Monday, February 06, 2006

Oh, My Pod!

Either I slept through this last year or it hasn't been this nuts before, but iPods everywhere are furiously downloading the Superbowl commercials. I don't know how much of it is legally done through avenues like Podcast and iTunes or how long before the copyright police shuts down the illegal downloads, but it's a marketing dream come true. The target audience is buying and stealing the ads for your product!

The Superbowl commercials, for the most part, were advertising at its best and I only wish I could make a short film half as good as most of them.

True to my advertising background though, I spotted little things in most spots that I thought could have been done better, but these were great spots and choosing favorites is no easy task. Even though I never tire of seeing the trailer for POTC 2 and I loved the FedEx caveman and the Budweiser streaker (truth be told, I spewed diet Dr. Pepper out my nose, I laughed so hard), I'm looking at this from a Female 25-54 demographic sales viewpoint. With that in mind, my top three Superbowl spots are:

(3) Miss Piggy doing her Jessica Simpson impersonation for Pizza Hut - The Jessica Simpson version made me nauseous but hey, I was not the target audience in that one. The Miss Piggy spot was written for women and it works.

(2) Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty - I loved the spot and the message but am a little squeamish about campaignforbeauty.com's plea for donations to keep the campaign going. Where will the money go? To pay the $2.5 million for a thirty second spot during the Superbowl? But again, written to make me, the female viewer, feel good about running out and buying Dove products.

(1) The Budweiser barn with the Clydesdale colt - this was brilliant. A junior Clydesdale getting a little confidence boost from his parents. I absolutely loved this spot and can't find a single fault with it. Nobody crosses over demographics better than Budweiser. If I were an iPod'r, I'd be dowloading this one right now!

3 comments:

Tim said...

The streaker sheep was funny. As was the caveman FedEx spot. I missed the miss piggy spot. Kermit pitching Ford hybrids was lame.

However, this generation simply does not appreciate the simplistic beauty of The Muppets, with all of the digital effects going on, even in commercials...

MaryAn Batchellor said...

Piggy was a pregame commercial.

Frank Strovel III said...

Why any sponsor would object to people madly downloading their commercials--illegally or otherwise--is beyond me. Sounds like an advertiser's wet dream.