Hasta La Creative!

And now, we head into the fourth and final quarter…this game seems to be moving awfully fast this year. Notables from the third quarter include, Career Builder and Vitamin Water.

Cars.com – “Witch Doctor” – :30 – Tiny heads – reminds me of a scene from “Beatlejuice”.
Agency: DDB, Chicago
Director/Production: Matt Aselton, Epoch Films
The spot takes place at a dealership and ends with the tagline “Confidence comes standard.” The ad ends with a “funny” “Plan B” the buyer had in mind if things went sour.

Salesgenie.com – “Pandas” – :30 – At least the animation makes this much better than last year…and this year they actually have a concept!
Agency: creative:mint
Animation: Geoff Callan and Daniel Grace, Creative Mint, San Francisco
The concept and copy for the spot was created by Vin Gupta, founder and chairman of the company.
Superadgrunts, see the spot below.

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Ok, boys and girls – it’s game time!
There were a few notable ads, including Audi, Pepsi Diet Max and Underarmor. We’re also twittering the spots as they air here.
First Quarter:
Bud Light – “Fire” – :30 – Pretty much expect type of work for Bud Light (ie. sophomoric humor).
Agency: DDB, Chicago
It’s everything you want in a beer, plus the ability to breathe fire. Guy lights candles by breathing fire and then a cat walks by, he sneezes and fire shoots out his mouth as well.

Audi – “Godfather” :60 – Nice spoof of the horse head in the bed, instead with front grill and headlights of a car.
Agency: Venables Bell & Partners, San Francisco
Ad promotes the R8 sportscar and is the brand’s first Super Bowl spot in 20 years. The ad referenced “The Godfather” and featured actor Alex Rocco, who portrayed the character of Moe Greene in the first Godfather. The spot was shot on location at the Fleur de Lys house in Los Angeles.

Diet Pepsi Max – “Nod” – :60 – Great spot – very Super Bowl-esque and what we have come to expect of the ads.
Agency: BBDO NY
This star-studded spot features Joe Buck, Troy Aikman, Busta Rhymes, LL Cool J, Missy Elliot and every day people falling asleep. The spot is a nod (pun intended people!) to SNL’s “Night at the Roxy”, complete with “What is Love” by Haddaway.
Superadgrunts, check out the spot below:

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Check out this little Flash news report/interview with the DDB ad team for Budweiser’s Superbowl commercials.

Also, I posted a three more 2008 Super Bowl XLII commercials, for Garmin, Hyundai and G2 from the Gatorade Company. Caff will update that spoiler post again soon while I get some well deserved shuteye. 😉

FedEx is yet again appearing in the Super Bowl this year with a 45-second spot entitled “Carrier Pigeons”. Since 1989, the brand has made 18 appearences during the big game throughout the years. Some of their notable spots include “Apology,” “Desert Island,” “Bolivia” and the EMMY award-winning “Stick.” BBDO New York has been FedEx’s agency of record for more than 19 years and has produced more than 65 Super Bowl spots for its clients since 2000.

Throughout FedEx’s advertising history, their ad strategy has aimed to demonstrate the company’s reliability by sketching entertaining caricatures of the business world. These include: “Absolutely, Positively Overnight” – 1978-83, “It’s not Just a Package, It’s Your Business” – 1987-88, “Our Most Important Package is Yours” – 1991-94, “Absolutely, Positively Anytime” – 1995, “The Way the World Works,” 1996 – 1998, “Be Absolutely Sure,” 1998 – 2000, “This is a Job for FedEx,” 2001 – 2002, “Don’t worry, there’s a FedEx for that,” 2002 to 2003, “Relax, it’s FedEx,” 2004 – present.

But as it’s Super Bowl season, below you’ll find a list of FedEx’s Super Bowl spots from 1995-2007. Come back on Sunday or Monday morning to see their new spot airing during Super Bowl XLII! You can check out a behind-the-scenes video for “Carrier Pigeons” here.

Superadgrunts, click on the titles and/or images to see the spots.

Fedex – Names – (2007) 0:30 (USA)

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Around this time of year, practically everyone puts out a list of the "best" superbowl commercials. Or the worst. Two things these lists have in common include getting the year the ad aired wrong (no, really it happens a lot) and then 85% of the ads on their carefully chosen lists are identical to the ads on everyone elses list. 😉
So here’s our twist on the lists, possibly most forgotten superbowl ads. It doesn’t mean that they’re bad, in fact some show up on other fun lists of good ads – people just don’t seem to recall that they too were once superbowl ads.
Lets start at the beginning shall we? Way back in 1969 super bowl III commercials this Gillette – Techmatic adjustable ad could make me forgive all the other terrible Gillette ads if they just put this one back on the air. Please, pretty please Gillette, do it just once!

In the 1973 super bowl VII commercials, Joe Namath is so exited becaause "he’s gonna get creamed" by none other than Farah Fawcett. I don’t know what Joe thinks "creamed" means, but I’m sure it’s naughty. This is hilariously cheesy.
Noxzema Joe Namath / Farah Fawcett

In the 1975 super bowl IX commercials McDonald’s test people on their jingle for the Big Mac, and they all fail. Sing it with me! Two all beef patties special sauce lettuce cheese pickles onions on a sesame seed bun. Now down a vodka and do it again faster! This should be a drinking game.
McDonalds – Big Mac

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Last year, (as seen in our press clippings) we helped the New York Times do a look back on Super Bowl ads from the past where the NYT did a little graphing to see what type of ad was most common each year, while showing at least one ad from every year since 1984. Sixteen of the 23 years ads were supplied by us from the 35 year strong Super Bowl ad collection a.k.a the Claymore project. Stuart Elliot’s article Colts and Bears and Kevin Federline goes with the NYT graph.
Naturally we have all the ads (and more, hehe) that the NYT used in their fun graph – here are the ones they picked as standout ads from each year together with the ones that we think you should also see. Two minor mistakes in the gray lady – the year 2000 Etrade ad does not contain a monkey but a chimp, which is an ape. The Tabasco spot is from 1997, not 1998. I nitpick, I know. Links to commercials inside.

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