Lies Well Disguised: I Hate the Super Bowl
I hate American football. I hate American advertising. I'd rather have been anywhere — even at this avant-garde horseshit (sorry. ed.)— than in front of a TV Sunday evening. Because unlike the revered windbag ad critics (Hi ya, Bob Garfield!), I spend my days/nights/weekends "crafting" ads. If I didn't have to write this stupid column, my Super Bowl XVI report would've looked a lot like last year's.
I'm not going to do another who-gives-a-shit scorecard rundown of all the Super Bowl commercials, though that Coke machine spot via Wieden+Kennedy was pretty fucking cool. And smart, because it's part of a new campaign that was created with web video shelf life in mind. The rest of you three-martini morons, WAKE UP. TV advertising's dying.
Anyway, pretty much every other spot was not at all cool, for one reason or another. Here's a sampling:
GM. Jesus, what the FUCK were you thinking? A laid-off assembly line robot committing suicide? After you gutted your workforce by more than 34,000 in 2006? Are you stupid or something? Spot via Douche, sorry, Deutsch LA.
Nationwide. K-Fed! Nice "get," TM Advertising (part of the shitty McCann-Erickson network, which is part of the bloated Interpublic clusterfuck). Word is you paid that rappin' human disaster a cool half mil. The spot actually made me think of another human disaster, Katrina. "Life" came at the people of Louisiana and Mississippi pretty damn fast, didn't it Nationwide? Didn't stop you from trying to reclassify a "hurricane" as a "flood." Payouts pending.
FedEx. Why didn't you guys get K-Fed? Instead, my best buds at BBDO trotted out another stale scenario — let's imagine... The Future! I did appreciate the use of the synth-opening from Europe's "Final Countdown." A guy gets killed at the end of the spot. HAHA funny!
et al roundup: careerbuilder.com—very funny, but the spots gave me no reason to visit their site over competitors'...Bud—tired, lowest common denominator "humor." Also, I will never forgive them for this exploitive bullshit from the 2002 Super Bowl...Special Hackneyed Anthropomorphism Award — Taco Bell. Izod — typical fashion idiocy... Snapple — trite, predictable setup... And so on...
94 years ago, liar H.K. McCann launched his NYC ad agency with the slogan "Truth Well Told." That was a Big Fat Lie. Advertising copywriter copyranter brings you instances of Ad Lies and the Lying Liars who sell them.