The worst Super Bowl ads of 2011

Apologies for being a little late on this post, but I’m still a little bleary eyed after watching 6+ hours of TV on Super Bowl Sunday. When I wasn’t gripping the arms of my chair while the Pittsburgh Steelers slowly pecked away at the Green Bay Packers’ lead (which the Pack thankfully held on to), I was underwhelmed by this year’s crop of Super Bowl ads. It’s not exactly true about a bad apple spoiling a bushel, but, man, some of the ads were awful. You can see where the ads ranked on USA Today’s site.
In my eye, the worst ads came from discount coupon sites. Apparently their humor is cut rate as well. One ad that had me scratching my head was LivingSocial’s (which aired during FOX’s pregame coverage). The ad details how the discount site “changed” a man’s life from being trapped to embracing what appears to be a more effeminate lifestyle — including dressing in drag.
While some people are unhappy about LivingSocial making a joke out of transgendered individuals, I had no idea who this ad is supposed to appeal to. Most of the male audience wouldn’t necessarily get or appreciate LivingSocial’s message. Perhaps the ad was geared more toward the women in the audience — that could be savvy insofar as recognizing that the Super Bowl draws a large audience from both sexes.
The other set of ads that I thought were dreadful were the GroupOn ads. They start off with tearful testimonials about the suffering in the world only to say that it’s OK because people can save big bucks with this discount site.
Some of these ads seem to portray potential customers in a negative light. GroupOn basically says use our site and be a tool (but save!). It reminds me of the Sprint ads where people are being jerks but it’s OK because they have unlimited minutes or texting.
Although I’m a Sprint customer, my desire to keep the service is diminished whenever it portrays customers as blowhards. Portraying customers as petty, selfish and callous does seem to run counter to the old advertising tropes where you depict customers being attractive and successful while using a product.
Along those same lines, another ad that portrays potential customers as weird was a Doritos ad where a man apparently just can’t get enough of that nacho cheese-flavored crack — he has to rip a co-worker’s pants off to lick the crumbs that the co-worker wiped on his legs. I guess it might appeal to the more juvenile in the audience, but I wasn’t amused.
Another set of ads I didn’t find funny included two where a dog or baby are thrown into glass. The one with the baby dealt with a vacation home renting site HomeAway (which posited a problem with hotels that I don’t think most people have to deal with). The commercial depicted a lab testing how uncomfortable hotel rooms are culminating with a “test baby” being thrown into the lab’s glass walls. It was a little shocking, but ultimately was a miss.
The other ad with glass included a man taunting a small dog with a bag of Doritos from behind a glass door. The dog is running, running and running until the ad’s punchline where the dog breaks down the glass door, pinning the man and liberating those tasty, tasty chips. I didn’t think the ad was particularly funny and I was a little bored with it.
It’s interesting that people just loved the dog one (it tied for first in USA Today’s AdMeter), but panned the baby one.
Looking at the rest of the list of Super Bowl ads, many of them were just average. I did like the Coca-Cola ad where the two border guards find a creative way to share a Coke while staying on their respective sides of the border.
Movie trailers are interesting if you’re interesting in the upcoming attractions, but they aren’t great Super Bowl ads. I can’t remember the last time there was a creative trailer during the big game. I also won’t take a movie entitled “Cowboys vs. Aliens” seriously.
In the end, the Super Bowl is one of the largest stages left in the world and it might be hard to please everyone with so many people watching. That may be part of the problem — in trying to please everyone or to be “funny,” some advertisers end up pleasing no one.

