The Super Spots

Looks like Kevin Federline might find more work after his Nationwide spot. The former Mr. Britney Spears courted some controversy in his ad that shows him sunken to the level of a fast-food employee. Adrants reports that Taco Bell's president, Greg Creed, wrote Federline:

We know you respect those who work in our business. In fact, last year you said in an interview, "My kids are going to have to learn what a real job is, what life is. You don't have it easy with me. Period. My kids are going to work at Taco Bell."

We're flattered, but obviously they're too young to work for us. So here's our offer to you: Come work for us, just for a one hour shift. We'll get you a uniform, a custom name tag and show you what a great place Taco Bell is to work. We'll even reward customers who visit that restaurant with an order of our new Carne Asada Steak Grilled Taquitos for free.

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Two words: Beard combover. What more can we say?

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AdFreak co-editor Catharine P. Taylor asks if that's a wardrobe malfunction Charlize Theron is experiencing in the ads for J'adore perfume.

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Find $2.6 million-per-30-seconds too pricey? Why not just post your ads to YouTube for free? TechCrunch reports that newish companies including Meebo, Meez, Multiply, Plaxo, RockYou and Technorati are going the low-budget route. Technorati borrows wholesale from The Big Lebowski. Plaxo asks, "is it cold out there?" All about the shrinkage.

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Another place to see the ads you missed (if you actually missed any - maybe you got a sandwich when the game was on) is AOL, which seems to have them posted in real time.

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Barbara Lippert, columnist for Adweek watches the Taco Bell ad and wonders why the lions on the velt have surfer dude accents. "What's up with giving every speaker in commercials -- from babies to wild animals -- that same slacker voice and affect?" Give her the grouchy Geico cavemen any day.

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Was that Janet Reno sitting next to Mike Myers in the Chad Johnson Super Bowl party?

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The Snickers ad, where two mechanics meet under the hood of a car, fight over a chocolate bar, and chew their way toward a kiss?

At Deadspin, commenter Black Aces wrote: "Snickers just pissed me off. Dammit, if I wanted to see men kissing, I would have turned on figure skating."

AdRants on same: Winning the Most Disgusting Super Bowl Commercial Award is the commercial from Snickers in hich two mechanics end up eating the same Snickers bar from opposite ends until the two meet and are shocked. They suddenly react by doing something very manly, ripping off their chest hair. Yes, it will talked about and maybe that's half the battle. It's still gross though.

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New York Times graphic charts ads since 1984. Use of humor is up. Though not sure how they classify 1986's Herb the Nerd spots for Burger King.

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Have a favorite ad? Hate one more than others? Visit AdBowl, the annual online poll conducted by McKee Wallwork Cleveland, an Albuquerque, NM. advertising agency.

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A favorite insight from the group of live blogging Madison Avenue types at SuperAdFreak came from Tim Arnold, an AdWeek columnist and principal at Dragonfly, who said that the spots are an expensive vanity fair that don't have to work - they only need to be noticed:

  Here's why the Super Bowl is the greatest show on earth. In forty years it's gone from a game to a spectacle, and in the process handed an enormous gift to a bunch of lucky dudes in the media and advertising industries. With every last Super Bowl TV commercial poll and analysis out there measuring nothing more than "favorite," "best ever," "funniest" and "most animals," us ad dogs are off the hook. It's akin to papal dispensation: apparently we don't have to sell dick during the big one—just rank in one of these popularity contests. Our clients' egos get stroked, and we can all congratulate ourselves for a job well done. Thank you very much.

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Good to see the flap over too much skin a few years ago hasn't kept the spots from featuring plenty of violence and mayhem - the face-slapping Bud ad, the mouse abuse for Blockbuster, Bud Lite's rock, paper, scissors game won with a real rock, the Doritos car crash.

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About that citizen-generated Doritos ad, AdRants rants:

Ooh. Doritos just made our skin crawl with their latest ad featuring a cashier getting progressively hotter and hotter over her trucker-looking customer's choice of chips. The spot ends in an aisle cleanup. You do the math.

And unless there's a wide demographic of married cashiers and truckers, we think this is a total "Sideways" rip-off. There probably are a lot of married cashiers and truckers though. In all probability Doritos may very well be the glue that keeps their love together. Who are we to talk?

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Adrants was kinder to the cit-created Chevy ad:

OK. It's cheesy. It's lame. It's hideous. but we love it. Love it! Call us sick but we love the consumer-created Chevy HHR commercial in which guys turn into street strippers for a couple of women in a car.

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We were pretty much leaning forward on the couch, open-mouthed, during Prince's half-time show. In the rain. With that rag and the devilish guitar, which looked more devilish when his purpleness was glimpsed behind the sheet. At Deadspin, Spectator wrote:

Prince just wanted to remind you that he rocks. Thanks for watching.

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Robert Goulet, crawling on the glass like The Salamander from that old Hill Street Blues episode, and then Sir Charles Barkley getting mistaken for Dwayne Wade's dad in the same commercial break. I'm never gonna get that sandwich.

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An ad to remember? Frito Lay: Fans. It's the most low key -- you hear the call of the game and see fans reacting. Young, old, they're all of color. There's a subtext: not one but two coaches who are black are leading their teams. The ad doesn't spell this out. It never has to. "We've got more than a game here," the announcer says. "We've got history. Not just getting here. But what getting here represents."

Prince was amazing, amazing, amazing.  So was the marching band with whom I commiserated as I have also been stuck marching in the rain.

But, the real nail biter moment for me was the woman of color wearing a tight, bright white outfit who was singing backup for Prince in the pouring rain.

White outfit + rain = a wardrobe malfunction that could make Janet Jackson look demure.

I'm looking forward to the ad to play at the two minute warning about NFL fans.

meh, no Eagles love.

Prince is the man.  What a showman.  

I didn't get to start watching until right at kickoff, so maybe I missed it, but what happened to the guy that bought an ad to propose to someone?  No one seems to be mentioning it either. 

eb, i heard he didnt end up raising enough funds to pay for it.  so i guess it didnt run.

http://ironlionoroku.blogspot.com/

Philadelphia cops partying with underage undergrads at a local university.  What are our tax dollars going for?

http://ironlionoroku.blogspot.com/

Agreed, Prince was good.  He plays a wicked ax.  I was rooting for the bears, oh well.  I liked that commercial, Dan, the "Frito Lay: Fans" one.  It gave me chills.

Something similar would be if you put Condy Rice vs. Hillary Clinton against each other in the next presidential election.  Or a World Series with the Cubs vs. the Red Sox in years prior to 2004  (almost happened in 2003 but Bartman messed it all up.. oh and so did the red sox that year).  You know some streak or curse will end or some other historical event will happen.  Obviously the trick is in getting there, and if you're the best at the time, then you'll get there, no matter what color you are or how many fingers you have.  I love the Bears' Defense though, that's why I was rooting for them.

It was a sloppy game played in sloppy conditions, but not as bad as other rainy games due to the pristine nature of the nice and unused turf down in Miami.

The halftime show was awesome.  Prince played the hits and oh man, Purple Rain wa...