Hasta La Creative!

– In this promo for the NBC 2014 Sochi Olympic Winter Games, athletes are portrayed as superheroes. And when you think about it, they really are.

– According to a 2013 survey by Lab42, 39% of people prefer Super Bowl ads over the actual game, 64% said that more than half their game related conversations the next day revolve around the commercials, and 69% have re-watched a Superbowl commercial online. So play Big Game Bingo while you watch the ads.

– Coke is out with one of its Super bowl ads. Created by Wieden + Kennedy, it’s entitled Going All the Way and features a boy who ends up with the ball during a football game…and really does go all the way!

– Leveraging kids to pimp your Lean Cuisine diet is, in a word, despicable. Kids shouldn’t be burdened with obsessing over what they eat. That’s a parent’s job. For shame, JWT New York!

– Haven’t seen Hyundai’s two Super Bowl spots yet? Well here they are. Created by Innoecean, there’s Dad’s Sixth Sense and Nice. Dad’s Sixth Sense is pretty aewsome. Nice is, well, nice.

– And we wonder why Americans are fat. These Taco Bell XXL Steak Nachos are OK for Kevin Love but they are way too much for you.

– And then there’s the Puppy Bowl.

– To mark the 15th anniversary of Sony PlayStation’s Gran Turismo, the brand has launched a feature length documentary film on the iconic game.

– Saatchi & Saatchi Norway is out with a case study of its work for Toyota entitled Try My Hybrid which which urged Toyota owners to become brand ambassadors for the manufacturer’s hybrid vehicles.

– Sometimes you need some time away from the kids. Usually that comes when you go to Days Inn for a Bizcation. Work from Toronto-based Giants & Gentlemen.

– Oh and here’s Morpheus in Kia’s Super Bowl teaser ad from David&Goliath.

So FOX wants to “ban” the Scarlett Johansson SodaStream ad because Coke and Pepsi are mentioned? While Coke is denying it had anything to do with the decision and SodaStream CEO Daniel Birnbaum is pissed — though is capitulating by removing mention of Coke and Pepsi — the Humanaut-created ad should be banned for another reason. It sucks.

Johansson delivers her lines as if she just woke up from a nap. The ad is so infomercial-ish it makes one want to barf. It hauls out the 5-year-old “wish this would go viral” crap and gives us the most unsexy delivery of the very sexy Johansson anyone has ever seen.

And for those reasons, the ad should be banned. Not because it mentions Coke and Pepsi. Which, for the record, it has every right to do.

Well this is lame. So Dannon has released its Super Bowl ad for this year and its a big let down. The teaser, which the brand released last week, delivered much more of a giggle with the camera panning to Bob Saget and Dave Coulier after Stamos finishes watching the game…and eating his Dannon Oikos yogurt.

In the actual ad, Stamos is basically re-enacting his 2012 Super Bowl ad in which he woos a woman at the kitchen table. The 2014 spot hinges on exactly the same scenario except it gets quite shockingly dirty for a Hull House-themed approach to things.

After the dirty bit, Saget and Coulier show up to clean up Stamos’ mess. And to lob a few lame jokes. It really doesn’t work. The teaser, however did.

And regarding the whole notion of the teaser. If you’re going to tease something, that means you don’t actually show it. Showing Saget and Coulier in the teaser defeats the purpose of the fact they might appear in the ad with Stamos. Knowing they’re going to appear takes the fun out of the approach.

As part of this year’s Super Bowl advertising insanity, Adrants will be sponsoring Pavone’s SpotBowl, a Super Bowl ad poll site that’s been doing its thing since 2004.

What can you find on SpotBowl? Everything you could ever want to know about the Super Bowl ads of course! Who’s running what and when. Reviews of Super Bowl ads that have already aired. A poll to determine which ads you think are the best. Downloadable score cards. And even recipes you can enjoy on game day.

You can vote during or after the game and can view up-to-the-minute results after each voting session. Polls close on Monday, February 3, at 3 p.m. EST.

GoDaddy, which promised it would cease airing sleazy ads replete with scantily clad women and heavy sexual innuendo, has lived up to that promise with its Bodybuilder ad, one of two ads it will air during Super Bowl XLVIII February 2nd.

Well, they’ve mostly lived up to the promise. There are no scantily clad women in this ad but there’s a hell of a lot of scantily clad male muscle-heads showing off their pecs as they race towards the spray tan store owned and operated by the aforementioned fully clothed woman.

