Who Won the Super Bowl?

The Chiefs, of course!  

But who won the commercial battle?  There were lots of great entries this year - many really strong showings that got a lot of people talking.  In fact, many of the "best of" lists had different entries, which means we got a lot of really good submissions.

It started out early with the redux of Jake from State Farm.  I was wondering what State Farm would do given Patrick Mahomes was a spokesperson, and they dusted off the perfect answer.

Sam Elliott's moustache danging to Old Town Road was a hit, as was Jeep's Groundhog day.  But for my money, Google won the day, and it wasn't even close:

  
I'm not sure how advertising gets better than that - human universality, clear benefit with obvious utility, and emotion-evoking in its storytelling.  

That's excellent advertising, any way you slice it.  Hats off, Google.  

Carolina Panthers Announce Their 2019 Schedule - Video Game Version

I have no idea who came up with this, but it damned brilliant:

Super Bowl Commercials 2019 - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

I must admit that the 2019 version of Super Bowl ads seemed to lack punch.  Is it because more firms can't justify $5.2MM for a :30 spot?  Especially in the age of social media, where reach can be dwarfed at a fraction of the cost if things even go a little viral?  Perhaps.

I also did appreciate that we were not forced to muddle through a lot of sanctimony.  Given what Gillette just produced, I feared this would be the "woke" Super Bowl, and that is clearly what we did not have, with the exception of the Washington Post ad (yuck).

With that, here's this year's Super Bowl commercial instalment of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:

The Good

Hyundai Elevator
Probably the winner of the night.  Did a great job of playing off human emotion associated with buying a car and offering a solution.  Funny, memorable, on brand:



Audi Cashew
A lot like the Hyundai ad, just not as effective.  Still, very well done:



Bud Light - Game of Thrones
This one is the hands down winner in terms of buzz generated.  Bud needed to do something with the dilly dilly arc, and for them to take it where they did is remarkable.  I'm not sure I've seen two brands pull off something this aligned, especially two such divergent brands.  This will make for a fantastic business case:



The Bad

Kia Telluride
I have absolutely no idea what they were trying to pull off with this ad.  From the weird voice over to the shots of nondescript citizens, does it make you want to buy a car?  I think not.  Not sure what their agency was doing with this:



Burger King - Eat Like Andy
1) Does anyone that traditionally eats fast food know who Andy Warhol is?  2) Will this sell any incremental Whoppers?  The answer to both is "NO":




The Ugly

Mint Mobile - Chunky Milk
Disgusting, especially considering that most of your audience is eating at the time.  Terrible ad that uses a gross-out factor to try and drive brand preference.  Really

Olay - Slasher
This one is disturbing as well.  I'm not sure how this production is going to lead to a lot more incremental sales.  How does something like this get green lit for a cosmetic?  

A Pretty Good Christmas Ad

While I know this borrows (A LOT!) from the opening scene from Guardians of the Galaxy, it's still a pretty good Christmas ad.

Plus, anytime you can play some Redbone, count me in:





Oh, what the heck, here's StarLord's version as well:

Palessi Shoes

This is old news, but relevant to me as we're in deep conversations about enlisting the help of brand ambassadors.  

As you can see, if you pay someone enough and set the right stage, they'll say anything.

And that's exactly why we won't do it:

Asian Signage in McDonalds

These guys were hitting their local McDonalds and not seeing any advertising that looked like them.  So what did they do?  They made some:



It actually hung in the store for over 50 days.

Love this prank.  Makes a point, hurt nobody, and was ingenious as hell.  Kudos.

SJU Hype Video

I work with a video production team that graduated from St. John's.  While they're fresh out of school, they do incredible work, and SJU has employed them on a number of projects.

Here's the latest:



Go back and check out that shot of the touchdown run at the :15 second mark.  That's some incredible video work, no matter how you slice it.

There's not much better as a job than to be able to work with incredibly talented people, and that they happen to be Johnnies?  That's just icing on the cake.

Nike Walks Away from Customers

By now you've surely heard that Nike has launched their latest version of their famed "Just Do It" campaign, but this one is featuring Colin Kaepernick:

There have been a lot of responses to this, the best being a replacement of Kaepernick's face with fallen hero Pat Tillman.  There's sacrificing everything, then there's sacrificing everything.  

I won't get into rehashing the whole Kaepernick, Black Lives Matter, kneeling protest.  There's enough of that out there.  But you know what else Nike thinks there's enough of out there?  Customers.  The whole NFL thing has divided a country, and by picking a side, Nike has effectively pissed off millions - let me state that again - MILLIONS of customers.  Much like Dick's Sporting Goods did with guns, Nike is deeming it more important to be a Social Justice Warrior than it is to serve its customers.

Perhaps they feel that their SJW move can endear them to other non-Nike customers, and woke folks buying other brands will flock to Nike and offset non-woke customers.  Perhaps they just don't care, and like so many nowadays, they believe they're right, and if you don't agree with them then you're a bigot and you don't deserve to buy Nikes anyway.  I don't know.

As a marketer, I do know that acquiring customers and protecting market share, especially in a mature category like shoes, is a bare-knuckled fight.  It's damned hard work.  

Given how hard it is, why would you ever simply walk away from people that literally ensure that you have food on the table?  

I'm so tired of politics everywhere, and I'm particularly tired of politics in sports.  It used to be a last bastion where folks of different persuasions could find common ground.  Now, you either prove how woke you are, or you run the risk of being a racist, fascist, Nazi, or homophobe, even when following your favorite team.

Regardless of my political slant, the marketer in me wishes Nike nothing but failure.  The minute you take your customers for granted, especially for something like not being woke enough for you, that's the time your long-term business prospects are dubious.

Gillette and the Power of Great Advertising

Consider Gillette and their razors. About as boring of a product as there is. Their business has been suffering from the Dollar Shave Clubs and other similar competitors that are out there. Likewise, CPG is about as cutthroat as competition gets, and they’re in the middle of it. Their top and bottom lines are being challenged at the same time, and significantly so.

Then they go and do this:



The market on this new, fringe product is tiny (albeit growing). In the grand scheme of Gillette's business, it's a rounding error. Yet someone in product development cared enough to propose this product, someone in Marketing was able to justify its existence, and someone in Advertising was able to give it life. It was an uphill battle the entire way, but they ultimately green lit it, brought it forward, and took it to market.

Not because it was the right thing to do financially. But because it was the right thing to do. And that enabled them to take credit for it.

Good marketing and advertising can do that. It can take a tiny concept of a product, with a rounding error for potential incremental sales, and develop something with a massive halo effect that has the potential to buttress its entire brand against Dollar Shave and all the other direct-to-consumer providers that have been taking chunks out of their market share.

That’s the power of great advertising.

Kudos, Gillette.

Jack in the Box - We Love Jack's Bowls

We don't have this burger chain up here in Minnesota, hence, the social media outrage of this campaign isn't on our radar screen.

What's the outrage?  This:



As of this writing, JITB has not apologized for this campaign.  For that, I give them credit.  It takes a lot of bowls to stand up to the social justice warriors...

No "Dilly Dilly" at the Masters

It's being reported that a list of phrases has been submitted to Masters security, and patrons shouting those phrases would be ushered off the premises.  

Some definitely need to go.  "Baba booey" and "Get in the hole" have definitely run their course.  But "Dilly Dilly?"  That's just no fun.

Speaking of fun, here's what Bud Light did to celebrate Loyola's improbable run to the final four:

Someone on their marketing team deserves a huge bonus.

The Best Solution for Stopping Telemarketing Callls

I'm not sure about you, but I'm seeing a huge increase in the amount of telemarketing calls that I'm getting on my iPhone.  Upon recieving an offending call, I'll always note the number and establish them as a blocked number on my phone, but despite doing this well over 100 times, the calls still keep coming.

What's a guy to do?  How about getting even?

There's a cool service out there called Jolly Roger that uses a voice robot technology to waste telemarkers' time and drive them crazy.

How it works is that when you get a call from a telemarketer, you use a really cool technique to hand them off to a Jolly Roger robot.  From there, the conversation begins.

Here's an example:

Kiss Cam at Pro Bowl - Check the Boxes

This ad was sent to me as an example of a "great ad."  Why is it great?  Perhaps because it checks nearly all the liberal boxes:

• Gay couple - crowd goes wild!
• Not one but two Interracial couples - pretty much always a white guy and a woman of color on commercials.  Only rarely do you see it the other way around.  
• Hajib - Because you're not truly diverse until the symbol of the subjugation of Muslim women gets shown.
• Downs Syndrome kids - this one was surprising, as most Downs Syndrome kids are aborted, and we know how much the left loves aborting kids.  For example, only one or two Downs Syndrom kids are born in Iceland per year.  Every other one is aborted.
• Lesbian couple - I'm conflicted.  The Orlando Survivor t-shirt thing is troubling as a Muslim guy was responsible for the hate crime.  Maybe we can just blame guns and go back to forgetting the fact that Islam loathes homosexuals.  

Who you love is your business, and I literally could not care less about it.  Had I been in the stadium, I'd not have been surprised by any of these kisses.  They're great.

What I don't need is the feeling that unless I'm actively cheering, I hate.  

You know what I do hate?  I hate being told how I need to feel about every damned thing.  I hate overt virtue signalling.  And I hate that there are boxes - so many boxes - that just gotta be checked.

Is Sling TV Commercial Too Much?

In watching NCAA basketball this past weekend, this commercial was served up:



Color me not a fan.  Those that know me know I'm not a prude, but this ad just smacks of creepy.  At best it's a risque SNL skit, and at worst it is a further degradation of traditional marriage.  Yeah, it is that bad.

Yuck.  Just yuck.  

Audacious Audi Commercial

Audi won the preachy prize for this year's Super Bowl commercial cavalcade.  According to Audi, women are worth less than men.



I'm tired of suffering this lie.  I've been responsible for a payroll of over 40, and in no circumstances did I see any examples where women were paid less than men for comparable work.  In 2018 talent is too scarce, business too cutthroat, stakes too high, that if a company did indeed pay qualified people less than others with the same skill, they'd be out of business in no time.  

Has it always been easy for women in the workplace?  Hell no, and even in what should be "enlightened" environs like the media and entertainment, some women are still treated like meat.  But in business, where folks have to build teams to compete and win or die?  I'm sorry, the lie just doesn't apply anymore.

In the meantime, Audi preaches in hopes that it drives sales, but here's the dirt: they only have 2 women on their 14-person US senior leadership team, and have ZERO women on their board.  Kind of hard to pay women the same as men, when they don't even get a seat at the table.  Perhaps that's why they produced this ad for the game, went to the expense of producing it and getting George Clooney to voice it, but decided not to air it.  

That pretty much tells you everything you need to know.  

Super Bowl Ad Recap

A pretty good crop of ads this year.  We didn't get too preachy, things were pretty entertaining, and a number of brands did very well for themselves.  

Tide won the night, and by a wide margin.  At first, I was put off as they're involved in some controversy related to kids eating their Tide pods, but they went right past that and put out a massive advertising blitz that had them owning the night.  It was not even close.

Here are others of note:

The Good



Another mash-up of brands worked just awesome together.  Big names, big production, big entertainment value:



Avocados from Mexico

Conveys a strong expansion of use in an extremely funny manner.  Really effective advertising:



Febreze

The "bleep" don't stink was hilarious.  Admit it - it's tough as hell to sell poop spray.  They approached the subject in impressive fashion:




Special props to the NFL for the Dirty Dancing TD celebration.  Great stuff!

The Bad

M&M Danny DeVito 

The punch line of DeVito playing an M&M has been public for weeks now, so it was no surprise when he showed up.  Since the big surprise was out, you'd think their content would be out of the park.  Not so much.  Huge miss by M&Ms:




Kia Steven Tyler

I do marketing for a living, and I honestly don't understand the point of this ad.  



Coke

When did Coke fire their ad agency and go with Pepsi's?  The most preachy ad of the night.  We got all of the lefty bases covered, including the obligatory hajib shot, because Islam!  I believe this campaign will actually hurt their brand.  They must be privy to some incredibly damaging research to have moved so far away from their traditional brand.  Really disturbing:



The Ugly

I'm running out of time to embed them, but they are:

Diet Coke Girl Dancing (Coke, how bad can you suck?)
Squarespace with Kenau Reeves

Delta Recaps My Year

I recently received a great email from Delta airlines which thanked me for my patronage in the past year and recapped my experiences with them.

I can't embed the video here, but you can check it out at this link.

How smart!  A loyalty program is just that - something designed to endear me to their brand and make me choose them over other providers.  Likewise, they have all the data they needed to pull off this very personal video right at their fingertips.

Kudos to Delta.  What they're doing is exactly what one should do with loyal customers, especially when you've already gone to all the trouble of tracking their interactions.

Tostitos Super Bowl Commercial / Party Invite

Tostitos has developed a really cool way to invite folks to your upcoming Super Bowl party - you can do so by creating your own Super Bowl commercial.

You'll need to click this link to see it (I can't embed it), but it is pretty cool technology.  And, as you're creating it, if you're not a fan of how it came out, you can remix it for various other scenes.

Cool stuff.

IHop Pancakes Ad

A good old-fashioned advertising technique is to cram as many product mentions into the ad as possible.  IHop does this, and then some, with their latest ad:



Throw in the great close in the parking lot, and this one's a home run.

Better said, this one's "pancakes."

The Red House TV Commercial

There are almost too many things to love about this.

Just enjoy: