Watching the Super Bowl ads was the priority in our house. Even my son hit the rewind button when the K-Fed spot slipped by him. Yes, we watched the game but not once did we feel the need to go back even when a call was close. Of course, these weren’t our teams. Our teams were the ad folks behind the scenes and we were routing for big laughs. To say we were disappointed is an understatement. Many of the ads were so mean spirited the joke seemed to be on the CMO’s who threw away their millions. The Career Builder spots were among the worst, in my opinion, with the low point being disgruntled workers throwing themselves off cliffs. Perhaps the creators were too young to remember the infamous Apple “Lemmings” spot that bombed big time in the 1985 Super Bowl. So for all you aspiring commercial makers out there, repeat after me, people throwing themselves off cliffs just isn’t funny.
I thought the Robert Goulet ad for Emerald Nuts provided an unexpected chuckle. Even though many in the audience wouldn’t know who he was, all got the idea that this famous old guy was doing something ridiculous. The K-Fed spot for Nationwide was also ridiculously funny. The dream conceit was quite similar to our favorite spot.
Call us suckers but the Chevy “Robot” spot (see it on YouTube) was the big winner in our house. We watched it three times. We were totally charmed by the clumsy robot who gets fired from the Chevy factory floor and after a few pitiful jobs ends up throwing itself into the river. The story telling was clever and well paced and the ending, while not a belly laugh, was quite charming. Here’s the irony–a story about a robot had more humanity than nearly all the spots featuring people. What’s up with that?
According to John Neff on Autoblog:
It’s funny, but a little strange, too. Not that the ad agency intended this, but it feels like you’re watching a union member who just lost his job.
Not everyone agrees with our assessment of Robot. Richard Kirshenbaum of Kirshenbaum and Bond gave the spot one star in today’s New York Post saying “It was creep, weird, stupid and scary. It was the biggest lose of the Super Bowl.” Of course, everyone is entitled to his/her opinion but Richard, you are wrong about this one! Stuart Elliott in his column in the New York Times wrote:
The best of the batch was a commercial for General Motors by Deutsch, in which a factory robot “obsessed with quality” imagined the dire outcome of making a mistake.
So, who you going to listen to, the Times or the Post? If I were working with GM, I’d be figuring out how to get that Robot out to his awaiting public. That Robot could be the next King (as in Burger). Get him on Letterman (with or without Oprah–that was a very very funny inside joke). Get that Robot on street corners, have it ring the bell at the NYSE and make sure it shows up at the regional and national FIRST robotic competitions (think varsity sport for the mind). That kid should be a star!