The long road to Packer fandom via Chico

I’ve been following the Packers off and on for about 13 years. While the Super Bowl XLV has yet to be played, the past couple of weeks have been the most exciting for me Packers-wise as Chico celebrates native Aaron Rodgers’ success as Green Bay’s quarterback.
My first big experience with the Packers came in 1998 when they faced off against the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XXXII in San Diego. The team was training at my college, UC San Diego. As the co-news editor of the college paper, I wanted to make sure we covered this fairly significant event.
The only hurdle and it was a doozy — the NFL didn’t particularly want to give a college newspaper access to the facility (especially since we were asking for permission during the week of the game). To be fair, the league didn’t want to give anyone access without permission. Crews had wrapped the chainlink fence around the track-and-field facility with black tarp.
To make a long story short, the paper staff launched “Operation Packer Tracker.” What was envisioned as a James Bond-esque plan to successfully take the photo and make a getaway, was resolved simply when the photo editor walked to an elevated position on public property and shot into the leased facility. The photo was a nondescript shot of the team on the field with a cherrypicker cart in the air. I was excited that we were able to get it.
My first professional gig was working at a small newspaper in Upper Michigan. One of the odd quirks of where I lived is that we had access to both Packers and Detroit Lions games on TV. If you had to choose, the Packers were usually the better choice considering how the Lions have been mired in mediocrity for a decade.
For those four years, I watched a decent amount of Packers games. I didn’t really become a fan, although my boss for most of those years was a diehard cheesehead.
Despite my lukewarm feelings towards the Pack, it was still a huge honor to take the tour of Lambeau Field in Green Bay in 2004 (it was just a little down the road on U.S. Highway 41). It was pretty cold and I could get an idea of how the frozen tundra moniker came about. I still have the 2004 Media Guide as a momento of the experience (the Brett Farve section was 25 pages long).
Less than a year later, I was on my way to Chico while Aaron Rodgers was on his way to the NFL after being selected in the 2005 draft. I’ve been impressed how Chico has embraced its hometown hero with his alma maters holding spirit days and Packers displays throughout the city. Everything, including media coverage, been a little overwhelming at times, but it’s hard to deny the mounting excitement. Being in this mini-maelstrom has been far more exciting than watching in Michigan or even trying to get that photo in San Diego.
Despite the outpouring of Packers backing, Chico’s not totally in the bag for Green Bay. There are still a lot of Raiders jerseys (even someone wearing a Seattle Seahawks sweatshirt). Some people are rooting for the Steelers or freely express less-than-favorable opinions of Rodgers. This easygoing and mostly welcoming nature is one of my favorite things about fandom in the United States.
Although I’m not ready to doff a foam block of cheese, I’ve enjoyed watching the Packers over the years, especially this run to the Super Bowl. Win or lose, Aaron Rodgers has forged a connection between cities and fans 2,200 miles apart.

Tube Talk: Super show

I was going to take off after the Big Game ended, but ABC started airing “Grey’s Anatomy” pretty quickly. I hadn’t seen the show since the first episode left me uninterested. Although I was only vaguely familar with the show or its characters, tonight’s episode drew me in.

After opening with a rather pedestrian woman feeling down after a romantic situation ended badly, the show was off to the races. There were a dozen plot threads running almost to the point of implausabilty (for example, the cranky, pregnant head doctor in labor while her husband is going through brain surgery after an accident en route to the hospital), but darn if it wasn’t good TV with a engaging mix of comedic and dramatic moments.

Things were moving so fast, I told my friend that it was a two-part episode to minimize the bummage factor when the inevitable cliffhanger came. And it was a doozy — finding one of the main characters holding an embedded explosive in place in a victim’s body.

I didn’t say it to Joel at the time, but I really liked the bright image from his HD TV. True, the local ABC affillate wasn’t airing an HDTV feed, but the broadcast via Dish looked pretty clear. I must definitely mention this when I see him again. I’d be very interested to see how BSG looks when it airs on the NBC Universal HD channel.

OTOH, the remote for the DISH DVR looked like a control panel on a 737. There’s a ton of buttons and I still don’t know what a third of them do.

And lastly, I probably shouldn’t have been talking so much during the broadcast. People didn’t seem annoyed, but it’s probably a little rude and annoying. Also, my hit-to-noise ratio was probably a little low (although there was one good laugh somewhere).