Hasta La Creative!

Oh dear. Is that singer a Justin Hawkins from The Darkness?

I’m with die-hard apple fanboy/a beard short for a *nix-nerd guy. “That was over the top”. Indeed. Way over the top.

So, approximately 169 million people have been buzzing all day around the various watercoolers in the offices of the world, pondering who won the adbowl. The answer is: Madonna did. Refactoring iconic Hollywood with an entrance fit for Elizabeth Taylor, roping in slackrope walkers, doing handstands with cirque du soleil and dubbing her pop princesses, Madonna just showed all you advertising people up. She might have slipped once, but she can hipshake with the best of them, and isn’t afraid to elbow one half of LMFAO in the chest for missing his cue. She just showed you adfolks how one borrows interest, rides the wave of the latest trends, and dresses up in “been done before” without losing sight of selling her own brand in the process. Unlike some of the ads in this years superbowl, I think Madonna will move the most units. You ad kids should take notes.

Lets get on to the ads shall we? Even though all you regular adland readers saw them before the superbowl – as usual – but this year was a record. We had 14 out of the 30 ads before the super bowl even aired, and the others had teasers. Like I’ve been saying for years, it’s like opening your gifts before christmas, and the ones we’re not opening we’re shaking to guess what’s inside. This always ends in a miserable christmas with disappointed kids. Can we please stop this?

I had high hopes for Chrysler and their two minute Clint Eastwood peptalk. But when the ad came on, I thought he was running for president. What? Well Ronald Reagen held the “A time for choosing” speech and this sounded a lot like it. I’m honestly confused if the message is buy an American car or vote for Mr. “Do you feel lucky, punk?”. Because I would, this guy might be the best candidate out there.
We’ve seen the national pep-talk ads now. We get it. We are all still hurting from the bad economy (especially here in Sweden after General Motors screwed up our empire of SAAB cars thanksverymuch), but this needs to move on, not just hire more expensive stars.

Now here’s a car ad that manages to show very little car, and still paint a picture. Of the car. Hello. You still here?
Now, I might not belong to the group of people who had to stay seated after this aired, but the seductive Italian bombshell of a car does make me go hubba hubba and I adore the new looks of all Fiats. They might have said “it’s hella sexy” quite literally, but then it is a hella sexy car and once the viewers are able to stand up and get to a dealer they might even check it out. Honestly, I find it surprising that this tactic hasn’t been used before, considering our long standing tradition of shilling cars with leggy ladies.

“A thing called love” for Samsung upheld the superbowlian tradition of being very over the top, even saying so in the ad. The singer Justin Hawkins from the Darkness breaks up the line at an Apple store and it all turns into a spontaneous concert/flashmob thing. All this for a stylus. You know what you do with a stylus? You lose ’em.

The Bud Light dog “Weego” who fetched beer we’ve already badlanded here, as it’s not the first time Bud Light had a dog fetch beer. It’s not even the first badlander of this superbowl as Chevy and this SEAT ad from last year looked pretty much the same, and like a scene from Bee Movie.

Speaking of things we’ve seen before, Hulu repeated their Hulu Aliens eat our brains joke from 2009 super bowl XLIII. It’s like a superbowl of re-runs, this – we have The M&M’s that should be retired, Coke revisiting their polar bears idea, and that E*trade baby is back once again. Bring back the chimp, all is forgiven, and at least he danced without CGI help. Even Downy went and burned 3.5 million dollars+ on copying the Mean Joe Green Coke ad, as if a remake would capture the magic of the original. Take a note from Madonna, you got to own it when you do this, and you didn’t, Downy.

Another ad that went all out with the over-the-top was the KIA ad, where we find the most boobage of any super bowl spot this year. Yes, beating the Toyota Camry “Reinvented” spot. Congratulations to the most Ta-Ta’s award, guys.

But when it came to actually demonstrating a selling point, staying on brief without reading the USP lines straight from the brief like Chevy “Apocalypse” and E*trade “fatherhood” did, Audi won. Yes. I didn’t like it much, but you remember why all the vampires went *pouf* and disappeared in a cloud of fire-dust, right? UV-lights. Daylight at night. The hashtag #solongvampires didn’t have to be there. If you use twitter, you want to click that, and if you dont use twitter you don’t know the twitter-injoke of hashtagging stuff just to be funny. #letmeshowyou #presentinghow #likethis #understoodnow #omgthisisannoying

Will Arnett does his best Will Arnett.

Ran during the kickoff show.

The Chrysler ad that made me think Clint Eastwood was running for President, upset Karl Rove while David Axelrod applauded it.
“‘I was, frankly, offended by it,’ said Karl Rove, strategist behind President George W. Bush’s two presidential campaigns, told Fox News this morning. ‘I’m a huge fan of Clint Eastwood, I thought it was an extremely well-done ad, but it is a sign of what happens when you have Chicago-style politics, and the president of the United States and his political minions are, in essence, using our tax dollars to buy corporate advertising.'” The opposing team, of course, had an opposing view. ‘Powerful spot. Did Clint shoot that, or just narrate it?’ David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, wrote on Twitter.

Karl Rove was on Fox news speaking about the ad.

The ad that is a two-minute long pep-talk, penned by poet Matthew Dickman, Kevin Jones and Smith Henderson has this line at the end:
“This country can’t be knocked out with one punch. We get right back up again, and when we do the world is going to hear the roar of our engines.”
Look, I mix metaphors like a duck out of water, but that makes me picture a boxer getting back on his feet and making engine noises. This tells me the boxer has lost his mind, and the fight should be called off.