Ever since the brand unleashed (literally) an avalanche of sexual innuendo with Candice Michelle having a wardrobe malfunction in a court room, the brand had always pandered to the lowest common denominator. Now that Bob Parsons is gone things, it seems, have shifted directions.

Wearing a muscular body, suit, Danica Patrick makes an appearance in the commercial as well. It’s her 13th Super Bow ad, more than any other celebrity.

It’s not like an ad agency to share its inner concepting thoughts with the outside world before the final product is complete — it’s kind of like a chef barfing up his mistakes — but that’s just what San Francisco-based agency Argonaut with this Super Bowl teaser ad for VW. The agency will also create the brand’s ad for the game.

Complete with a brain fart of babies, midgets, chimpanzees, sports figures, Indians, twerking, puppies, a hashtag, a unicorn, balloons, confetti, dinosaurs, bikinis, Carmen Elektra, Abe Lincoln and a tennis ball to the nuts, the agency has unleashed an orgasm of Super Bowl memes from years past.

Everyone thinks more clearly after they’ve, ahem, released a bit of pent up energy.

A recently released study of 1,000 consumers concludes 80% of Super Bowl ads do not achieve sales for brands. The study, which surveyed respondent before and after they viewed 2012 and 2013 Super Bowl ads, was conducted by Tucson-based research firm Communicus.

Communicus queried participants about their buying patterns – recently bought and intend to buy — in product categories represented in Super Bowl ads. It also surveyed whether or not respondents saw Super Bowl ads.

As to why Super Bowl ads don’t work, Communicus CEO Jeri Smith told Advertising Age brands simply don’t run their Super Bowl ads enough and that “we find that one ad exposure often isn’t enough to make anything happen.”

She also commented on the creative approach to Super Bowl ads saying, “The advertisers really dial up the entertainment quotient to pop to the top of the USA Today rankings and such. But we find the brand association with Super Bowl commercials is much lower than you’d get with a typical buy, just because of the way the creative is structured.”

And while Super Bowl ads are well remembered (44% versus 32% for non-Super Bowl ads) because of the often crazy creative approaches brands employ, that approach results in lower brand recall (35% versus about 50% for non-Super Bowl ads).

And so it goes. The battle for Super Bowl creative supremacy does not always accomplish what matters most to brands: sales.

For the first time in almost a decade, DoDaddy Super Bowl advertising will contain no risque innuendo. The domain registrar has promised to clean up its act, a promise that’s been underway since DoDaddy hired Deutsch New York in mid-2012 and one that accelerated under new CEO Blake Irving who joined the company in January.

“The [new] Super Bowl ad strategy allows us to have fun and be edgy, and demonstrate how we help the little guy kick ass,” Irving said. “2014 marks a new era for GoDaddy Super Bowl commercials.” Creative details have not yet been shared.

Of the shift, Chief Marketing Officer Barb Rechterman said, “We’ve matured. We’ve evolved.” Does that sound like an insult to Bob Parsons? We’ll leave it to you to interpret anyway you like. Rechterman added, “Our new brand of Super Bowl commercials will make it crystal clear what we do and who we stand for. We may be changing our approach, but as we’ve always said, we don’t care what the critics think. We are all about our customers.”

GoDaddy will air two commercial during the Super Bowl, one of which will feature Danica Patrick. It will be her 13th appearance in a Super Bowl ad.

Of her participation, Patrick said, “I love what’s going on at GoDaddy. Since our last Super Bowl, I’ve been to the new Silicon Valley office and talked with customers who are genuinely grateful for how GoDaddy helps them grow their businesses online. GoDaddy is for the go getter, the ‘little guy’ looking to compete with the ‘big guys’ and I love that.”

Apparently, the new direction comes from “extensive research, customer segmentation analysis, customer surveys and employee input from every corner of the company.”

The net? No wardrobe malfunctions. Not hot models sucking face with geeks. No painting hot models with body paint. No stripping lessons. No bimbos with huge, fake breasts stuffed into bursting tank tops. No boys dreaming of hot angels dancing in the clouds. No beaver references. No hot, headless body doubles that turn out to be Joan Rivers. Nope. Just good, clean domain name fun.

On and there’s this. Believe it or not, we, yes, Adrants, called for an end to GoDaddy’s sexually-laced advertising in an open letter to Bob Parsons way back in 2007.