Sure, creating a great commercial for the Superbowl is tough. But it may be even tougher to come up with truly awful stinkers like these five losers.
Superbowl XLVII had its share of great commercials, but these five hit new lows in wasted money, poor targeting, lack of imagination and sheer poor taste.
Creating commercials for the Superbowl is always tough. The need to stand out, make a splash and be remembered naturally conflicts with the high-stakes nature of the event.
This explains the yearly default to a short list of themes that always test well with consumers and clients alike: babies, animals, slapstick and iconic music, especially '70s classic rock.
The lineup for Superbowl XLVII was no different, but like every year, some brands found new and compelling ways to tell their stories and innovative ways to deliver them.
Here are the top five of this years ads - commercials that lived up to their presence on the world's biggest advertising stage.
If you hate football but love cinema: no problem! Here are the trailers for Iron Man 3 and Star Trek Into Darkness which aired during last night's game—without any sports involved.
The Iron Man 3 trailer (above) mixes a reasonable amount of previously seen footage with some new—the highlight being a scene where Stark plucks falling passengers out of the sky following some sort of airplane disaster. It still looks amazing.
Elsewhere, the Star Trek trailer (below) gives absolutely nothing away, but is dramatic and full of Benedict Cumberbatch. So... what's not to love? Kick back for a couple of minutes and whet your appetite for films to come.
The BlackBerry Z10 does so much that BlackBerry gave up trying to explain it all and instead released an ad showing fanciful things it can't do.
That's the premise of the brand's first-ever Super Bowl ad, which just ran in the third quarter of the game. The ad, from London's AMV BBDO. The spot is designed to confuse the viewer at first by showing a guy using the phone to set himself aflame and then put himself out. Then he grows elephant legs, disappears into a colorful puff of smoke, reemerges from a manhole cover and turns a careening oil truck heading his direction into thousands of rubber ducks.
Cord-cutting, it is commonly known, isn't ideal for sports fans. There are just too many games that require a cable subscription to watch and pirating each one would be too cumbersome. Fortunately for those who want to tune into Superbowl XLVII this weekend, there are a few options that don't require a traditional TV setup.
The Super Bowl will be streamed in its entirety from two main browser-based sources. First, there's NFL Live, which will feature "Road To the Super Bowl" and all the other pre-game programming beginning at 11am Eastern Time. The game itself kicks off at 6:30pm ET. You can also stream the whole thing from CBSSports.com.
On a recent episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live, they featured a Lie Witness News comedy skit where Jimmy sent his crew out to Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles and asked strangers if they watched Super Bowl XLVII last Sunday (January 27, 2013). The funny thing is, it doesn’t happen until this Sunday (February 3, 2013).
It looks like BlackBerry won’t be alone in pitching its smartphone at the Super Bowl. Samsung said Thursday that, for the second year running, it, too, will be buying the pricey but coveted TV commercial time.
Get yo' popcorn ready. When your company is announcing the latest and greatest mobile OS, why not seize the opportunity to scrape up a few million bucks to make sure the entire world gets a proper introduction? Research in Motion will be forking out for a Super Bowl spot (which averages $3.8 million this year), as part of an effort to get the word out about BlackBerry 10. Let's just hope it's not shown the exact moment 40 million people head to the fridge. A little presser can be found past the break.
To the average business owner, Super Bowl commercials often appear to be frivolous, expensive diversions from responsible, straightforward advertising. But Super Bowl campaigns done right are among the most effective marketing efforts there are. They have to be—or the world’s leading brands wouldn’t spend big bucks on them year after year.
The concepts needed for a winning Super Bowl campaign are the same for any powerful, year-round marketing program, regardless of the size of your company or budget. That’s what I learned over the past dozen years as my advertising firm asked consumers to rate the big-game commercials in our online ADBOWL. By analyzing the winners and losers from among hundreds of contenders, I’ve identified 10 rules that make winning campaigns work. See how they apply to your marketing efforts...
If you didn't catch the full trailer for "The Avengers" now is your chance.
The New England Patriots weren’t the only ones who choked Sunday night.
Websites from Coca-Cola, Acura and film Act of Valor crashed Sunday night after being overwhelmed by Super Bowl ad-driven traffic. In Coke’s case, a Facebook app featuring animated polar bears in the ads buckled under the strain. On the other hand, Kia’s site had the most reliable, fastest performance of all Super Bowl advertisers Sunday night, according to Yottaa, a website optimization firm.
Ferris Bueller got a second day off during Super Bowl XLVI, as a Honda CR-V commercial found Matthew Broderick reprising his iconic role — and we’re obsessed with it! But this is just one of many awesome commercials that aired during the 2012 Super Bowl. Which one was your favorite?
