Thursday
May 17, 2012

I feel like an ad nerd during a Super Bowl timeout.

By  |  February 8th, 2011  |  Posted in ,

Just last night, forty or so Buffalo advertising professionals ventured out into the February nastiness to keep the Super Bowl magic alive and discuss, what else, the ads. The Buffalo Ad Club held its second annual Uber Bowl with superstar panelists Crista Geary, Tom Merrick, and Crowley Webb’s very own Jeff Pappalardo (yes, I got his autograph – on an expense report about an hour before the show).

For the most part, the conversation was what you might expect it to be. We talked about the winners (Chrysler, Audi, Bridgestone), the losers (Pepsi Max, Groupon, Christina Aguilera), the celebrity cameos, and the exorbitant amount of soda cans used as weapons this year. All in all, it was a light discussion with the toughest question asked being, “What would you do if given the chance to create a Super Bowl ad?” Yes, creatives just love being put on the spot like that.

But an interesting thing happened to me personally as I watched and rewatched the spots in preparation for the night’s event. The more I pined over them, the more disappointed I became. I mean, it’s not as if I was looking for some great revelation on Sunday evening. But nothing truly jumped out at me as new or exciting. Snickers ran a spot – while sort of funny – that was simply an extension of a campaign they unveiled during last year’s Super Bowl. Any of the three Bud Light spots could have run six weeks ago or six weeks from now. E*Trade’s big addition was a sneezing cat sidekick to the talking toddler (which caused Jeff to quip, “It’s time to put that baby to bed.”).

All this may be the reason the Chrysler 200 spot with Eminem driving through the city of Detroit struck such a chord with people in our industry. Rather than slapstick humor, it featured gritty, brutal honesty – quite the departure. And it did so for a gripping two minutes.

So if Crista Geary’s analogy that Super Bowl Sunday is to ad nerds as Christmas morning is to children, Santa sure let me down this year. All I found under the tree were the same toys he brought last year, only in new colors. Oh, and there was a nice, practical Chrysler 200 wool sweater. Thanks, big guy.

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