Why it works: This is superb, wordless storytelling that builds dramatic tension using a well-cast kid in an amusing but recognizable scenario. The payoff completes the story and manages to showcase both the looks and an attribute (technological advancement) of the vehicle.
Fail: Groupon.com
Premise: The Chicago-based online coupon company used its first Super Bowl ad buy to tout its ability to save you cash. Actor Timothy Hutton talks about Tibet’s beauty and troubles — plus its “amazing fish curry,” and how much Groupon saved folks at Himalayan Restaurant in the suburbs.
Why it doesn’t work: The tone isn’t clear. With a clever “Save the Money” tag line, this ad seems to want to poke gentle fun at charity campaigns, but that’s a tall order when you use a real place with real problems. Only when you view the ad online do you see the link to donate what Groupon saved you to a Tibetan charity.
Hail: Chevy truck as Lassie
Premise: A man’s son falls in a well and needs to be rescued with a Chevy truck. Then the trouble keeps coming, including the boy getting trapped in a cave and, later, floating in a hot-air balloon. “Where’d you get a balloon?” the father wonders aloud.
Why it works: It’s a well-imagined, dark-comic escalation of troubles, ending in, “I didn’t even know this town had a volcano.” The balloon comes off as a sly, funny reference to the famed “Balloon Boy” incident, and all of it helps sell the vehicle as something that’ll help you get important work done.
Hail: Transformers 3
Premise: Would you be surprised to learn that “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” is about giant robots that get all rock-’em-sock-’em with one another and destroy the surroundings? They even do it, this ad reminds us, in parts of Chicago.
Why it works: We are just jingoistic enough to be thrilled to see our fair city on national TV, even if director Michael Bay’s idea of lakefront beautification is somewhat different from Mayor Daley’s. Bay shot in the same spot where Oprah held her season-premiere party in 2009; we preferred watching robots rolling through giant planters
Fail: Pepsi Max
Premise: In three ads, Pepsi gave us a stereotypically shrewish wife, cans shot at a man’s groin and a woman’s head, and a man giving voice to his id (“I wanna sleep with her”). Who do they think they are, Bud Light circa a couple of years ago? (Bud Light, by the way, was tame this year.)
Why it doesn’t work: Some of this material probably drew living-room laughs. But it’s all first-level stuff: easy, obvious, and, what’s worse, been done before. Selling sugared water can’t be easy, but Coke at least tried creativity with its solid “border guards” ad and an animated dragon extravaganza.