The LA Times report that Eastwood’s Super Bowl ad sparks the discord it decries
“The ironic thing about the small-scale brouhaha is that Eastwood is a Republican who opposed the bailout of the industry. (The Chrysler ad never mentions Washington’s capital injection at all, which annoyed some Democrats.) Asked about his presidential leanings last week at an event, Eastwood only allowed some fondness for Ron Paul, saying the libertarian was ‘as good as anybody else’ in the race.”

The supposed non political ad also used some footage from the Wisconsin protests, digitally replacing pro-union messages with a picture of an alarm clock instead.

Chrysler – Halftime in America – (2012) 2:00 (USA)

Here’s the Madison, WI protest against the SB11 budget repair bill, compare footage here at 2:17 with the signs seen in the Chrysler ad.
Wisconsin “Budget Repair Bill” Protest from Matt Wisniewski on Vimeo.

I think I know what this ad is saying. It’s halftime in America, and we sold half of Chrysler to Fiat, so the second half is gonna be soccer. Got it!
Speaking of Fiat, their Super Bowl ad sold sexy & cars not national pride. You might want to try that tactic again, Chrysler.

Last years ad “Imported from Detroit” featuring Eminem was miles better in my humble opinion, even though me and Bill Green disagreed on this during The Beancast last year, with Bill arguing that we’ve seen this sort of thing before. In time spent we hadn’t, as it was the longest Super Bowl ad ever aired then. With the images of Fox theatre, steel workers and the streets of Detroit narrated by a born and bred Detroitian, it reminded Americans to buy American. It seems to me that Chrysler has forgotten what sells cars in tight times: pricing, milage, value for money. People aren’t buying a Prius just because they bought the ideal of some “save the earth” hippie-style campaign. The miles per gallon for a Prius is 50, while Eminem’s fancy car in this ad does 23 miles per gallon. You think the consumers don’t notice this?

At some point you just have to make a car that people can afford to buy.

Thirty years ago it was morning in America, under the leadership of president Reagan. Now it’s halftime. When’s lunch? When is quitting time so I can go home to the offspring? Lemme know, America.

For the past few years Gatorade has congratulated its athletes by taking a step back, shining the spotlight on their G moments. Today they celebrate The Giants, and Eli Manning’s G moment: winning his second Super Bowl.

The color version of the print ad is running in the first post-Super Bowl issue of Sports Illustrated, as well as the New York Times. A black and white version was also created.

I’ve had the honor to help judge the Osocio Campaign of the Year awards 2011, and am really happy that all the judges have given high votes to my personal favorite. The winner this year is ?????? ?? ??? ???? ?? ??? ?????? – Ben Ali is back, by Ogilvy Tunis for Engagement Citoyen.

The ad was a stunt, spied on with cameras everywhere. One morning as people were going about their day, they noticed a giant poster of former Dictator President Ben Ali covering a wall. People were stunned, shocked, upset, and some got very angry. As emotions boiled over a group of men decided to jointly pull the poster down, toppling the dictator once again. That was exactly the point. At the elections a few weeks later 88% of the population went to the polls, rather than the 55% expected to show.

All twenty campaigns that made it to the Osocio shortlist are quite exceptional, and I must say it’s difficult to judge good ideas for good causes to boot, but I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Congratulations to Ogilvy Tunis again.

Five hours ago I managed somehow to record Bob Knorp’s the Beancast together with the excellent ad-critics Ken Wheaton ( @kenwheaton ), Managing Editor Ad Age, David Burn ( @davidburn ) Editor/Publisher of Adpulp and Bill Green ( @mtlb ), cofounder of Adverve Blog and Podcast.

Cliff notes: we hated the super bowl ads. So much that Bob had to delete all the “shit” we said. I’m sorry for being a pottymouth, Bob. My bad. I still reckon that Madonna won the super bowl.

Despite the headcold from hell, I managed to hang on until the end there, and the topics we covered included Komen’s PR disaster, facebooks new mobile challenge, and more super bowl topics. Tune in here and see if you can spot at what point my Nyquil-like meds hit me. 😛

Here’s the SNL skit we talk about:

I didn’t take too long for a Mad Man to find a use for Pinterest that’s worth a Paul Calf-er, some Snoop Dogg and a bit of Ringo Starr. It’s the Agency Rhyming Slang Board where every word is a celebrity pinned by @EamonDownes . Okay, fine, not every word, Femoral Vein isn’t a name, and Baked Potato needs to be pronounced Baked Patatahh to even rhyme with Facebook Data, but just roll with it will you, it’s funny. Gotta dash now, got a Ronan Keating.

Ponce Buenos Aires has created a new web campaign for Axe (Lynx) where they borrow heavily from Pulp Fiction, Nikita and other noir films for their hero. More specifically, they’ve run off with the character of “the Cleaner”, the man in a suit who appears like a ghost to clean up messy “jobs”. In this case there are no dead bodies, just remnants of wild parties and the occasional half naked lady, while stressed out guilt ridden men are calling the cleaner for help in getting all the dirt they did last night off them.

All of this is of course just a clever way of selling a body wash widget that “scrubs” while it lathers.

In the first installment, the straying boyfriend needs to cleaners help to get rid of the evidence before his girlfriend gets home.
Lynx / Axe – The Cleaner / Evidence at home (2012) 3:10 (Argentina)

In the second installment, “the cleaner” arrives at an office after a party and helps the two businessmen clean up after their activities. No idea how he’ll get rid of that ass though. I do mean the donkey (ba-dum-tish!)
Lynx / Axe – The Cleaner / Evidence at the office – (2012) 2:15 (Argentina)

The campaign is produced by Argentina Cine and directed by Rafael López Saubidet, it’ll also be available on facebook. Naturally.