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So, another Super Bowl has come and gone and I lament the fact that if not for an official’s error, my Buccaneers would have gone to the playoffs instead of the Packers. But that’s Monday Morning stuff. Of course, there’s been more conversation afterward about the commercials again this year and I have to agree that at $3 Million a spot, there should be some buzz afterward. I’m just not sure that the buzz is among the targeted customers as much as the media who cover them. Certainly in this venue, these message must pop and generate a lot of interest. But so do your commercials that run the other 364 days of the year. There were some really creative spots (yes, I thought the VW/Darth Vader spot was one of the cutest ever.) but I have to keep asking the same question for the past XLV years:
“Where is the brand message? Does this motivate me to consider buying this product?)
I use Go Daddy for my web URL’s and have been pleased. Their terrible commercials have nothing to do with my choice nor keeping them as my provider. As a matter of fact, I’m not sure what Go Daddy is saying in their sexist, stupid spots. The Dorito’s spots are great, but do they really convince you that they taste good enough to lick someone’s pants or fingers? Audi must have spent as much as Avatar’s full production cost to contrive a luxury jail spot that wouldn’t convince me to buy an Audi no matter how good they are.
I could go on, but let’s take a look at the Chrysler spot which salutes my home town of Detroit. I thought this not only gave an honest, sincere tribute to Chrysler’s and its workers home. The branding behind this, I thought, was a particularly sound strategy as the company has re-emerged from its financial and sale woes. A company with roots in a city that’s tough, that works hard, that has pride, and has a long heritage in automotive, is about to introduce a new model line that reflects today’s automotive needs and desires. I think this is a sincere effort (even if their agency is not in Portland, Oregon) to get back to the relationship an auto has with its owner. At 120 seconds, the spot really got into the spirit of Detroit and the company and even Eminem seemed sincere. Whether they get their media dollars’ worth will remain to be seen as the new models roll out, but it’s an excellent branding message that many of the other spots failed to even come close to replicating.
It’s interesting that Ad Age’s survey of the best Super Bowl spots of all time had some really great spots and I found that almost all of them had a great branding strategy behind the outstanding creative message. Mean Joe Green’s Coke spot could run today (probably with Packer linebacker, Clay Matthews) and still have the same strong message that was right on about Coke’s being the “real thing”. It was a sincere, well-placed message that said more about the great taste of Coke than the Pepsi Max spots did this year.
Even the NFL’s own spots generated a great brand message that not only promoted the sport and its players and fans, but also it helped offset yet another wasted halftime debacle. Why Bridgestone tires would think that the Black Eyed Peas, Usher and Smash would motivate “younger customers” to consider their tires over the others on the market is beyond me. Let’s get back to great brands with breakthrough creative that wins over the minds and the hearts of the customers.
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