The Superbowl: we watch the commercials
Word will have reached across the Atlantic by now of the winner of the 2012 Superbowl, with, despite the game being an American national sport, the New York Giants being proclaimed world champions. This result may be meaningless to many – the easier fluff to engage with is the commercials and of course the half-time act – and was this year brought to us in fine theatrical style by Madonna. As ever with Madonna, the consensus is polarised. She is like the coriander of music, people get volatile over their disdain for her or insist that she is a legend. Whatever your view, both she and an M&M last night declared they were sexy and they know it:
My impression, 3 hours in, loaded on Carlsberg and having made a minimal dent in a wagon wheel pizza, was that the ads were underwhelming. I can sleep more soundly tonight knowing Twitter has been agreeing with me since they aired. Matthew Broderick and Elton John need to make better choices. For pure stark contrast to the mostly silly tone of the ads, GE went for heartstrings and rhetoric, with the result that Clint Eastwood is being called on to run for President. See here:
Along with GE, the car industry forked out hugely for air-time. The re-invented Toyota Camry applied its methodology elsewhere here and the Chevy survived the apocalypse here. Audi were first off the blocks on the night and made good use of oh-so-hip vampires:
In my experience of Superbowls, Doritos are the most consistently funny and didn’t disappoint with a bribing pooch:
And of course, Superbowl commercials can mark the launch of many of the marketing campaigns to come for summer blockbusters. Yes, the trailers did offer footage of Liam Neeson and Rihanna starring in a movie together and as much as this invites discussion of the increased likelihood of the oncoming apocalypse, the highlight for me last night was a clip for ‘The Avengers’, heavy on action, light on dialogue. Worryingly there was consensus from the room I was in that Jerry Seinfeld skylining through New York looked more realistic (see here) than some of the effects used. There is time for tweaking; fingers crossed Joss Whedon’s time has come:
Clint’s Chrysler commercial was by far and wide the best of the night. Second would be Chevy’s post-apocalypse spot. The Doritos adverts were cute and the Budweiser spots were just plain bad. That’s how I saw it.
You missed the best one of all!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tig4zbYMhJQ