Super Bowl Ads I Liked

As any astute observer knows, the Superbowl is really about marketing. Just like the whole world is. That and the first iconic Bond girl.

Don't believe me. Ask the Roots. Any rate, it's true. The world is about marketing, and Honor Blackman. So, to honor that tradition, today, we look at SuperBowl Ads I liked. Tomorrow, we look at the ones I didn't. Lets get to it.

Since Anheuser Busch unofficially owns the city I live in, and since they had the most spots, let's start there. My favorite, judged by unaided recall was Budweiser - Superfan.

I like the way they shook up the Clydesdales Football Game. And the sheared sheep streaker had me rolling. There was a bit of unintentional comedy at the end, just for those of us who enjoy that better than intended humor. The two cowboys, who have been fixtures of this series, reminded me very strongly of Brokeback Mountain's two lead characters. Cracked me up big time.

In aided recall, I also liked The Wave and Michelob Ultra Amber's Touch Football, although the latter was kind of stolen from Reebok's Terry Tate campaign.

Burger King

Anyone who has talked to me about advertising in the last year or so knows that I love pretty much everything BK puts on the air. I loved Hootie in the land of the Tendercrisp Chicken Bacon Ranch, I love the King as King Kong. I love the King in football. I love that they have a product called Chicken Fries (and no, I will never eat one). The Whopperettes were another home run for the King. Favorite part: when they toss the girls on top of one another to make the Whopper at the end. The costumes are great, the original music, brilliant. Nothing not to love about this. Now, if only people made fast food decisions based on ads rather than first available store, they'd probably be winning the burger war. This was an unaided recall commercial.

Emerald Nuts

Emerald Nuts burst on the scene last year (has it only been a year?) with their weird, off beat commercials featuring odd people who fit the EN labeling system enjoying Emerald Nuts. This year, they took it one further, shooting an offbeat scene and spelling EMERALD NUTS with the description. Awesome. Lots of fun. I didn't recall this one unaided, which I could do with the previous series. Hell, I even bough some Emerald Nuts, and I don't even eat nuts often. For me, they have replaced Planters as the premium nut company, and in so short a period. I think it was March Madness last year that did it, but still, this is advertising at it's best.

Hummer

Hate the product and usually hate the ads. But this one spoke to me. I love those old movies, American or Japanese, about radiation enhanced monsters destroying civilization. They are as funny as the Final Destination movie series (third one out on my birthday!!! ;-). And this weird love story just enhances the iconic nature of the most despicable auto series on earth. But even for us greenies, who hate Hummers like we hate Bush and toxic waste, this ad has a bone. The linkage of the Hummer H3 to culture wrecking monsters seems to apt to be accidental. Kudos for mocking your critics and further enhancing an icon symbol of unsustainability that is Hummer.

Other Notables
I also liked the following ads with aided recall, in no particular order. If you want to see any of them, check out Ifilm.com's page of Superbowl ads.

• Nationwide Insurance's Fabio ad (I thought it was going to be a I Can't Believe It's Not Butter ad until the end)
• Oversock.com (I love this woman talking about getting the big O in your life with that serene look of, "I just multipled, multiple times," on her face. )
  
• American Home Health (Green Hazmat suits are just funny. Really.)
• Aleve: Leonard Nimoy (My in laws were completely mystified by Nimoy and this ad. I guess I really am a closet Trekkie.)
  
• Sierra Mist: Metal Detector ("Whaa, Wheep". And anytime Michael Ian Black comes up short, I think I smile a little.)
• Sprint: A Song for Every Occasion
• Career Builders, both ads. (If only their site wasn't useless... 22 Truck Drivers needed immediately in the St. Louis area... I have a frickin MBA.)
• Full Throttle: Auto Melee (Especially funny since one of those Red Bull euro-mobiles parks down the block from where I live. I want to see it crushed by a big truck.)
• Toyota Tacoma: Invincible (I loved the use of time lapse photography in this ad. Very cool.)
• GoDaddy.com (I think I will write a whole piece on this later. The story is that good. And they probably got a million visits on Monday, which maybe justifies the expense. Maybe.)
• Honda Ridgeline: Silver Goddess (Inventive. And Yosemite Sam. Nice.)
• Mastercard:MacGyver (Commercial proved two things: 1- MacGyver is Iconic. 2- It's been a long time since old whasshis name wore the old mullet.
• McDonalds: Hamster (Funny, appropriate to the event. Uncharacteristically cheap and weird. Nice spot.)

That's everything I liked. I think I will save GoDaddy.com for Friday maybe. Tomorrow, the sappy, the boring, the ugly, the played, and everything else I didn't like about the ads. And that includes the AB:Baby Clydesdale ad. ICK!

Bill Simmons, The Sports Guy, Had the Best Line about SuperBowlXL

At 9:18 (I guess this is PST), Simmons concludes his running diary of the StuporBowl with this gem:

Shouldn't the refs just replace the yellow flags with Terrible Towels at this point?

I will accept submissions for a better line about the game, but I think you will be hard pressed to find one.