Once again, the Super Bowl was indeed super, but how about the ads?
A few ads brought sustained belly laughs, others brought groans.
But which were responsible, and which weren’t?
For review, visit my Super Bowl XVIII ads page.
Cast up to five votes in following polls.
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If you’d like to weigh in on any of the ads, please comment below.
Here are all the ads from Super Bowl XLIII, all assembled on one page for your review.
Review the ones you missed, then cast your vote for Most and Least Responsible Ads of Super Bowl XLIII.
Enjoy.
THE ADS
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
I happened upon some entertaining Thanksgiving advertising this week. Here are a few of my faves:
View “Turkey and butter, 1956″ on YouTube
View “Talking with your mouth full” on YouTube
View “Woman vs. turkey” on YouTube
View “Turkey ‘Terror’ ad” on YouTube
View “A DeNiro and Crystal Thanksgiving” on YouTube
View “Snowboarding turkey” on YouTube
View “XBox Thanksgiving” on YouTube
So, do you have a favorite?
Comment below to share.
I enjoy marketing that rewards you for paying attention. Ads that leave you guessing. The double entendre. Cultural, historical and sports references meant for the few instead of the many.
And I appreciate a well-executed spoof, as long as it’s done responsibly.
With that in mind, I’d like to introduce you to Derrie-Air Airlines.
Here are a few excerpts from “Fake Ads Don’t Fly” featured in this month’s issue of Marketing Management:
Philadelphia’s two major daily newspapers caused a stir recently by publishing print and digital ads for a fictitious airline, all of which were designed to measure the power and reach of such ads to readers across media platforms.
In early June, the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News published full- and partial- page ads for Derrie-Air, a fictitious environmentally friendly airline purporting to offer fares based on passengers’ weights. According to the Inquirer, the ads appeared 21 times in sections of the Inquirer, 15 times in the Daily News, and on the Philly.com home page.
The ads contained no disclaimers, but one on the Web Page to which readers were referred in the ads said, in part, “The Derrie-Air campaign is a fictitious advertising campaign created by Philadelphia Media Holdings to test the results of advertising in our print and online products and to stimulate discussion on a timely environmental topic of interest to all citizens.”
Nevertheless, the lack of full disclosure in the ads prompted concerns and complaints from some journalism veterans who maintained that the ads were deceptive and could compromise readers’ abilities to trust the newspapers’ editorial coverage.
The effort, however, did yield intriguing results, according to the Inquirer. The ads for Derrie-Air, drew a 1.25 percent click-through rate for the online version, compared to a national click-through average of 0.05 percent.
The negative response to this campaign is a little puzzling to me for three reasons:
First, how could anyone possibly believe the airline was real? It’s named Derrie-Air!
Second, how can these ads be deceptive if they aren’t even real? Nothing was being sold, so nobody was deceived into buying anything. In fact, if I was buying media in Philadelphia, I’d appreciate the publications testing their own media.
Third, if someone was upset about the price-per-pound approach to ticketing, a trip to the website would have disabused them of the notion that this was real.
Check out the FAQ’s—you’ll be rewarded for paying attention.
Do you think this controversy is much ado about nothing, or is it valid?
Why or why not?
Comment below to weigh in (no pun intended).
Special thanks to Outsource Marketing Intern Extraordinaire Jennifer Hillman for her assistance with this post.
Mad Men, the critically-acclaimed AMC series about Madison Avenue advertising men returned last night.
Twitter and the blogosphere were abuzz with talk about the show, and for good reason: It’s good.
My favorite Mad Men quote from last season:
Beatnik: “You’re in advertising… How do you sleep at night?”
Don Draper: “On a bed made of money.”
Reminds me of something my grandfather, Roy Draper, used to say:
There are two kinds of people in business:
Those that eat well,
and those that sleep well.I prefer the latter.
My grandfather was an amazing man—the antithesis of Don Draper.
Still, I can’t take my eyes off the show: It illustrates how in marketing, commerce and conscience collide every day.
Do you have a favorite Don Draper line?
Comment below to share it.
First, you build a huge ramp…taller than the Space Needle.
