Monday, February 04, 2008

Best and Worst Commericals

As a sports fan, it always drives me nuts that there is more talk about the commercials than the game. However, after yesterday's thriller for once this might not be the case. That being said I did find myself at least having an opinion about a few of the commercials. So without further ado, in one man's opinion the best and worst of "The Big Game*" commercials.

Best:



Somehow watching a person in a really blatant mouse costume (note the space between the head and body of the costume) lay the smack down on the creepy looking guy was really, really fun. Maybe the PBR had more of an effect that I thought. It does go to show you though that in some cases the amateur ads end up being as good as those done by the ad agencies.

Worst (tie):



and



The group I was with was shocked when these ads came up. While I could go off about the racist nature of the ads, I'm equally as disturbed about the business sense of Sales Genie. Sales Genie has been quoted as saying that their goal was to make the worst commercials of 2008. While the "any publicity is good publicity" school of thought is usually appropriate, I can't imagine that getting branded as a trashy, racist organization by a large part of the general populace is where you want to be headed from a branding perspective. The other question to be asked is wouldn't the $4.8 million they spent on securing the ad space be better spent on something with a more discernible return on investment? Do they really think that people who need sales leads are going to call up Sales Genie after that? It will be very interesting to see what the fallout for this is for Sales Genie in the days and weeks ahead.

I'm already serving as an enabler by linking to the ads. So enjoy the Doritos commercial and get back to work!

Brian

* I will stick with The Big Game for fear of having the NFL copyright police knock down our door and force me to watch a 24 hour running loop of NFL pundits talking loud and saying nothing.

2 comments:

elpelso said...

Couldn't agree with you more on your choices and comments...

Brian and Becca Davis said...

Here's the follow up in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/06/business/media/06adco.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

In case you can't get in, a quote from the chairman and CEO of InfoUSA(salesgenie.com's parent company) who wrote the ad (note: an ad company didn't write them.):

“We never thought anyone would be offended,” said Mr. Gupta, who developed and wrote both commercials himself.

“The pandas are Chinese,” he said. “They don’t speak German.”

Still, “if I offended anybody,” Mr. Gupta said, “believe me, I apologize

“What offended me was Bud Light,” Mr. Gupta said of the other Super Bowl spots on Sunday. “Very stereotyped.” [the Carlos Mencia language of love ad]

Mr. Gupta contrasted the “millions of dollars” Anheuser-Busch spent on its seven Super Bowl commercials with what he said was the cost of his spots, $50,000.

Despite the response to this year’s ads, Mr. Gupta said he wanted to return to the Super Bowl next year because the commercials had generated millions in revenue for Salesgenie.

“Maybe next year, no audio,” he added, “so I don’t offend anybody.”

Becca