Ad-ditional Comments

I know it's a bit late for Superbowl commercial-related commentary, given that it's been over a week and all of the ad websites that I like to read basically live-blogged the entire thing. (Twitter apparently exploded with 2,500 [useless] messages on the subject. What a waste.)

What's that? There was Football, you say? It wasn't all raging ad copy? I was watching some "sports?" Oh, but I did watch the "match," and an exciting and unpredictable game it was. But while the game is over, the ads live on, spun into internet immortality by YouTube and every other streaming site. And it's not like the rules of football are changing.

Advertising, on the other hand, has no rules.

It's been a few years since I watched the entire telecast from start to finish - last year I party hopped, 2006 I forget, 2005 I was doing homework and got to the bar late, 2004 I was cooking in Vermont with the game on, and so on and so forth. Somehow, I had forgotten how the whole thing is such a synthetic a production. Sponsorships on the field mirror the ad spots, Budweiser establishes a cohesive storyline through its ads, and generally many of the commercials echo each other.

In particular, I noticed a slew of what I'm calling cobranded ads - spots in which two or more products were advertised. It makes sense to combine ad budgets, obviously, given the extraordinary price of airtime during the Superbowl. But some of the product combinations simply didn't make sense.

There were the clever - Will Ferrell as the character from his upcoming movie Semi-Pro hawking Bud Light.

And the confusing - I didn't quite understand Dorito's endorsement of singer Kina, who I imagine won some contest. Are frat boy chips going indie? Note the iTunes logo that shows up at the tail end of the spot. It's unclear if the ad was actually cobranded or iTunes has an agreement with Interscope records, who appears to be putting out Kina's album.

The predictable - Dell and Bono's (RED) campaign teamed up for that goofy butt-slapping ad - though I wonder if that counts because the whole notion of (RED) is that it appears on products you already buy.

And finally, the last cobrand I happened to catch was Pepsi's "Justin Timberlake gets hit in the head with stuff" (not the official name) spot. Timberlake is annoying me less these days - due in large part to the fact that he gets hit in the head by a car door in this spot. Brilliant. Pepsi teams with Amazonmp3.com to advertise... buying stuff.

(Read more from the commentators who get paid to rant about these ads over at Adage.)


So forget the Giants and the Patriots. I was rooting for capitalism!