The most noticeable trend in Super Bowl ads in 2014, like the past few years, is the meta-ad—the kind of spot in which someone reminds the audience that they are watching a very expensive Super Bowl ad, meant partly to draw attention to the oddness of the whole spectacle. To that end, before the game began, the director Seth MacFarlane announced that the trailer for his new movie was too racy to be aired, Bud Light ran a series of ads about the making of an ad, and Stephen Colbert did his thing for Wonderful pistachios.
There have been plenty of the other usual suspects: dogs, women suspiciously better-looking than the men with whom they are paired, Muppets. But some good news, as well: the great Cheerios family is back, Tim Tebow (who needs a contract?) was actually pretty funny for T-Mobile, the E-Trade talking babies are gone, and, so far, a total of zero grandmas have twerked. Here are a few of the best and worst from the first half:
Best
Coca-Cola: Coke kept this ad under wraps, and was wise to save its release for the game. After hours of jingoistic and military-heavy pre-game festivities on Fox, in which the network implored viewers at home and around the world to recognize the might and greatness of America, Coke managed to evoke patriotism in just a minute, with a multilingual version of “America, the Beautiful.” Coke is Coke, and doesn’t need to convince us much about its flagship product, other than that it still exists. My only complaint: it could have used a little Ray Charles in there somewhere.
TurboTax: Leave it to a commercial for an essentially boring product—tax software—to capture one of the deeper emotions felt by many people watching the game: the sadness of being left out of a national holiday. This ad, with a voiceover by the great sad sack John C. Reilly, equates watching a Super Bowl between two teams you don’t root for—the harsh reality for a majority of fans—to having to watch the girl of your dreams dance with some pretty boy named Sean for four hours. There are stats on Sean, and tons of slow-motion replays, Reilly tells us. It is miserable—which is a lot like watching this game as a Patriots or 49ers fan. Will it help sell software? Not clear, but the ad does identify an interesting point: older people may loathe or fear taxes, but younger people often equate them with refunds, and, thus, a personal holiday!
Hyundai: A short, relatively simple ad: a father (barely) saves his son from various physical injuries over the years, until he is old enough to start driving, when the Genesis sedan can start doing it for him. The sight gags—near-falls into brickwork, a flaming grill, a lake—are just absurd enough to be funny, but just real enough to send a shudder down the spine of any father or mother watching at home. For synergy purposes, the song playing is by one of the halftime performers, Bruno Mars. And who doesn’t love hearing Jeff Bridges as spokesman? The Dude never gets old.
Worst
Maserati: The world, quite rightly, loves Quvenzhané Wallis, the captivating child actress who sprung to fame for her performance in the 2012 movie “The Beasts of the Southern Wild.” This Maserati spot for the Ghibli sports car, directed by the often great filmmaker David Gordon Green, taps into that movie’s ominous imagery of nature gone slightly berserk, and men and women displaying ingenuity and dedication in their struggles against it. But then comes the reveal. This isn’t an ad for a plain, hardworking American sedan but for an Italian sports car, which has a base price of about sixty-six thousand dollars. “Beasts” was about society’s outcasts making do at the margins of society—connected to the forgotten people of Hurricane Katrina. The Ghibli is supposed to be a Maserati for a more “average” consumer—but it’s still a Maserati, not a jerry-rigged swamp boat.
Chevrolet: Animal breeding is best not considered too deeply. And, at any rate, it should never be presented accompanied by the song “You Sexy Thing,” by Hot Chocolate. One of the worst lingering trends of Super Bowl ads is silly, winking sexual innuendo, which seems borrowed from another time. It wears especially poorly with cows.
The game may be turning into a rout, but the ads will keep coming. Stay tuned.
Ian Crouch
from Currency http://ift.tt/1fDc3dZ
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment