Superbowl Ads seemed to have a better year than last year on the success rate. “Success” in this context means drawing positive attention to a brand and especially getting view count after the game online.
My two favorite ads this year did a fantastic job of surprising and delighting the audience.
-
- NFL. The NFL is running ads to try and get people excited about its sport that has been slipping in the ratings some recently. What started off as an innocuous practice scene from the Giants very quickly turned into a jaw-dropping, I can’t believe this is happening, moment. They capture the star power of Odell and Manning really quickly and kept people in longer by introducing the music 10 seconds in. The music sets off such an odd tone for a football commercial, it did a great job of keeping peoples’ attention. The dirty dancing tribute is the kind of thing that will live a long long life in the minds of fans!
- Doritos. While they also upset a bunch of folks by suggesting “a Lady Dorito” that didn’t crunch as loud, they did rock the Superbowl with a great use of celebrities. So funny, in fact, a friend made me watch it at dinner last night (I missed it during the game). This ad gets going a little faster than the NFL one and that gives it a social media advantage. Peter Dinklage is going to catch peoples’ attention very quickly and the first kicks in at 4 seconds which is going to help keep peoples’ attention. Great use of pop culture icons and geniously made to break into two separate 30-second spots to get even more mileage out of them!
And one loser.
Dodge.
Dodge decided to hijack the words of Martin Luther King to apply to a truck commercial. Seems in bad taste. To save the idea, they could have taken trucks out of it and just put a small dodge label at the end. The motivational talk by Dr. King is great, some of the visuals are great, but the very clear insertion of the trucks repeatedly was enough to cheapen it. Then to top it off, they decided to irritate every Vikings fan in existence with this one:
