Super Bowl Commercials
 

I was going to post this in the Random Thoughts thread, but figured it was a decent enough discussion topic. Plus, we usually have a commercials thread at some point, so here it is for those who want to discuss them.

Anyway, the reason for starting this thread is that I'm fascinated by the trend of releasing SB commercials before they air during the SB. I would think you get the most bang for your buck out of making people wait for the "event" of airing during the SB rather than leaking them earlier to little fanfare. There must be a legitimate marketing reason for it, but if there is, it seems to fly in the face of what you'd think gives the most marketing impact.

I was wondering about this, too. My guess is that the window after the Super Bowl is crowded with people talking about the best couple of spots. So, if your spot isn't one of them, you might get drowned out.

Here, you get a week or so of free pre-publicity by having the commercial "get leaked."

Maybe also the thinking is that everyone will see all the commercials anyway, so you are not losing eyeballs by talking about it before hand.

All just guesses on my part.

I can see it cut both ways, I guess. On one hand, these commercials aren't exactly like MP3s, where it's inevitable that someone's going to get it and share it with the world before the SB. At least, I don't think so. So it seems that you are cutting down on the "in the moment" effectiveness of the spot by having at least a segment of the viewing audience react like, "I've already seen that one," thereby (I would think) lessening the chance people are going to talk about the ad that night and the next day.

On the other hand, maybe that's a good thing if the ad is perceived negatively. Then again, if you're going through all of the time and expense of putting one of these together, I would think you're confident enough in it that this thought shouldn't enter your mind. Otherwise, you just spent a lot of money to shoot yourself in the foot. But in the game of "any press is good press," isnt' the fact that your commercial sucked enough to have people single it out still a net positive?

I don't know enough about marketing to answer any of these questions, or even know if they are worth answering. I'm sure someone has figured it out and that's why they are releasing them early. Just seems odd.

Maybe they're hoping for more of the flip side? If other people are like me, they can't manage to watch every commercial. But maybe someone in a group will say, "oh, I saw this one, it's funny" and more people will start paying attention.

Disappointed by the Ferris Bueller commercial. The guy we all wanted to be in high school is now overweight, with bad hair, a boring job and driving a Honda. No thanks.

And has an equine fetish.

and a billion dollars

+1

What I don't get with the 'Super Bowl commericals' is .... why pay to air them during the Superbowl at all? ...

Call it a Super Bowl commercial, leak it - if its good then it'll go viral and more people will see it that way then would through the Super Bowl slot anyway surely plus you save $x million that you'd be paying for an over-priced advertising slot.

wow they really released them BEFORE the superbowl??? Talk about lame. Then again most superbowl commercials are pretty lame nowadays. I used to watch the superbowl mainly for the commercials but now I don't much care about them.

Win.

That's one ugly car.

I almost posted the same thing but wondered if the "leaking" gets done directly by the agencies in order to be officially branded a SB commercial. I agree with you though.

Umm ... probably not.

Avg quarter-hour for last year's Super Bowl was 111 million viewers. Plus an enormous number of Tweets/FB posts/etc to go with a lot of those spots, so there's an immediate multiplier on any SB ad impressions.

Meanwhile, the most viewed commercial video on YouTube video last year was 49.5 million (Volkswagen Force spot)

Even the most viewed video last year period ("Ultimate Dog Tease") was only 91 million views.

(Here's the list in case anyone is curious)

If you notice at about 5 seconds in, when she's bent over, she's mimicking the shape of the car.

yeah i was gonna say, the superbowl is probably one of the main programs that will get you more viewers than a youtube video. (and probably more noncomputerusers than users :) )

But one hot chick.

Not bad, seems like they are trying a bit too hard...

Looking forward to seeing the reaction to the Time Warner Cable ad that my company is playing at around 7:58 PM Eastern. We saw it on Friday during a meeting and I was pretty impressed with it. I'm not 100% if it is national or not though.

Still ugly. :D

Is it "Fuck you MSG"? If not, I don't care.

If you're a company, why not show it online? People will still watch it on tv as it's not as if you know X commercial will be on at 8:04 so since I saw it online, it's a chance to go take a bathroom break. You're getting people to watch your advertising willingly. There's really no downside

SI

I vote HOT on the Century 21 agent in the teaser commercial.

