I am not a big sports fan. I will occasionally watch a game or two, but my following of sports entails looking at the standings in the NFL or Major League Baseball maybe once a month. When the White Sox or Chicago Bears are in contention for a title, I pay a little more attention.
However, the Super Bowl I invariable watch. The joke has usually been that I watch the Super Bowl for the commercials. This year the commercials ran about $4 million a spot. It appears that from the amount of repeats and plugs for CBS’ shows, few took up the offer. Those that did apparently spent all their money on the spot and nothing on making a creative commercial.
The Masterlock Super Bowl ad, for instance, was obviously missing. CBS must have aired about 20 to 30 spots for their own shows, most were repeated ever quarter. The GoDaddy ad was repeated twice. As expected there were car commercials and beer commercials but that was about it.
A few commercials registered a chuckle, such as the CareerBuilder.com commercials (which take on an even more amusing bent for a government employee). Most were rather stupid. In fact, it’s hard to say which performed worse, the Super Bowl commercials or Rex Grossman.
There was nothing overtly clever about any of the ads save one. GoDaddy’s use of eye candy is lame and played, but as the saying goes, “sex sells.” Budweiser’s commercials were typical, though the face-slapping ad was amusing. The Sierra Mist Comb-Over ad was kinda stupid really. The GM Robot ad was the only one that was in any way clever.
Once you could count on the Super Bowl being entertaining, at least for the commercials. Alas, those days are over.
John Bambenek is the Assistant Politics Editor for BC Magazine and is an academic professional for the University of Illinois. He is a syndicated columnist who blogs at Part-Time Pundit and the executive director of The Tumaini Foundation which helps AIDS orphans and other children in Tanzania to get an education.
He is the current owner of BlogSoldiers, a blog-only traffic exchange.
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Roger Knight said,
February 5, 2007 at 3:31 pm
NationalVoice said,
February 6, 2007 at 11:24 am