Quote:
Originally Posted by Moogs
fuck the overrated commercials. Now it's gotten to be a cultural thing so it doesn't even matter anymore if they're good: they know everyone is paying attention so half of them are just boring average commercials.
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This I never understood. Super Bowl ads might have been priced at a bargain for their massive reach once, but that doesn't seem to be the case any more. They're priced at a premium. You could probably reach the same number of people though multiple "average commercials" for less.
What you're
paying for, in other words, isn't just the audience, you're paying to be part of that "cultural thing," part of the program that people watch for the ads, part of that water-cooler talk the next day. Part of threads like these, in other words. You're paying extra to make a splash. You can say you have a new ad and nobody cares, but if you tell people you have a Super Bowl ad, people pay attention.
So, knowing this, why half-ass it? The idea is that the Super Bowl is a showcase for the ad industry's best and brightest; a collection of their most creative output. That's the only reason why people would watch a show for the ads, after all; we can see
normal ads anywhere. And many times the ads
are creative and clever and, y'know, good. But sometimes that doesn't seem to be the case, and I always wonder what's going through those media buyers' heads.
I think the worst are probably the trailers for the summer blockbuster movies. They all look the same! It's probably because the movies
themselves are all the same, but they could at least
advertise them creatively, beyond the standard explosiony Super Bowl teaser and Burger King tie-in deals and Memorial Day premiere, &c. &c.
It's probably to be expected that with such a large audience, lowest-common-denominator ads ("Chips! Beer! Guys getting hit in the balls!") would reign supreme. But what this means is that to
stand out, you should take a different approach. I'm not saying the Super Bowl should be full of snobby ads, with glasses of wine (or David Beckham) artfully photographed in black and white, only that being memorable requires being different.
For the last few years, Doritos has been crowd-sourcing their ads (and the results have been, well, about what you'd expect). What this basically means is that Frito-Lay doesn't value good ads. You'd never see a company crowd-source their hiring practices or their mergers and acquisitions department, because that stuff
matters, but stuff like logos and ads? Pssh! Anyone can do
those. Hell, let's make it a contest and use that to get even
more publicity!
It goes without saying that, say, Apple doesn't crowd-source their ads. Apple pays
through the nose for TBWA/Chiat Day. Target and Nike and Levi's and Coke all pay through the nose for Wieden+Kennedy. They all seem to think paying for the best and brightest is worth it. And hey, those are all pretty well-known, admired brands! Funny that.
(Woo, tangent.)