Feb 3, 2014

Our Three Favorite Super Bowl Commercials (and Why)

Wonderful Pistachios with Stephen Colbert
Why it worked: Self-awareness.  It poked fun at today's marketing world and picked the perfect person for the job: Stephen Colbert, the clever TV personality who makes his living humorously but sharply digging at modern America. It played off ad tracking, instant gratification, and how the product alone isn't considered enough for advertising. It had the random humor of the suited-up eagle. It had the memorable visual ‘OMG’ moment when said TV personality cracked his head open to reveal his inner nut.




Heinz “If You’re Happy and You Know It” (An obvious choice for Pittsburgh!)
Why it worked: Ritual.  It captured the ritual bottom-tapping of Heinz glass bottles by using the beat of a happy song. It had football tailgating! It was slyly funny in that bottom-thunking is a pretty annoying part of Heinz glass bottles. But we all do it. It also played with the ‘old woman out of her time’ trope in that she was using the new fad (the nearly-empty squeeze bottle) and her (presumably) granddaughter corrected her back to the classic glass bottle.


 


Audi “Doberhuahua”
Why it worked: Memorable image.  A Doberman head on chihuahua body is funny and horrifying. The dogs also take on the personalities of both breeds – very clever. And keep in mind that the ‘compromise’ topic was borne from a relationship dispute – very relatable. Audi gets away with the “rug out from under you,” “This is an ad for what?” technique because the ‘compromise’ connection makes just enough sense with the way cars are sized and marketed today. Audi knows who it is.




-- And a special shoutout to GoldieBlox, the CA small business who got its ad on Super Sunday!  They promote a very cool cause: creating toys that help young girls get themselves on the path to becoming engineers, a traditionally male-dominated profession.  They "aim to disrupt the pink aisle."

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