Dangerous Curves, Dancing Dwarfs, Macho Men and Robert Goulet
No Careerbuilding chimps this year, we're promised. They've evolved. Maybe into those Geico cavemen.
No farting horses. No Britney Spears.
But Kevin Federline got the callback. So did Robert Goulet and the dangerous curves of the GoDaddy girl. And three ads and one jingle come up from the crowds - citizen-generated spots, made with with a little professional help.
We're not sure when ads shoved the game to the sideline, but getting into the spirit, we present Blinq's Second Annual Guide to America's Super Bowl of Sales:
(For last year's edition, see Singing Burgers, Beer Cheers, Office Chimps, Fabio and Ads Too Hot for XL.)
While much is kept under wraps for maximum impact, and we understand why, given that a 30-second spot costs about $2.6 million, we know much more about the ads planned than we did before last year's game. For this, thank the Web. It had the same effect on Black Friday sales this fall when big box stores broke the news of their own post-holiday sales seeing as it was bound to get out anyway.
This is why a site like AdLand by Jan. 26 had the whole line-up nailed down, give or take a few details. They weren't alone.
We know Jessica Simpson (again) will trip over her red dress at a movie premiere in an attempt to sell Pizza Hut pies. She'll follow Alka Seltzer and precede Ford, which will spout some Ford Tough stuff about its F-150 pick-ups for the beef 'n' beer crowd.
That's before kick-off. A Doritos ad is to be the first of the consumer-created spots. Citizen ads for Chevy and NFL follow. Alka Seltzer held a contest for the best update to the Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz ditty. You can watch the five Doritos finalists here. An add for Snickers "features two blue collar workers sharing a Snickers candy bar in a way that will change both of them forever," AdLand writes. Will want to TIVO that.
We have to wait until the third quarter to see why it is that the Super Bowl loves Kevin Federline but not the woman who dumped him. It's also widely known that Robert Goulet found work with Emerald Nuts. Ricardo Montalban returns to give pronunciation lessons to two lions discussing Taco Bell's steak taquitos.
If you'd rather see this stuff to enjoy it, you can go to iFilm, which has eight ads and sneak peaks up for viewing pleasure. (Ok, one is for the Canadian Super Bowl, but I watched anyway.) There's GoDaddy.com's behind the scenes piece, which features large breasts and dancing dwarfs. Still not sure what GoDaddy is, but each year it finds some new way to make hay out of getting rejected by the network.
There's a trailer for Wild Hogs, road movie about suburban dads who form a biker gang, which sounds lame until you realize the buds are John Travolta, Martin Lawrence, William Macy and Tim Allen. (I'm not even sure they're going to advertise on the show - they may have just paid to tag the trailer Super Bowl so loxes like me write about them in posts like this.)
Yahoo! has its own roster of sneak peaks, such as snippets of Anheuser-Busch ads that feature a cute dog, a big crab, Road Warriors and beer drinkers in space.
Adverlicio.us does for online ads what iFilm and Yahoo! do for television spots. And Advertising Age has a special section for Super Bowl XLI. There I read and watched how ad critic Bob Garfield expects 25 or 30 advertisers to cater to one of the last mass audiences left in our fractured mediascape.
At least half "will suck," he predicts. But we watch anyway.
FYI Godaddy.com is like Network Solutions (netsol.com). A domain name registrar with value-added services. Loved the behind the scenes look at their commercial, especially the champaign scene.
unless i misjudged proportions, i stand by midgets.
You couldn't hold Robert Goulet's sweat towel, Rubin.
It really should be "dwarf" or "little person". The "M-word" is a very derogatory term to little people, at about the same level as the "n" word.
Sorry, proportion has nothing to do with it. A little person can be proportionate or disproportionate. The M word fell out of favor a long time ago, both medically and socially.
thanks for writing, and letting me know -- dan