A Reflection on the Super Bowl Ads

Sunday night, I stayed up to watch some of the Super Bowl. I got tired sometime after half time and went to bed without staying up for the end of the game. It was a good game, even for those of us somewhat ambivalent about football.

As always, the part that was most interesting to me was the ads. Looking back, what do I remember? Cowboys and Aliens. I think that was a serious ad for a movie coming out, but it was bizarre enough that I wasn’t sure. There was also Thor and Captain America ads, but I don’t remember anything about them. Not that it matters, I am very unlikely to see either movie.

There were the typical ads. Etrade had yet another iteration of the baby talking about trading. Cute. GoDaddy had another ad exploitating of women. Annoying. Coke had some good ads equating Coke with happiness, or something like that. One car company appeared to be trying to evoke a reference to a famous VW ad. Didn’t really work. Another car company had something about aliens wanting to capture the car. Didn’t really work either.

The ad I found most interesting was for the new Motorola tablet. It was a great twist on the famous 1984 ad by Apple. Yet in this ad, the mindless drones were dressed in ways that evoked Apples images, including the classic iPod headphones. My wife didn’t get the references, so it may not have been effective with the general population, but from my geek/media/marketing perspective, I thought it was brilliant.

Oh, and Doritos had a funny ad too. At least I think it was about Doritos as an elixir bringing things back to life.

So, without looking at any of the ads, what do you remember?

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