Farewell to Super Bowl 2011

I think most of the voting for Super Bowl ad favorites has closed now. That probably is wise; I’m not sure how many people still care. But I wanted to do a wrap-up to my pre-game post, which had a title that now seems remarkably inaccurate.

If you want a rehash, here are two good sites. Superbowl-ads.com has been doing this for a long time and has an incredible archive. Fanhouse has a nice Super Bowl page and you can compare the 2011 and 2010 winners. The Volkswagen Force ad was the winner on most of the sites I looked at. It was cute, and it had quite a bit of pre-game buzz.

Overall, I thought the ads were either bland and uninspired or technically deficient. Seems to me the fan-created ad contest has about run its course and I missed the A-B Clydesdales, but the Dog Party Ad was cute. The Eminem ad for Chrysler (an expensive 2 minutes worth) has gotten a lot of post-game buzz, and its intent was commendable. However, I watched it closely, wondering whether it was a Chrysler ad or a Detroit ad. Of the two, only Chrysler could afford to pay for it, so the answer was pretty obvious. It was, however, one of several ads that didn’t mention the sponsor until the last few seconds. Why do advertisers and agencies think it’s ok to spent $3m and not identify the source of the ad in the beginning so the viewer can connect the brand and the message? I know all the arguments about great creative to make an impact on the Super Bowl, but the basics of good advertising still apply. Finally, I thought the Groupon ad was in astonishingly bad taste. I think it was a last-minute buy, so they probably pulled something off the shelf, but if you can’t do it right, you shouldn’t do it at all.

For me the biggest disappointment was that the social media aspect I was looking for was not in evidence. I’m sure there was a lot of Tweeting going on, but in terms of obvious advertising tie-in, it just wasn’t there. What was I expecting? I don’t really know either! Is it possible that social media has a huge role in building pre-game and post-game buzz, but relatively little during the game itself. A firm called ymarketing did a report on the ads and their impact on social media that came out a couple of weeks after the game; here's the link. A similar study by PRLog says that all advertisers benefitted from social media traffic and that Motorola, Doritos, Hyundai, and Dove benefitted most. That’s interesting, because those four don’t tend to show up or at least show up high, in the best ads rankings. What does that mean??

Fast Company has an interesting take on Super Bowl ad metrics and some interesting additional coverage. Ad Age columnist Ian Schafer was also disappointed in the social media connections and has some pithy things to say about the ads themselves. The usual excellent SB coverage can be accessed on the sidebar.

So it’s clear we still have a lot to learn. Back to work!