Super Bowl Impressions – Second Quarter

1. Bank Gothic makes its’ Super Bowl arrival! The spot for Wanted, a new movie with Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman and others. It was only a matter of time. Yeah, bank gothic!

2. GoDaddy.com ad about their original ad being rejected by Fox – this will probably drive the most traffic to any one website of the whole Super Bowl ads. As for the Danica Patrick ad, pretty low brow (but I don’t mind her talking about her beaver). Am I the only one who thinks it’s funny that Fox, of all networks, rejected an advertisement? Fox, home of the Simpsons, Family Guy, et al. BUt how many people decide to register a domain name during the super bowl?

3. Tide Mytalkingstain.com – Funny shit. I’ll check their site out. Turns out that they’re having a spoof contest to film the best spoof of their ad. Deadline in about a month. I might try to do one!

4. The Budweiser Clydesdale Rocky ad – Waste of money. Anheuser Busch grew 2% last year (which is huge dollars), but this ad couldn’t help them much.

5. Bank Gothic is back, this time in the ad for the movie Iron Man. It’s not even surprising that they used Bank Gothic in two ads in the same quarter, both of which were movies! It looks like a decent film, Robert Downey Jr. is one of my favorite Brat Pack actors.

6. Toyota Corolla ad with badgers – As a badger enthusiast (I’m talking about the Teledu, of course), this ad gets my approval.

7. It appears to me that the Giants are just not good enough. And they should have lost that fumble. When there are only 2 possessions in a quarter, it goes by much faster

8. Careerbuilder.com bleeding heart ad – That ad was made just for me. I know that feeling well (see: last job). First thought is that it was a monster.com ad, though. But good.

9. Thrillicious.com ad – Huh? Lizards doing the Thriller dance? WTF? And am I supposed to know who that dancer is? You almost can’t even tell it’s a Sobe ad. I almost missed it.

10. GMC Yukon Hybrid – Don’t fool us, GM. Part of the reason we’re fucked environmentally is due to these fucking gas guzzlers. But lots of Super Bowl ads are basically eye candy, right? So the 150 million people who see these ads probably think that GM is this green, wonderful company. Read here for a more accurate picture of what GM is all about.

11. I totally knew that was an “illegal bat” penalty on the Giants – Marcus Allen used to do that all the time with the Raiders. Turned a probable field goal into a punt. Ouch. Bad form in a Super Bowl

12. Planters “Instinctively Good” spot – Funny. I never thought about cashew oil being an aphrodisiac. Someone pointed out that half the Super Bowl viewers are women, and this might rub many of them the wrong way. But I think it’s a funny ad with a unique twist at the end that could give some brand recognition down the road.

13. Justin Timberlake Pepsi ad. Finally. When I think about Justin Timberlake from this point forward, I’ll also think of the word “suck”. I guess that’s already the word that came to mind…

14. Doritos mouse trap human-sized mouse ad – Interesting they can have an ad where a guy beats the shit out of someone, but you can’t use the word “beaver” in an ad.

15. The Giants’ defense is much better than I expected. Brady is getting his ass kicked.

16. I just looked through the 500+ most recently posted photos that contain the term “Super Bowl” on Flickr and was surprised to not see any photos from the big game.

17. Geico caveman ad – John Lehr (actor in my favorite film, Noah Baumbach’s Kicking and Screaming) is one of the Cavemen! I had no idea until a few weeks ago, but I started watching “10 items or less” on TBS, which also stars John Lehr. Good times.

Super Bowl Impressions – First Quarter

1. The Audi R8 ad with the “Old luxury put on notice” tag is funny, but obviously it’s just a ripoff of the Godfather. I heard that Audi paid between $.5-1.5 million for the licensing rights.

2. A Pepsi Max ad with the Night at the Roxbury theme? It’s ten years old, the retro thing doesn’t work until 20 years. Like how the 80s are big again now…

3. The Bud Light “Big hunk of cheese” ad is hilarious. I’m a fan. Lots of good product placement (not just a logo in the last 3 seconds of the spot). The fire breathing spot, however, is sort of ridiculous (and not maybe in a good way).

4. Ad Age has a whole Super Bowl section. I’m looking forward to checking this out more in-depth. The Under Armour article, while dated for February 4 (tomorrow), looks very promising.

5. I’m pretty much blogging during the game, and giving my full attention to the commercials. Which works out pretty well. My initial idea was to fast forward between every single play, while watching the entire commercials, but that sort of didn’t happen yet.

6. I made this as my facebook status, but Theraflu is theradisgusting. Yes, I have the flu. Which is why I’m stitting at home, by myself, watching the Super Bowl.

7. The Bridgestone ad with screaming animals – Yeah, I’m still not buying your tires.

Super Bowl Impressions – Up to the National Anthem

1. I can’t believe that there are still Standard Definition advertisements during the Super Bowl. You’re paying $3 million per :30 spot and you can’t find some people to make it that understand the value of HD? I can’t imagine it would add that much to your budget these days.

2. I do like the Dell ad with the various old-school computers and monitors getting blown up. “Dell. Now available in beautiful” is the tagline. It’s good, but about 10 years too late, Apple did that with the first iMac. Just more proof how much Apple’s marketing is running the world. Dell is scared shitless, with Macs gaining market share dramatically.

3. I forgot about the Blendstravaganza from last year!

4. The Declaration of Independence deal was pretty crappily put together. I’m not sure that crappily is a word, but I’m sticking with it.

5. Did they really put a Ford in that centrifuge? A cool ad, but I had to rewind my DVR to remember what car company the ad was for. So much for brand recognition on that ad!