2007 Superbowl Commercials

Question. Have all the really great Ad Execs died?

Or has the Superbowl fear of not being politically correct caused the restrictions to be so high that we are not even allowed to laugh anymore? Everyone knows that Superbowl commercials are part of the entertainment. If they stop being so, there are those of us who are not football inclined who will stop watching. Have they now taken that from us too? This had to be the worst crop of Superbowl commercials in decades.

Here are this year's top winners based on the Jamie Saloff Superbowl Commercial Rating System (see below). These are the commercials I could remember this morning (and talk about) without looking up a list to see what I had forgotten.

Muddy dog gets a seat on the Budweiser wagon: 5 points (highest possible)(okay, so the "isn't that cute" factor won me over.)

The Doritos Fan Movie: 5 points (Hurray for fan movies! Let's see more of them since they are apparently better than what the Expensive Ad execs could come up with!)

Frito Lay / Doritos Black Celebration: 5 points

Orange County Choppers / HP: 5 points (the graphics on those always keep me watching, time after time, after time.)

Emerald Nuts with Robert Goulet: 5 points (thanks for a really good laugh - much better than last year!)

Coke GTA: 5 points (I'm embarrassed to say I know what GTA is! But I liked their use of it.)

Coke old man in the nursing home: 5 points (It wasn't THAT funny, but it had very little competition.)

Garmin and the monster map (the Godzilla / Power Rangers like commercial): 4.5 points (Was it just me? Or did the laser ray belt buckle seem to ride really low on the superhero?)

Doritos at the checkout counter: 4.5 (Eh.)

Budweiser, Bud.tv: 4.5 points (for making me curious enough to want to go there - but I haven't... yet)

Chevy celebrity singers: 4 points (see notes)

GoDaddy: 3.5 points (seen notes)

Coke Black Celebration: 3 points (I remember there was one, but not what it was about)

FedEx on the moon: 3 points (I had no idea what was going on and the last second blast was almost too late.)

FedEx Ground stereotypical people: 3 points (see notes)

CareerBuilder (both versions): 3 points
(Dear Career Builder, go back to the monkeys they were funny, this was not!)

Budweiser crabs: 3 points

Ford Trucks: 3 points (how about a little effort to make it interesting!)

Budweiser men slapping each other: 3 points (see notes)
(What are you thinking!)

Truck on contraption: 2.5 points (was it Ford or Chevy?)

Gorillas with the beer: 2 points (which lite beer?)

Cartoon animals using the live mouse like a computer mouse: 1 point

Rapper singing commercial: 1 point

Martha Stewart at a celebrity Superbowl party: 1 point


Now here's some notes:

GoDaddy, the commercial was boring, but don't fret because I'll watch the "real" commercials on your site - and you must be doing something right as I switched all my domain names over to you this year. The bottom line is customer service and price... You got me with both... P.S. Thanks for having customer service reps who understand English!)

I think the Chevy singers commercial could have been better. The commercial seemed disjointed. The songs didn't flow together well. I think they could have maybe all sung the same song (with a different twang?) It was a great idea, maybe when they show splurts of it later down the road the shorter versions will be better.

Budweiser! I can't believe you have started a fad of slapping people! You KNOW people are going to do this! I can't believe you stooped this low. I'm really disappointed in you! Have you been working with the Miller Lite people?

The CareerBuilder ads were memorable, so give them credit for that. I thought they were too busy and not at all funny. I think they tried to show too much at once.

Dear FedEx... If things aren't named for what they are, but all the people were named for what they were... aren't you subliminally saying that FedEx Ground IS slow? Or are you hoping that we will remember the commercial and remember the message? It just might work... Now if FedEx would remember where my house is and not deliver my packages to the car dealer down the street, or a day late, I might be more inclined to use them over UPS. (erg.)

The gorillas, (was that Budweiser or Miller Lite?), please someone tell the ad execs the old writer's rule: Show don't Tell. BORING! I was pretty much like the "other" gorilla. What? Something funny happened? The commercial bored me and I forgot to care.

At the last minute I remembered the Don Shula / HP commercial (sorry, I don't know who the other player is) and the Doritos talking animals commercials. I wanted to give them some credit. But since I didn't remember them for the original list, they didn't make the ratings.

In case you don't want to hop over to last year's blog to see the rating system, I've copied it here:

1 point if I remember the commercial the next day. This is important if the advertiser expects me to tell my friends about it and to get a buzz going about their product.

2 points if I remember the advertised product. It's not a good thing if I confuse which beer company sponsored which commercial or if I don't remember the product at all. If I don't remember the product, how am I going to buy it? Note... if I remember the ad when I see the product, that's worth a half of credit.

2 points if I liked the commercial and felt they made good use of their money.