Super Bowl Commercials
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In two days, one of the most anticipated events of the television viewing season will finally hit the airwaves. I don't mean the broadcast of the Super Bowl, however: I'm talking about the commercials.
These commercials are widely-known to be the very best of the year. They'd better be; advertisers have paid as much as 2 million dollars for 30 seconds of airtime. They are saved on computer, passed around on office emails, quoted, and talked about as much as the game itself.
This is incidentally an issue that arouses some angst here in Canada. We get to see the football game, but none of the cool commercials. Our home networks seize the American satellite feed, and insert their own commercials, containing shitty, unentertaining Canadian content. Yay, Canada.
The amazing thing is that few people can say with any authority that these ads work. Sure, a lot of them are funny as hell (so I've heard), but are companies selling more product as a result of the ads? Nobody knows for sure. Marketing research is inconclusive that traditional mass-media campaigns actually do anything at all.
Ask yourself this question: Can I name five commercials I have seen recently, summarize their content, and identify what was being advertised? I can't. I filter all that stuff out, a skill I refined to perfection back when my teacher was trying to teach me algebra. Or else i'm in the kitchen when it's on the TV anyway.
But even entertaining Super Bowl commercials that have a widespread and receptive audience seem just as ineffective. Can you remember any Bowl commercials, and what they were selling?
I can think of those "Bud Bowl" ones, but a significant reason has to be that they are aired multiple times during the broadcast. But what about a single, 2 million dollar, 30-second ad slot? Is it working? Think hard, of any of those ads from the past - can you recall much of anything?
In spite of Canada's aggravating censorship policies, I have actually seen quite a few, and I can't name a single product that was being sold. I laughed though. So I guess it's all good.
But I submit this proposal to wealthy and faceless corporations across North America: pay me the two million and gimme a sandwich board. I bet I'd be as effective promoting your product as your fancy Hollywood commercials are.
More importantly, I'd be rich as hell. Yeah, I like this plan.
posted by Wardo at 2/04/2005 11:01:00 AM
2 Comments:
Argus, you're absolutely right! We SHOULD spend more money on these commercials.
Oh, that's not what you were talking about?
Sorry.
I too, being a Canadian, am more than a little frustrated with the fact that our Superbowel coverage does not include the wonderous commercials that are enjoyed in the south. I mean, I hate football, so my tuning in to the Superbowel program ever year hinges solely upon the half-time show, since we don't get nothing else that's worth watching.
Last year I observed a whole twenty seconds of the now infamous show when Janet Jackson's leathery tit was seen the world over--amazingly it was the ONLY part of the whole Superbowel I saw! And it was the most talked about moment! Incredible.
the number of good super bowl commercials has steadily declined over the last ten years (i can demonstrate on an excel spreadsheet). there were only three this year, so next year's gonna be awful.
there's a reason most of this marketing sucks anyway. you mention you tune it out - i try, but when i pay attention to it, it's just not funny. hasn't been for years. when every commercial has the same ironic punchline, the same joke-first, product-second mentality, then one commercial runs into the next. the message isn't transmitted, and i'm nevertheless forced to sit through minutes of unfunny tripe.
jokes are best told (or heard) once. marketing and advertising continue to ruin irony as we know it - and that's both a good and a very, very bad thing.
-howlingman
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