What The Hell Happened To Super Bowl Commercials?

Last night was the big game for advertisers, the most eyeballs all year on screens anxious to watch commercials during the Super Bowl.

Companies paid five million bucks for thirty seconds of real estate, and sad to say, most flushed their money down the toilet.

Never before has so much been invested for so much borrowed interest and attention deficit spending. It was an endless parade of celebrities and iconic songs and huge production value computer generated razz-a-ma-tazz, which all added up to little.

I’m not snarky here. I’m honest. Was this the best our industry could do? Renting someone else’s fame, borrowing their popularity for a lame joke and slapping a logo on it? Apparently so. That was the formula for the majority of spots.

It’s a sad commentary on the state of advertising.

Where were the spots investing in an idea, elevating a brand? There were a few–– Persil laundry detergent and the Colgate ‘don’t waste water’ spot come to mind, but these were hardly great moments in advertising. Just simple messages that had some product relevance.

I haven’t looked for the USA TODAY scorecard this morning. I will, but it won’t change my opinion of what I saw last night. The spots had little humanity, empathy, or relevance to the products; it was depressing. It made me wonder if corporate America’s marketing was more focused on social channels.

That’s small change for a five million dollar investment, not to mention production costs.

Fortunately, there was a pretty great football game being played, to cleanse the mental palate of the awful commercials.

Now I’ll read USA TODAY and see how wrong I am.