My quickie reviews of last night’s Super Bowl ads (all of them, with a few exceptions, 68 in total) are up at time.com. I grade them not as an advertising professional but simply as a guy who watches TV and buys stuff, though I try to take the effectiveness of the message into consideration.
My favorites included: Google’s surprisingly sweet love-story-via-Web search; Betty White (and Abe Vigoda) taking a hit for Snickers; Kia’s road trip including Muno from Yo Gabba Gabba!; the Hangover-esque whale tale from Bridgestone; Hyundai’s vision of Brett Favre’s future; C. Montgomery Burns pitching for Coke; Cars.com’s we-sell-confidence spot; and David Letterman and Jay Leno making (somewhat) nice with Oprah. (The Late Shift’s Bill Carter has the story on how the ad got made.) That “controversial” Tim Tebow Focus on the Family ad, on the other hand, ended up being notable mostly for its anticlimactic dullness.
Least favorites? Oh, there were plenty. But the worst trend overall was a running streak of misogyny that made the cheesecake GoDaddy ads look like PSAs for female empowerment.
