Super Bowl Commercials: Art or Corporate Shilling?
WORDS BY ISH ZENDEJAS
Got something that you want to sell? Got an idea that can be told in 30 seconds or less? An extra couple million lying around? Then the Super Bowl is the place for you! Whether you are shilling out Coco flavored fizzy water, or you are trying to tell women what to do with their bodies, if you want to sell your product, you do it at the Super Bowl.
I’ve never really been personally invested in the game itself (I enjoy the Chargers as a team but I am not a die hard fan of them) but as a pop culture aficionado I enjoy watching the commercials. I love how advertisements really just meant to make twenty and thirty-something’s buy things have turned into a major media event and an artistic art form. Ever since Ridley Scott’s infamous 1984 Apple television spot, every company has been striving to make something that sticks in the mind of people. Big name celebrities, top of the line CGI, hot woman, these companies will spare no expense. It is really the only time people will actually tell their friends to shut up and watch a freaking commercial.
Superbowl MANia
WORDS BY JessCe
This year marks a turning point in my life. This year I will sit down with my father and my brother and I will watch the Superbowl. We will eat wings and drink beer and all will be well with the world. I will watch as my chosen city (who dat?!) crushes the Colts. I will see many commercials but I will not be seeing one for ManCrunch.com.
CBS denied the gay dating site a Superbowl slot saying that they believed the commercial would anger viewers. CBS was under the impression that the site was trying to generate a buzz around its name by creating an ad for the Superbowl that they knew would get rejected. A rep from the site has claimed that it took CBS two weeks to get back to them about the fate of their commercial. The channel also reportedly feared that ManCrunch.com, which is owned by Avid Life Media, would be unable to handle the fee for airing the commercial during peak Superbowl hours.
The main issue here seems to be a commercial that could potentially make viewers uncomfortable. The most infamous dating site, eHarmony, can put out commercials with a business-woman saying that she doesn’t have time to go out and date because she is too successful. I’m sure plenty of women might find that suggestion offensive. ManCrunch approaches finding love in a no pretense sort of way. In the age of the “Bromance,” their slogan, “Putting the man back in romance,” is the perfect thing to get men thinking about all of those ass slaps post game.
Imagine, male bonding over the biggest games of the year and after a few beers a commercial comes on for a same sex dating site. Two women in jerseys touch hands over a bowl of chips. Suddenly they pounce on each other, kissing passionately. That would have been picked up before you could say “touchdown.”
Oh Snap!!! Wait a minute…They’re Just Towels. Bummer.
Agency: Lowe Mena, Dubai
The towel is an ad campaign for Axe, and yet I see some major irony in it, seeing as that neither the towel nor the fragrance will help you get laid.
Just my two cents.
A History of African American Targeted Advertising
Saw these spots at ProThoughts and KissMyBlackAds. Written by Paul Smalera, the article outlines the history of African American targeted marketing: the missteps, the trends, and the “coincidence” of vice industries heavily targeted at African-Americans.
And of course, they recounted the moment when I got all hot and bothered over this.
I thought it was a good read. Definitely worth checking out.
LOLAds: TSC Picks Our Favorite Super Bowl Commercials
THE Best Commercial of the Superbowl
While watching The Super Bowl, we realized that the event puts you in a very uncompromising position. Namely, you’re not able to get up and leave the T.V. screen. You can’t leave while the game is on because you might miss the Hail Mary Touchdown. And you can’t leave during the commercials either, because it’s the one time of the year where all the commercials are new and a couple of them might be great. And some of the commercials become etched into the annals of Super Bowl history. While there were a lot of duds for this year’s commercials (i.e. Budweiser a.k.a THE DUMBEST Commercials of the Super Bowl or any car commercial besides Audi), some of them are still being talked about today! (Imagine that. Only one day later.) Well we’ve decided to give you our TSC picks of the Super Bowl ads, even though some have already gave their favorite picks and others just gave us the whole damn catalog.
I have legally changed my name to Pepsuber. MacGuyver FTW.
[LOLAds] “My Life is a Pseudo-Yuppie Paradise, My Home is Parkmerced”
I hate these ads for city townhouses that try to sell a sparkly, yuppie San Francisco lifestyle to anyone who’ll fall for them. I see them every time I’m on BART- each ad consists of a nice testimonial full of happy words and rainbows from an “Actual Resident” who boasts about how he or she likes to wake up, get yuppie espressos filled with sustainable unicorn dust from the amazing neighborhood cafe, prance in the complex’s [supposedly nonexistent] wide, green lawns amongst singing deer and monarch butterflies- and then tops it off with some indie form of entertainment.
I did a little light research (google) and found that Parkmerced management is actually terrible. It is also apparently built off of/next to a WWII-era rental housing complex.
Thanks, yelp (and SF Chron, for the historical info)!
[LOLAds] Fake Puma, Real Patrick Cox, Circa 2003-ish
In this new segment we look at crazy (and sometimes mildly disturbing) fashion ads from years past! The following turned out to be fake. Or, actually, it was designed by an actual ad creative who tried to push it onto PUMA, who then said, “Uh, no.”
Um … yeah. The ice cream on her leg was probably the dealbreaker … she should stop eating so much ice cream. Puma does not promote ice cream and its contributions to American obesity.
This one, however, was real and appeared in i-D:
Fast backward in time
