2008 Super Bowl XLII Commercials: What Worked and What Didn't

In the old days, a television commercial was just a pitch man (or woman) showing you the product and telling you how good it was for 60 seconds. Not anymore. Today, the commercial is a mini movie that is completed in 30 seconds or less and is designed to entertain as well as promote.

The Super Bowl is the king of these commercial venues, generating the most viewers and charging the most expensive prices. Forbes magazine stated that Super Bowl XLII ad time was between 2.7 and 3 million dollars per 30-second spot. With these prices, advertising executives were sweating the results of the game within the game, the Super Bowl ad war.

For a commercial to be a success, it has to accomplish two goals: it has to entertain, and it has to make sure you remember the product. This is especially true with Super Bowl commercials.

Budweiser, long a sponsor of the Super Bowl, chimed in with some notable entries. For Bud Light, there was the ability to have super powers with disastrous results. An ad in the first quarter offered the drinker the ability to breathe fire, and showed him at a dinner date suavely lighting candles with his breath. When the lady's cat arrived he erupts in a sneezing fit that ignites the curtains and activates the smoke alarm. Another Bud Light commercial in the third quarter continued in this same vein, offering the ability to fly but showing the drinker being sucked up in a jet engine. Both commercials then add that the super powers are no longer available.

Bud also had some other Super Bowl commercial winners as well. There was an ad that had a Clydesdale horse fail to make the fabled Budweiser Wagon, and with the theme from Rocky as background music, the Budweiser Dalmatian trained the rejected horse and turned him into a winner.

Coca Cola also had some notable entries. In a repeated commercial in the third and fourth quarters, Stewie (from Family Guy) and Underdog parade balloons fought over a balloon bottle of Coke. Their fight took them well off of their parade route, and when the Coke bottle was clearly out of their reach, a Charlie Brown balloon came in to claim victory. Almost immediate following that commercial came two political pundits from opposite sides (James Carville and Bill Frist) settling their differences with a Coke and a tour of Washington D.C.

Bridgestone tires came in with a commercial that had a driver about to hit a squirrel on the highway when the squirrel screams, and one by one the animals in the forest scream. The wife screams and the driver deftly swerves to avoid the squirrel. Tide offered a stain on a shirt that yelled gibberish when the wearer tried to talk thus destroying a job interview. E-Trade had a talking baby that would have worked had the baby not spit up during the commercial. An Audi commercial came in with a Godfather rip off, which would have been funnier about 25 years ago.

The sexiest was a late in the game Victoria's Secret ad with a woman in lingerie with the background music of "I'm in the Mood for Love" and bumper slides telling us the game will soon be over and then the real games begin. I expected no less from Victoria's Secret.

Clearly the worst ad was for Amp Energy that subjected us to a fat guy with jumper cables attached to his nipples drinking the energy drink and jump starting a woman's car. There aren't enough words in the English language to describe how badly that commercial made me never to want to buy the product.

The full slate of Super Bowl commercials can be seen at www.myspace.com/superbowlads.

Source:
http://www.forbes.com/2008/02/01/super-bowl-commercials-pf-ii-in_bgm_0201optionswatch_inl.html