Super Bowl Commercials and My Spiritual Tipping Point

by Sam Van Eman

Transcript of this recording:

It's early January and the perennial conversation about the Super Bowl game versus Super Bowl commercials has reached the living room already. Last night, after an overtime loss took the Steelers out of the running, a friend surrendered: "Well, there will always be the commercials." Even my seven-year old reminded me this week why she likes watching football: "I love the commercials, Daddy."

Of course, behind-the-scenes talk began months ago. This year's 30-second spot line-up was sold out before Thanksgiving. At a record-high $3.5 million a piece (about $117,000 per second), NBC is more than happy to host both the game and the high-fare entertainment.

Seth Winter, senior vice president of sales and marketing at NBC’s sports group, said, “We have shattered any recent revenue stories in regards to the Super Bowl."

Super Bowl commercials aren't predictably Jack's beanstalk for companies who commission them, but companies certainly hope their millions will become that. At the very least, with Ash Wednesday only weeks behind America's favorite game, it's as if they hope this will be the Mardi Gras of consumption until Black Friday resurrects their sales again.

My Mardi Gras

The Super Bowl is also my Mardi Gras; a last hurrah of pleasure and shiny lights before the darkness sets in; a cultural feast followed by a religious fast. I give up television each year for Lent because I watch too much tube leading up the Super Bowl. Charlie Brown specials, mid-winter sit-com reruns, play-off games, more play-off games. By the time I wake up the morning after the big event, I can't watch another minute of anything.

(Well...except for Netflix.)

The cycle does my body good. Unplugged, I'm invited to have expectations beyond wanting to see which Doritos' submission got chosen out of the more than 6000 entries for its 30 seconds of fame. Unplugged, I'm invited to wait for provision - the Easter kind no ad or product can produce.

For now - and since my team is officially out - we'll be talking about the commercials around here. I'll call my kids into the room when age-appropriate gems air, I'll talk with peers about their favorites, I'll reflect on the influence of advertising on our 21st-century hearts and minds. I'll also hope for more neighbor-sensitive commercials, pray for those creative types behind the scenes who have more power than they realize, and reflect on my own role in the machine that is consumerism.

And then, on February 6th, a day after partying with food and friends, I'll come home from work and find something else to do besides watch TV.

-----

Thanks for tuning in. Get the latest posts with an email address:

Read more...

Nissan Leaf, Polar Bears, Pittsburgh Steelers...hugs all around!

Nissan Leaf

I don't know who pitches for the Dodgers or leads the points race at any given Indianapolis 500, but I do watch football. I've been a Steeler fan since the mid-70s, when we played flipsies at Chad's house with now legendary playing cards of folks like Terry Bradshaw and Franco Harris, and when we stopped every police officer in town to ask for special edition trading cards.

I'm still a fan thirty-some years later. Their winning record and exemplary team management over the decades has certainly helped. And they're fun to watch, though if you saw yesterday's stressful game against the Jets, you'll know that I mean drop-tower fun more than Chuck E. Cheese's fun.

But this post isn't about the Steelers. Supposedly, an ad for the Nissan Leaf aired in the NFL season opener back in September, 2010. I missed that game, and, therefore, the ad. Yet with all the commercial repetition and subsequent hours of Sunday afternoon football I have caught since then, I somehow missed this much-discussed ad until yesterday afternoon.

Yes, it's manipulative. No, it doesn't mean Nissan is exempt from leaving an environmental footprint. But I like it. It surprised me in a good way, especially after assuming it was all cgi.

If you don't remember seeing a recent commercial with a polar bear in it, I suggest you start this video at 02:28. Then go back to the beginning to learn how they created it.


Nissan Leaf

Read more...

Man Step or Functionality? The Masculinity Divide

I'm guessing you've seen the now older Chevy Silverado's "Man Step" and the cruelty involved, especially toward a guy who has that much trouble on a ladder. Here it is in case you haven't:

Now here's something you may not have seen. Watch the first 35 seconds to see Howie react very differently to truck bed assistance:



The inconsistency from "Man Step" to "EZ Lift Tailgate" looks a lot like what I saw in the line-up of this year's Super Bowl commercials. Both contained a hodgepodge commentary on masculinity. As I wrote in the comments of Dove Men+Care and Fight Clubs,

You had Tim Tebow promoting life and Dante's Inferno taking life, David Letterman - in my opinion - reconciling with Jay Leno but doing so behind a macho facade of teasing, Men+Care body wash by Dove, men literally without pants and men figuratively "without pants" but who still got to have their manly Dodge Charger....

Are these spots and the ones above aimed at different men, or the two sides of all men? I don't appreciate Howie's bullying but his apparent ambivalence points to an increasingly acceptable hodgepodge. It could be just a marketing thing, or perhaps an indication of a growing masculinity divide.

Read more...

GMC Terrain: Major neighbor to a Mini car

As Mardi Gras is to Lent, my football watching is to the end of the season. I've consumed football during the past few weeks like it's never coming back. Late nights, poor posture for hours on end, emotional highs and lows...these are the consequences to my over-consumption and lack of discipline. They're also the good price I've paid for New Breed material.

GMC Terrain
When you sit glued to the tube, you discover a great deal of content. Like this new GMC commercial that I watched half a dozen times before suddenly appreciating it. It's only 15 seconds long, but in the midst of so many competition-based ads (Mac vs. PC, Howie Long vs. Honda), I find it refreshing. Even neighborly.



Bullying is so 7th grade
"The same impressive highway fuel economy you get in a Mini...." That's what I love about this ad: It makes the GMC Terrain look better by complimenting another automobile. In other words, this same GM brand that employs Howie to drag Honda through the mud doesn't drag Mini through the mud. It respects it. Of course, GMC and Mini aren't right and left shoes, so the closing line about winning seems somewhat irrelevant, but perhaps this commercial offers an example that Howie and Mac and Wendy and shameless others could follow.

It's a high road. It's also a challenging road, requiring brands to know the value they bring to the marketplace, to find security in that knowledge, and to risk (gasp!) making others look good along the way. Football teams do it all the time. They study and plan in order to win, sure, but you'll never hear mature players and coaches trash opponents. Quite the opposite, in fact.

The question is, Would it work? Is a high road possible given current marketing norms? Is it economically feasible? I don't know, but I'd like to see more of this practice in the marketing field.

Read more...

Double Take

By birth and by choice I belong to the Steeler Nation. This means I paid more attention to the Super Bowl this year than to the commercials that decorated it. As an advertising critic, this was uncharacteristic of me, but I couldn't help it. Go Pittsburgh!

A few ads caught my attention, however, and here's one in particular called "Double Take":



Work and the concept of calling fill a big file drawer in my brain and in my office. I open this drawer daily and find myself rooting through it, adding to it, mulling over its contents and laying that content onto the table for discussion. It helps that my co-workers share this interest, too.

Because "Double Take" is so visually effective, it instantly creates categories: work as Heaven, and work as Hell. Everyone has unpleasant work to do, but Jesus causes us to do another double take by flipping these categories. In his world, feet washing and humble service have the big office.

Few of us find moose butts appealing, but sometimes that's precisely where we ought to be.

(For another Monster.com commercial and questions about when this isn't precisely where we ought to be, check out "Your calling is calling" and then come back to comment.)

Read more...