Ad blitz

Kirk Baird

Monday, Feb. 7, 2005 | 8:16 a.m.

There was no halftime wardrobe malfunction. There were no commercials with flatulent horses or crotch-biting dogs.

For the post-game Super Bowl buzz, it's really more about what didn't happen.

It was a novel approach in response to last year's Super Bowl lowlight, when Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake's halftime breast-baring shenanigans raised ire and drew the ire of the Federal Communications Commission.

Instead, the NFL and Fox, which broadcast the game to an estimated 90 million viewers, relied on family-friendly Paul McCartney to deliver a noncontroversial halftime show. What else can you expect from "the cute Beatle"?

Advertisers took a similar risk-free approach with their commercials, priced at a record $2.4 million for a 30-second ad.

At least three TV spots were yanked long before broadcast by advertisers or, in one case Fox, for fear of drawing FCC fines. Among the canceled commercials was an ad for natural cold remedy Airborne, which flashed Mickey Rooney's rear end, and a Bud Light commercial lampooning last year's wardrobe malfunction.

Most of the commercials that did air were predictably safe, and rarely -- if ever -- pushed any boundaries, humorous or otherwise.

Still, Jim Hanas, editor of AdCritic.com, a New York-based Web site that focuses on news and trends in advertising, said this year's FCC-friendly ads were more memorable than last year's generally more crass fare.

"I thought they were a little better ... just as far as being interesting and clever," he said. "I don't think there were any huge blockbusters, but I'm not sure people were trying for that."

Among the commercials Hanas enjoyed most was a series for job Web site Careerbuilder.com, which featured a middle-level executive whose co-workers are mischievous monkeys.

"Monkeys are always funny. It's kind of a cliche, but I thought it was a very good, well-executed sort of a cliche," he said. "I definitely think this is one of the winners of this year's game."

Other memorable ads for Hanas:

Sean "P. Diddy" Combs' appearance in a Diet Pepsi truck, creating a new craze for the vehicles. "The idea of P. Diddy kicking off a trend of major hipsters driving a Diet Pepsi truck was pretty funny."

The Ameriquest Mortgage Co. "Don't Judge Too Quickly" spots, featuring a man who is mistaken as a robber while talking on his cell phone headset in a convenience store; and a woman who discovers her boyfriend in the kitchen making a surprise dinner, while holding a knife in one hand, and her cat -- dripping red sauce onto the floor -- in the other. "I thought they were very funny -- especially the surprise-dinner one."

A father telling his daughter if she eats any of his Emerald Nuts, she will inadvertently kill a unicorn. A unicorn appears -- and later Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny -- to confront the dad about his twisted fibs. "Just as a premise, I thought it was very funny."

Hanas' favorite commercial, though, belonged to Federal Express.

The ad, featuring Burt Reynolds and a dancing bear, mocked other Super Bowl commercials by offering and including a list of the 10 ingredients to a buzz-worthy spot: a celebrity, an animal, a dancing animal, a cute kid, a kick to the groin, a talking animal, an attractive female, product message (optional), a popular song and a bonus ending.

"The game now gets so hyped and the advertising gets so hyped, I think it's FedEx's strategy of poking fun of that," he said. "I think it's difficult to watch the rest of the commercials of the game without thinking of that commercial. All the cliches it outlines are in so many of the other ads.

"In a way, the FedEx commercial almost becomes the lens through which you watch the other commercials."

Hanas said the most talked about commercial today is likely to be from GoDaddy.com, an Internet domain registrar.

The ad, in which a woman experiences several "wardrobe malfunctions" as her tight-fitting top repeatedly comes undone while testifying before a congressional panel, was the only commercial to reference last year's Super Bowl halftime show and the subsequent outcry.

"Somebody had to do it. Somebody had to go right at the thing that we've talked about so much that nobody wanted to talk about anymore," Hanas said. "With that much interest floating around that, there's buzz to be gained.

Bud almost ran a spoof on the incident. "But it was a smaller company with less at stake as far as public image that did."

While humor typically plays a key role in most Super Bowl ads, some of the spots playing for laughs simply weren't funny, Hanas said.

In particular, he disliked Lay's potato chip commercial with MC Hammer dancing for children after being tossed over a fence along with other forgotten relics.

"It was my least favorite commercial of the game," Hanas said. "The premise didn't really make much sense and it didn't really say much about the product, just that people love it so much they'll do anything.

"I just thought the MC Hammer joke was a very poor use of a semicelebrity."

Hanas also gives a poor grade to online music provider Napster for an ad touting its new subscription service in which a fan at the game holds up a poster board comparing fees for the Napster service and iTunes.

"It wasn't done in the most artful way imaginable," he said. "It really looks like an afterthought to me."

Although Hanas enjoyed the Bud Light commercial featuring the return appearance from last year's Super Bowl ad of the donkey who wanted to be part of the Clydesdale team of horses, he questioned the need for a sequel.

"It's a tradition of Anheuser-Busch ... they get these franchise campaigns and do follow-ups on them," he said. "I think it was good, but I'm not sure if the donkey ad was a big enough hit to carry the follow-up."

The TV spot that puzzled him the most, however, was from Cosentino for its brand of Silestone quartz surfaces. The commercial featured Chicago Bears legends William "The Refrigerator" Perry, Mike Ditka and Jim McMahon, each declaring themselves "Diana Pearl." The punchline to the ad was former NBA badboy Dennis Rodman soaking in a bubble bath stating that he, in fact, was Diana Pearl.

"To me, that is the strangest media buy of the Super Bowl," Hanas said. "That has me scratching my head. I don't know why you would want to go mass-market and buy an ad for something as specialized and niche as quartz-surfacing countertops. I'm not convinced that anyone, after watching that commercial, knows what's being sold."

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