by Susan Carroll | Feb 5, 2007 | Random
If advertising is a mirror that reflects society, as Stephen Fox says in “The Mirror Makers”, what do the latest Super Bowl ads say about us? Looking in this giant convex mirror, objects appear closer than they really are: the babes, the celebs, even the animals, are self-deprecating in a way that makes them seem “more like us”. If you consider it’s mostly bright 20-something men (and I use that term loosely) writing the ads (and the demographic all marketers desire), you can understand why advertising as an art form has become more self-referential, ironic, fantastic and deconstructed. As advertising, what are we selling here? Super Bowl ads are less about the product benefits and more about our messy psyches and desires. Like Bud-light, they exist to generate buzz 🙂
Alexander de Toqueville, if he were to visit America today and become instantly acculturated, might observe:
Every American can (literally) have his 15 minutes of fame or at least an easy Creative Directorship.
Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl” commercial (See earlier “Doritos” post) My favorite, “Checkout Girl” was the winner: the chubby cashier checks out and wins over the junk-food hunkie through her provocative recitation of Doritos spicy flavors. This is good advertising.
Chevy’snaked men tearing off their clothes in the street to go wax the chevy was the winner of a college competition (note to self: definitely not sending my kids away to college). Clients just love seeing the masses flocking to their product. No wonder GM is in trouble.
We live in desperate times. It seems we have come to accept humiliation as a norm. To wit:
Budweiser’s “Slapping”. Funny, yes, in a slapstick way. But “Dogs” was better: A downtrodden mutt, splattered with mud, finally rides in a parade with the Clydesdales (“Under Dog”, or “Dog Day Afternoon”, or “Every dog has its day” would have been better titles).
Into this cute animal category you could add GM’s “Robot Arm”, where a robotic arm gets fired for lack of performance (guess he didn’t pay his union dues). I bet you GM’s employees really relate to Career Builder’s campaign. No more monkeying around, the “Jungle” spot shows “best practices” gone awry when corporate team members break into a free-for-all armed with office equipment.
Every ghetto has its silver lining.
Coke’s “Vice”, turns a “Grand Theft Auto” character into a Good-Deed Doer. Nice attempt, except for the crashing cars, to turn a negative into a positive.
Finally, as much as I admire the Nationwide campaign for making annuities relevant, I’m sad to say that it reinforces the notion that no financial institution, including Nationwide, is “on your side”…
View my list of Super Bowl Ads
PS: My personal favorite is for Jack-in-the-Box that didn’t air in my market. I love the twist at the end where JB jr. mixes up “Vegetarian” with “Veterinarian”.
by Susan Carroll | Jan 31, 2007 | Random
Last night my town made the NBC-10 local news with a story about showing third-graders “That’s a Family!” “A film for kids about family diversity”. It apparantly features families headed by those of mixed race and unmixed gender. About 300 families, mostly irate, showed up at a school meeting.
it is a great way to get more people involved in the PTA, if you ask me 🙂 But one wonders why talking about alternatives to the Mommy-and-Daddy-headed-household is so controversial. Over half the nuclear families are now divided. And the “alternative lifestyle” is a staple of prime-time TV, with freaks and fantasy increasing ratings. My guess is that these families’ V chips work better than mine, because my kids seem to know more about what goes on in the privacy of alternative lifestyles than I do.
What probably irks my neighbors, as it does me, is that there is very little support for family ideals of any sort. In the real world, family is “99% perspirations and 1% inspiration” — it’s difficult, tedious and subject to uncontrollable forces of erosion. So, when we go to our local video store to rent a movie to escape from all this — could we possibly have more choices for families, of whatever stripe?
Indeed, why can’t we get versions of hit movies, such as “The Aviator”, with the smuttier scenes deleted? And, hey Hollywood, could we have a little more about Howard Hughes as the ingenious aviator and entrepreneur that he was…and less about the playboy and freak he became?
by Susan Carroll | Jan 26, 2007 | Random
Ridin’ with the Donald
This ad appeared in USA Today, and I hear, on “Live! with Kelly and Regis” as well as bus stops and billboards throughout Atlantic City.
The Trump organization loved it.
Behind the scenes…It almost wasn’t even presented, but in the end won out from among a dozen other entries. It took the art director and me just one day to do it. The agency had only a couple of shots of Donald to choose from. Thank you, Photoshop.
by Susan Carroll | Jan 25, 2007 | Random
January 23rd, 2007 at 4:30 pm
Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl” promotion, sponsored by Yahoo! video, is totally brilliant if you ask me: Regular junk-food eating Americans submitted 30-second spots for a chance to have their ode to Doritos air on the Super Bowl. You’ll have to wait till February 4th to see the Big Game Winner. (What do you bet that more people vote in this “election” than in the presidential primaries?).
Does it matter that they’re not really all that good. That’s viral marketing, if you ask me.
(However: I had trouble viewing some of the spots [http://promotions.yahoo.com/]). I’m less impressed however with envelope-stretching Frito-Lays’ ads for Tostitos. The mom and dad are reviewing jr’s art works, one of which is of “mommy and daddy wrestling.” Freud would have a field-day with this one. Not to get your ito’s mixed up with your id — I ask your vote on this one: Bags of Doritos washed up on the beaches of Virginia. Is it a happy accident or guerrilla marketing?
Seems pretty incestuous to me. But I regress.
Photo by Donna Barnett / special to The Virginian-Pilot
