Super Bowel

firstly - you meant to search ‘super bowl’ didn’t you? admit it. it’s ok. you’re in good company. and by ‘good’, i mean plentiful. many people misspell a simple four-letter word like ‘bowl’. the word i used to title this post, however, refers to the intestine (commonly seen as bowels). as in, the transporter of crap. this post has nothing to do with the actual game, but rather the commercials that are aired during it. the ‘05 super bowl had some real stinkers.

secondly – go to youtube to see the 2007 super bowl xli commercials that aired.

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It is (was) that time of year again. Many people anticipate today with much fervor. Folks around the nation, chomping at the bit to see something spectacular. An impressive moment that will be talked about during their morning coffee to the guy from accounting. That’s right — Super Bowl commercials.

A couple of years ago (several actually), the commercials that aired during the Super Bowl could have challenged the game itself for air time. If you bought your tickets and went to the game, you actually care about the game. But for the rest of us folks, we get commercials whether we care to see the next touchdown or not. And advertisers know it. At its height, Super Bowl ads were something to see. Watching commercials didn’t seem so bad. Today… what a bunch of crap.

The FCC, or perhaps advertisers in general, have become so scared of the minority out there that the rest of us are subjected to donut ads for Dodge trucks. Sure, there is the occasional “good” ad that is either funny, witty or essentially clever, but I want commercials like Apple’s “1984”. Where are those ads? Being censored because of “Somebody Else” syndrome. PS: Read the comic there too. It’s ridiculously worth it. Unfortunately, this type of mentality has ruined it for the rest of us. The best we can hope for this year was barely a handful of ads about cars and mortgages.

However, despite the bumper crop of “ho-hums” out there, there is always the one that shines above the rest. The one that tried so hard to be different. To actually say something. The one many will likely talk about during their morning coffee to the guy from accounting. I’d like to think that one, this year, was the ad promoting Napster. Why? Because it was -the- worst ad I have ever seen. Ever. And I have seen a lot of ads. A lot. If you are going to compare your product and/or service to another’s, at least have the intelligence to compare the same type of product and/or service.

If you didn’t see the ad, good for you. Otherwise, suck it, because I am not linking to it — wherever it is. Basically, all the ad does is paste an equation type deal up on the screen to compare the cost of Apple’s iPod’s capacity to Napster’s new music service. That’s right, they compared a portable “hard drive” to a music service. Saying it would cost you $10,000 to fill up an iPod (they didn’t even bother to specify which iPod) as opposed to $15 a month to fill up any other MP3 player (Apple doesn’t like crap touching their products, I guess) using their service. How does that even compare? First, the assumption was made that every song for your iPod (the 40GB model) is the result of iTunes purchases (at 99¢). Second, they claim a service is the same as a physical product. Third, they are comparing Apples to oranges. Sorry, had to do it.

In the ad, they say you have access to a million songs at any time during your subscription and you can download as many as you want for only $15 a month, thereby never having to pay 99¢ each time you want to download a song. Oddly enough, I have over 600 songs in my digital library and I have only shelled out $13.17 to Apple for music downloads. And, yes, you can download songs and then import them into your iPod without having them originate from the iTunes Music Store. According to Napster, I must have paid over $600 for having all those songs on my iPod. It’s probably due to the fact that I actually bought CDs legitimately and transferred them to my computer and then to my iPod. Crazy!

The ad fails because it will not cost me $10k to fill up my iPod. iTunes is not my only option to acquire 10,000 songs. It also fails because the ad tries to attack the iTunes Music Store but its strongest argument is based on the iPod’s storage capacity being the reason you will pay so much. Obviously, I am not the target audience for this spot… but can one really say this was a good ad at all?

Lamest commercial ever.