The Super Bowl was a great game, but, given my profession, I paid a bit more attention to the ads, seen by over 97.5 million fans- the most ever. You may recall my review of Super Bowl 2007 Ads last year. 30 second spots cost about 7% more this year, averaging $2.7 million a piece. Overall, I think last year was a better year for the ads, and I was actually a bit disappointed with some companies this year. Which ads succeeded, and whose flopped? I tell all, below.

Surfing the last few weeks, you may have noticed Pontiac’s new ad campaign targeting women for the Torrent, a crossover utility vehicle. Titled “Crossover Confessions”, the mini-site shows you a few features the Torrent touts (safety, cargo, engine) and then encourages you to “confess” and “unload your baggage” on their site. I wasn’t terribly impressed with the mini-site, and for good reason.

Sprint, the cellular provider, has launched an a website called “Waitless” (http://www.waitless.org/) to promote their early night minutes feature, which starts at 7PM instead of most competitors who start at 9PM.  The site features video tips, called Sprintcuts, for saving time on everyday things like pouring ketchup (good tip), parking your car (terrible tip), and even how to soothe a baby.  Additionally, the site offers a calculator to help you figure out how much time you will spend in your life doing “boring” things.  Will this campaign succeed or flop?

Here is one of the (funnier) time-saving ads they made:

YouTube has announced the winner of their “SuperVote” Super Bowl ad competition.  The winner was the Doritos “Live The Flavor” ad, which was created by amateurs at a production cost of just $12 (in contrast to the $2.5 million by Doritos to run the spot).

Here is the winning ad:

The ad has over 400,000 views already on YouTube, and it was just selected.

I personally didn’t think it was the best one, but it was fairly entertaining.  One thing I did like about the ad is that they figured out a way to show three qualities of Doritos (Spicy, Cheesy, Bold) in a memorable way.  I also have my complete review of the 2007 Super Bowl ads over at:
http://www.pinnycohen.com/2007/02/05/ad-reviews/super-bowl-ad-review-2007/

As you may imagine having read some of my other posts, I was more interested in the quality of the commercials on the Super Bowl than the actual game.  Being that the average 30-second spot cost more than $2.5 million, you would assume that the ad quality would be the highest ever.  Sadly, this was not the case, although there were quite a few entertaining ads.  Over 50 ads were shown during Super Bowl XLI.

Themes

After Janet Jackson’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction” in 2004, network officials were understandably cautious about what they would allow to air during Super Bowl XLI.  CBS even rejected out of hand two sexually charged GoDaddy.com commercials (catch the banned commercials here).

Even if you don’t love the sport of football, most of you will agree that the commercials shown during the Super Bowl are the most entertaining you will find all year.  No other occasion brings out the creativity of companies like a $2.6 million 30-second spot. 

One website is offering you the ability to watch just the commercials, without having to sit through the game.

YouTube, which was recently purchased by Google for $1.65 billion, has created a whole Super Bowl commercial section where visitors can rank the commercials aired during the game.