Now that the game is over we await the real answers... what were the best commercials?

My be forgetting some but off the top of my head and not in a particular order....

- Volkswagen
- KIA
- Chevy
- Flower Commercial (whatever the company was)
- The Seinfeld one
- I liked the vampire one a little too but can't remember which car company it was (was afraid it was going to be twighlightish when I heard it was vampires)

Speaking of not remembering, all I remembered from the Chevy one was the dig against Ford. I didn't know it was a Chevy commercial until I looked it up just now.

Of the ones I saw, Fiat was my favorite. But Kia? Adriana Lima can wave my flag any time.

The problems with the Fiat commercial where when they replaced the woman with the car. :)

God Bless KIA... ;)

I think the only ones I really really liked were the dog losing weight (Volkswagon) and the Matthew's Day Off one.

Everything else was underwhelming. I think the worst commercials just go to Bud Light in general for the lot with 2nd place going to godaddy.

I thought the worst was a tie between the Coke commercial with the polar bears and the GoDaddy. Flat and uninspiring, and a terrible use of an icon with Coke, and GoDaddy needs a new and better schtick.

The Seinfeld/Leno commercial everyone loves I thought was stupid and annoying, but that's just my own personal opinion.

What I saw of the commercials were pretty bad this year. The only one we thought was somewhat funny was John Stamos getting headbutted, but that's because I have the sense of humor of a 13 year old and think people getting headbutted is high comedy.

Other than that, meh. The dog/VW one above was decent until they tried to shoehorn it into last year's ad and the star wars theme, which was bizarre and didn't work at all.

The word I'd use to descibe the Seinfeld commercial was "creepy".
Leno in the batsquirrel suit...*shudder*

The weird thing about the Seinfeld commercial is I wouldn't have thought Seinfeld or Leno fans are the target audience and they don't need those guys to sell it. It's a really good looking sports car from a respected manufacturer. If anything, those guys make it less cool.

I enjoyed:

-Chevy
-Kia
-Acura (Seinfeld)
-Doritos (slingshot baby)

Was disappointed not to see the Budweiser hockey commercial that has been floating around as their "big game" ad. Thought the beer commercials were really uninspired this time around - they didn't seem any different than your run-of-the-mill Wednesday night TV commercials.

Oh, and I was mildly amused by the Bridgestone football commercial.

I think the 'super bowl commercial slot' was a quick high and a fast drop, relatively. on one end, the 2000's brought out the boys of marketing and showed what kind of $$$ an expensive timeslot brings. and now with youtube and technology in general, as general person x learns more and more to completely adapt to daily internet ventures, there is no point to have a million dollar 30 second ad when eventually all this stuff will be easily viewed/accessible to joe public.

agreed. The 80's and 90s featured some bigboys doing big things and even the late nineties companies just missed the mark completely by trying too hard and/or just being stupid. Granted there is like 1 or 2 totally memorable ones every year, but that pales to what it used to be where you were waiting for every single ad every break and enjoying over half of them.

Probably the worst set of commercials I can't remember seeing in quite some time. Maybe ever. I got about 2 chuckles and 0 laughs and 100 I Can't Believe You Paid 3.1 Million For Thats.

Here Weego was my favorite.

With its price tag most of the sales are going to go to boomers looking to relive their youth.

And those folks know that Seinfeld and Leno are "car guys". I liked it, FWIW.

Also really loved the Kia spots, Matthew Brodrick's Day Off, the Chevy apocalypse one and the WeGo.

I thought that was a commercial for twinkies.

I was kinda surprised Leno laid himself open to "there goes Leno swooping in to steal something from another deserving comedian" joke, but I guess when you've got as much money as he does and 60 year olds can't bear the thought of dozing off without you, you don't really care what people think.

Biggest surprise for me was NBC greenlighting a car commercial simulating someone jizzing on the hood, a week after pulling an epside of Fear Factor that had people drinking donkey semen.

I liked the M&M's one with Sexy and I Know It

I didn't see that, but I have to say the commercials make me very uncomfortable letting my kids watch the show, particularly since their favorite part is the commercials.

I didn't see it either, but it was equally uncool watching the commercials with my father-in-law.

At which point it would become a 7-figure (plus) online ad instead. Oh, wait, they're already charging right around $1m per for the online ads.