And that’s really what “The Ramp,” a 35 minute documentary by Jeff Schultz (pictured above), is about. It’s an intriguing story about Oberpfaffelbachen, a small town in Germany that has fallen on hard times and determined they needed a common mission.
And the mission they chose was to build a giant ramp to launch a car from Germany—over the Atlantic Ocean—to America.
Sound crazy? Check out the trailer:
The link at the end of the video, takes you to Rampenfest.com, based on the name of the festival the town will throw to celebrate the launch. The only thing on the site is the documentary in a number of formats.
Of course, you may not have 35 minutes to view the entire documentary, and that’s probably okay since it’s really a mockumentary: The town, the people, and the ramp are all fictional—part of an ambitious viral campaign created by BMW to launch their new 1 series in the U.S.
Get it?
Anyway, as far as virals go, this is one of the better ones. The BMW doesn’t even appear until 15-20 minutes in, and it’s not the star of the show. It’s the people. And the ramp.
The cost of producing this video was a fraction of the cost of running a :30 second spot here in the U.S., but “The Ramp” has resulted in significant word of mouth for BMW and it’s new 1 series. Millions have viewed the video, and mainstream media like CNN has picked it up as well.
Do you appreciate the creativity and subtlety of viral campaigns, or do hate feeling like you’ve been duped?
Comment below to weigh in.
Inspiration for this post came from Conrad Saam. Thanks for the tip, Conrad.
In Can subliminal marketing be responsible? I shared a faux subliminal ad that AMC was using to promote Mad Men, their series about a fictional Madison Avenue ad agency set in 1960.
For a number of reasons, I argued that for this show, subliminal advertising would actually be the responsible thing to do, even though subliminal advertising doesn’t work.
The Golden Globe®-winning series for Best TV drama and actor will be back on Sunday, July 27th (I can’t wait) and it’s DVD box set is being released on July 1st and AMC is going to make sure that the sleeper hit of last year gets a lot more attention this season.
Today, I received this in the mail:
At first, I thought Ad Age was simply doing a retro cover. Upon closer inspection, I realized MadMen had done it again when I saw the headline “Sterling Cooper Wins Kodak Projector Account” with a picture of the agency’s Creative Director, Don Draper.
I showed it to two members of my team (possibly the only two that don’t watch the show) and asked “What’s wrong with this picture?” Both thought it was just a retro cover.
Like the show, it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s fake. Sixteen pages intermingles real articles pulled from the Ad Age archives, along with an interview of Draper, “then and now” comparisons and lots more.
There’s a lot to like here:
Two quotes from a sidebar called “What They’re Saying…” you might find of interest:
Advertising is based on one thing: Happiness.
[Advertising] is most effective when it does its job, for whatever client, in an honest way.
The first quote is by Draper. The second is by John F. Kennedy.
So, which quote to do you agree with more, and why?
Comment below to weigh in.
In the last week, the above video has been viewed 444,117 times on YouTube.
Question is, what is it?
I did some sleuthing for you.
Go to the video’s YouTube page, and you’ll find a link that takes you to a splash page:
Click on the splash page and you’ll find another page with the video on it, and the following copy:
My friends, my name is Papi. Viva Chihuahuas. We have been dressed in sweaters and carried in purses. I say no mas! I am tired of the jokes about our size. Will not be toys or fashion accessories. Will not answer to Fee Fee or Foo Foo. No mas! Viva Chihuahuas. Who is with me? Heel!
There are no links to click.
No “contact me” fill-in for your email address so they can contact you with more information.
Nothing.
So I did some more sleuthing and discovered this is a viral video produced by none other than…
Disney.
It’s a promotion for a movie coming this fall:
Here’s an entertaining video, probably out to sell jeans. It’s been viewed nearly 800,000 times in five days.
Viral video can be pretty entertaining, however, it often forces you to jump through a few hoops to figure out what’s being sold.
But isn’t it a good thing if the creative gets your attention, the mystery holds it, you interact with the brand and then you tell others?
So, do you love or hate viral video?
And can you figure out what brand the “unbuttoned” video is promoting?
Comment below to weigh in.
Inspiration for this post came from illegaladvertising.com.
