The best known Super Bowl spot of all time is perhaps the Apple 1984 one. For that era, it was the equivalent of ’shock and awe’, I guess. Over time, advertising during the event has been a subject of increasing public & media attention. The result: advertisers wanted to outdo each other in getting attention. For a while it was funny. The early spots for EDS, E*Trade, Budweiser (frog), Monster.com (‘When I grow up’), Tabasco (‘Mosquito’) were genuinely funny and memorable.

Over the years, things have become repetitive. Being bizarre, outrageous and aiming for the lowest common denominator in terms of IQ levels may have delivered results years ago. Not anymore. So stop aiming to please only the cretins among the audience. I think GoDaddy is a perfect example of this. What worked some 5 years ago is being rehashed and re-presented over and over again. It’s tiring to watch. Almost feel like the guy in the Career Builder ad – letting out deep sighs.

Careerbuilder Super Bowl ads: its time to get back to advertising

I showed a 50-odd ad collection of last night’s Super Bowl in the office. Underwhelming is the word that comes to mind. See the ads here or here. What gives? I think agencies are getting caught up in their own creativity or too much of this crowd sourcing bit is happening. What explains the lack of a single, outstanding ad with an idea? Google’s Parisian Love was my favourite among the lot – simply because it was devoid of any buffoonery.  It’s perhaps becuase the event and the advertising around it has become what we in India call, a tamasha.

Trust me, next year will be no different. There will be even more crowd sourcing, even more hype before the event (why on earth do advertisers release their Super Bowl ads to media before the event?) and even more bizarre ad themes. Hopefully the old style advertising will stand out even more.

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TBWA appoints Chief Compensation Officer: sign of things to come?

February 8, 2010
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Ad Age reports that ‘Omnicom Group’s TBWA/Chiat/Day has appointed Neal Grossman, a one-time certified public accountant who over 25 years at TBWA has served in various financial and strategy positions, as its first global chief compensation officer’. This new position is over and above the Chief Financial Officer is [...] Continue Reading…
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Tooheys New: for the love of integrated advertising

February 7, 2010
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Saatchi & Saatchi, Australia has developed a new integrated campaign for Toohey’s NEW beer (yes, the brand name is NEW).  I simply loved the central creative idea, the executions and the potential for creating integrated stuff.  According to Campaign Brief,  the fully integrated campaign explores the truth that in [...] Continue Reading…
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Cape Times: good from every angle

February 5, 2010
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Over the years, ‘newspapers, periodicals and’ as a category has seen some memorable creative work – Veja (Dead vs Alive), The Economist, SKY television and several others come to mind. Among the common themes covered, ‘transporting you to the place of action’ and ‘presenting an in-depth coverage of world events [...] Continue Reading…
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Of Parle Hippo and cohesive brand ideas

February 4, 2010
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The new TVC for Parle Agro’s baked munchies, Hippo, is creating some buzz. A majority of people have reacted with positive comments. In a highly competitive category, the ‘root cause of all evil is hunger – appease hunger with Hippo’ proposition is being seen as unique.
Agency: Creativeland Asia
The brand name [...] Continue Reading…
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This iPad video is an amazing, wonderful, awesome, great…piece of editing

February 2, 2010
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This video put together by Neil Curtis is doing the round of tech & Apple blogs. It compresses the entire iPad launch event into 180-odd seconds, capturing the key sound bytes of the event.
Via: Mashable
Pretty much sumps how Apple presents it’s products: there’s no half-assed stuff here.
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Christmas Imaginitol: creative formula for maximum relief

February 2, 2010
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Here’s a great example of the Seen & Noted category of creatives.  The Creative Method, Australia created a Christmas Party invitation that was meant to serve as a new business tool too. According to the agency, initially the prospects were emailed a doctors prescription, followed by the package in [...] Continue Reading…
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Smitten by the Goodlife Recipe

February 1, 2010
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Loved this campaign for The Goodlife Recipe, a pet food company, for it’s insight, the creative idea and the execution. They’ve created a ficititious family, The Bartons who have a pet dog, Clay and a cat, Mitten. The everyday antics of their pets is presented in claymation (Clay, Mitten [...] Continue Reading…
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Apple iPad: what it could be is more promising than what it is

January 29, 2010
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And so the iPad has been announced. And the sun still rises in the east.
I was glued to my Macbook,  following the various live blogs. I also managed to catch the live television coverage on CNBC’s US feed. The last time a similar thing happened in 2007, during the [...] Continue Reading…
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