Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

As a diehard football fan, the Superbowl each year brings out some mixed feelings.  It is the championship game on the biggest stage which is very exciting, but at the same time, the Superbowl brings an end to the football season and I know I am going to have a long hot summer to get through until the season starts over again. 

For this year's Superbowl I did not have a strong feeling for either of the teams which gave me the time to focus more on the commercials and the subsequent Twitter chatter.  I found it amazing to follow #sb44 and #brandbowl hashtags and see what everyone was talking about in real-time throughout the game.  So many different opinions and thoughts, midway through the game, I could not help but to think, "How cool is all this technology?!".  

Here are my opinions on the best and worst of the Superbowl commercials:

Biggest failure - Dockers - They spend millions to develop and buy a commercial during the Superbowl.  They ask everyone who is watching to go to a URL to win a free pair of pants.  People do EXACTLY what Dockers asks them to do and in the millions they type in the URL.  What happens - a big, ugly 404 error.  In this day and age, it is inexcusable to not be prepared for that kind of traffic and have the boxes and bandwidth ready to handle it.  Did they not think they would get a bolt load of traffic from the Superbowl?  Fail.  I am not even going to bring up that their commercial immediately followed a commercial that also had guys with no pants on.

Best commercial that no-one remembers what it was for - Snickers - Everyone loved the Betty White commercial, unfortunately, no-one remembered it was an ad for Snickers.  I have seen so many tweets and blog posts asking what the Betty White ad was for?  The question is does Snickers consider their commercial a success if no-one can remember their product?

Weirdest commercial - Focus on Family - The Tim Tebow commercials were a hot topic of conversations before the Superbowl.  My issue with them is what was up with Tebow tackling his mother?  That brought a whole new set of issues up when it comes to focusing on family if Tim is tackling his mom.  I did not get it and it made me feel a little awkward.

Most tired and needs to go away immediately commercial - GoDaddy -This is coming from a red-blooded American male GoDaddy, I am soooo tired of your commercials.  They are boring, they are tacky and the only thing they make me feel is dirty that I do business with your company.  To the CEO of GoDaddy, Bob Parsons, it is time you realize that you are running a multi-million dollar business and you are not on an episode of HBO's Cathouse.

My favorite commercial - It was close, but I think the one that topped all others (drum roll please) - Google!  I loved the simplicity of it. If you had never used Google or any other search engine, the commercial effectively communicated what Google does and how it can bring value to your life. 

Well now the Superbowl is behind us, it is time I start preparing for my air-conditioned hibernation until August when this whole ride starts all over again.  Please feel free to comment with your thoughts on the Superbowl commercials and if you agree or disagree with my thoughts. 

Like rising and falling hemlines, Super Bowl ads are a cultural barometer: Their creators aim to measure the national mood and align their appeals with it. A decade or so ago, that mood was "wow, all we have to do is say the words ‘dot com' and money falls out of the sky." For Super Bowl XXXVI, played only months after 9/11, we saw patriotic Clydesdales, Rudy Giuliani's thank you to America (courtesy of Monster.com), and the ONDCP linking drug use to terrorist financing.

This year, the zeitgeist is all about austerity in a lousy economy. So here's the catch: How can your Super Bowl ad capture a spirit of belt-tightening when, at up to $3 million for 30 seconds, the ad's very existence is evidence of lavish spending? And everybody knows it?

Will the tone of this Sunday's ads pick up on Travelocity's newest spot? It's honest, but a little on the nose, and four hours of that would leave me seriously depressed. Will some advertisers go the other way with a lavish, distracting, fiddle-while-Rome-burns approach?

I'll be watching to see who comes up with a third way that makes innovative reference to the current climate without either insulting my intelligence or making my cry in my beer. If your client had one of those spots to fill, how would you go about it?

Hooray, political ads have left the airwaves! But rejoice cautiously, friends. Because we’re all in store for a lengthy run of another kind of creatively soulless advertising: the tanking-economy ad.

Times are tough. Which means the Unique Selling Proposition has officially been replaced with the Cheap, Clichéd Proposition (a la “our product is good for you, and for your wallet!” Gag.) Today, brands have tabled their interesting stories to engage instead with price. Personally, over the last 4 months 90% of the ads I’ve written have had to include a value message in some form, usually in really big letters. The same brands that were touting best-in-class flavor or ingredients or service a year ago, are now saying, ‘Hi! We’re cheap.’

Granted, some brands are trying to not be quite so overt. Sara Lee, instead of airing happy people smiling around a ginormous ham sandwich, is now showing the same happy people dancing around PB&J. A subliminal economic message. But really, Sara?

Meanwhile, some brands are coming out of the woodwork, thinking they can take advantage of the country’s abysmal state. New York Life just launched a campaign that suggests the ideal gift for loved ones this holiday season is not jewelry or a vacation, but rather life insurance, which the ads call “the selfless gift.” Seriously?

I hear even Bloomingdale’s is advertising 50 percent off furs.

And I shouldn’t need to mention Toyota.
 
I get it. We’re all hurting right now. But is this the only viable strategy? When the economy turns around, how will people remember your brand?

I think the value message can be done right, but with so many brands rushing to shout price from the hilltops…we all might be wishing Kay Hagan was back on the air instead.

Recently, while doing some late night channel surfing, I stumbled across a program that made me put down my remote control and settle a little deeper into my chair – a show with the sole purpose of entertaining me with the very best commercials on the planet. The real plus – the show never cuts away to a block of inane 30-second insults on my intelligence. Wow! A program of commercials that doesn’t cut away to commercials. On top of all that, this is a multi-platform concept that also lives on the web and mobile devices.

The program is called Firebrand.

I will now pause while the Millennials and Gen-Xers reading this laugh at how hopelessly far behind the cultural curve I am. For the rest of you who care to know more, I will continue.

Firebrand launched in October 2007. It is an opt-in entertainment and marketing destination where consumers can watch the "coolest" TV commercials and then head to the Firebrand Web site to continue the love affair with their favorite brands. The format is reminiscent of a young and pure MTV, only in this case, the VJ’s are spinning spots.

Online the Firebrand site has personalization tools that allow you to create your own playlists and share your favorite spots. Advertisers also have a real-time tool called the Firebrand Dashboard, which allows them to simultaneously monitor TV viewing and online clicks for specific spots.

Who’s behind this black hole of consumerism? You can thank investors like Microsoft, NBC Universal, Adweek, Brandweek and Mediaweek to name a few.

Problem is, after watching an hour of great commercials, my eyes had started to glaze over and I felt a bit empty and unfulfilled. Why is that? For an old ad guy, Firebrand should seem like the promise land – a candy store of creative storytelling.

I realized that Firebrand is making it too easy. Is it possible to watch too much of a good thing? They were spoon-feeding me the stuff I used to wait for patiently. Maybe, just maybe, to be completely entertained by a spot, you can’t see it coming. Perhaps we have to sit through countless commercials featuring screaming car salesmen and sultry, steamy burgers to truly appreciate the very rare but stellar ones. We need this gauge, this constant comparison with the forgettable to keep our conceptual bearings straight. If we ate filet mignon every day wouldn’t it quickly become tasteless and routine?

So, go check out Firebrand and plan on being entertained. When you feel like you can’t stand it any longer, switch over to any other channel where you are sure to witness plenty of 30-second stinkers. Just keepy our finger on the “last channel” button.