2014 Super Bowl Ad Review

Yawwwn. Wow what a dud of a Super Bowl! The game was a blowout from the opening snap blunder and this year’s crop of commercials weren’t that great either. Bruno Mars was the biggest hit of the night, what an exciting live performance. Props to him but shame on advertisers, who didn’t seem to put much creativity into the commercials this year. The scene was dominated by auto makers and Budweiser, not as many big brands. Advertisers also bucked the trend of the last two years; not as many ads were pre-released over social media this year. There wasn’t a 30^th anniversary homage to Apple’s “1984” I was hoping for (see our News page), but we did get a fun Seinfeld reunion of sorts.

You can watch ALL the commercials from the game on this Ad Age link. Here are my favorites:

1. Radio Shack “The Phone Call” (watch here) – Totally awesome dude!! Wow the fun factor on this one was off the charts with soooo many icons from the 80s – Hulk Hogan, Mary Lou Retton, The California Raisins, ALF, and on and on. It wasn’t just pure fun either; Radio Shack found a hilarious way to degrade itself and admit to consumers its image is out of date, prompting us to take a second look. Hopefully this is the first in a series of humorous rebranding ads. Bravo!

2. Hyundai “Dad’s Sixth Sense” (watch here) – Nice camera trickery and humor made this an unexpected delight. The dangerous scenarios kids fall into grabbed my attention, made me laugh, and tied together nicely in the end with a clear message and warm payoff. Very clever.

3. Bud Light “Epic Night” (watch here) – Exactly what you expect a Super Bowl commercial to be. Big effects, big stars and lots of fun. This had the best pre-Super Bowl  buildup, with those quirky Schwarzenegger ads over the past few weeks that left you saying “what was that?” Very entertaining storytelling.

4. Volkswagen “Wings” (watch here) – Volkswagen has had a great run the last few years that started with the famous “Darth Vader” commercial. This was a humorous and creative way to emphasize product longevity.

5. Doritos “Time Machine” (watch here) – Both of the Doritos commercials were produced by fans as part of a contest this past year. I thought this was the funnier one by far. It was cute and silly but effective.

6. Budweiser “Puppy Love” (watch here) – This spot was released a couple of days before the game to start tugging at our heart strings. And it did just that, although I don’t think it was as good as last year’s “Brotherhood” ad. It seemed a little bit rushed and confusing at the end (was it about the dog and horse or man and woman?), but it scored big points for poignancy nonetheless.

Other notable spots – The Coca-Cola “It’s Beautiful” ad was popular with a lot of people and rated high by Ad Age, but I thought it seemed forced and over-done. You’re a global company all about bringing people together, we get it. I didn’t care much for the serious ads during the night such as Chevy’s ad about cancer and the U2 “Red” AIDS spot. Unless a commercial is really powerful and grabs your attention from the start (like last year’s The Farmer), serious is just tough to do in this setting. There were some others that were funny but not quite great – T-Mobile ads with Tim Tebow, the M&M’s mafia-style ad, GoDaddy’s “Epic Quit” and a few others.

I thought overall the quality was down but the humorous ads were the best. What do you think? What were some of your favorites? Let me know what I left out.