Evey February I would sit down with a large number of snacks and appetizers and watch some expensive commercials interrupted by a sporting event. There would be a commercials that would be funny, others would tug at the heartstrings. And finally there would be a series of commercials that would air and everyone at the party would look at each other and whisper “Did they really spend money on a commercial like that?”
So while we were not getting together with friends for a super bowl party, I was thinking that I could write up a blog post on what commercials made me laugh and what commercials I’d be talking with co-workers about the next day.
Errrr…. What was that saying about the best laid plans?
I watched the commercials. And there were a few things of note. But the commercials just were not as good this year. It use to be that this was… well the super bowl of commercials. Corporations would spend millions of dollars producing top of the line ads. You would see these adds for weeks to come just because they were trying to get a return on the investment. We would laugh about them as we talked around the water cooler.
The commercial with the baby adoption was a good at tugging the heartstrings. I also really enjoyed Bruce Springsteen and the Jeep commercial about America (a message that was sorely needed). The M&Ms commercial was funny. Will Ferrel tried with his electric cars commercial, I just don’t find him that funny. I liked the Wayne’s World shop local commercial, I just don’t feel the urge to use an overpriced delivery service. The Paramount+ commercials were also good, but I had already seen them since they had been released online prior. When I was talking with a lot of people who had been interested in the commercials in the past and their response was “Meh, I’ll just watch it on YouTube.” I think we are missing the opportunity to do something all together at the same time.
I notice that the commercials just didn’t hold as much water this year. I didn’t really have a vested interest in either of the teams. I don’t really have any loyalty to an NFL team since there isn’t one located in Utah. As I was watching the last half of the blowout game, I was hoping that the Chiefs would come back and make the game interesting. Then it hit me. When the game is dull (looking at you Patriots and Rams from a few years ago) the commercials end up dull as well. Probably because when the game is bad, my attention starts to wander.
Now I understand that we’ve just gotten over a bad year. But I really feel that the advertisers missed the mark by not delivering more comedic advertising. Give us a reason to smile and make things fun around here. That would have made your product placement much more memorable. Now is the time to get started for next year.
Oh and I almost forgot to mention. I was originally watching the game on a Comcast/Xfinity provided channel. It was playing English during the pre-game. But for some reason it switched over to SAP (Spanish) when the game started. No matter where I looked on the Xfinity remote there was no option to hit SAP to see if it would go back to broadcasting in English. So I turned on my CBS All Access (soon to be named Paramount+) and watched the game that way. The sports on the streaming service had no problems what so ever. I was pretty impressed.