WHO WON THE SUPER BOWL?
Not the beer advertisers, that's for sure.
Overall, it was a ho-hum parade of spots from beginning to end, with occasional small surprises throughout.
Single favorite joke? "Release the hounds" triggers the opening of a kennel of Afghans in Audi's prison of luxury.
Single most delightfully ridiculous? Best Buy's Ozzy Osbourne wondering, "What's a Bieber?"
Single most surprising? GoDaddy's Joan Rivers. (Not saying it was necessarily good. Just unexpected.)
But overall, it felt lackluster and apathy-inducing--with occasional astonishing wonderments like, Why on earth would Motorola want to invite comparisons to Apple's vaunted "1984" spot, and if so, were they aggressive and pointed enough?
(I'll probably be in a minority on this count, but that spot should have been more aggressive--especially since the Xoom is going to be considerably more expensive than an entry-level iPad.)
The single bright point for the group in our TV room Sunday?
Eminem.
NO, NOT HIS COMMERCIAL FOR BRISK
Which had some unique charm of its own.
Rather, we're talking about the two-minute pod-hogging spot from Chrysler.
This gritty homage to Detroit and Patriotism and Chrysler was a surprisingly deft and well-crafted bit of corporate propaganda from a company that's already had more second acts than any car maker probably deserves.
The detractors are legion, of course. They're complaining bitterly that a car maker still on the government dole should not be spending taxpayer dollars on a Super Bowl commercial.
It's easy to understand why they're upset.
The thing is, you can't stop advertising. And if you're going to advertise in a way that tells people you're back and ready to be reckoned with, there may be no better venue than the Super Bowl.
And a single, two-minute spot buy.
AN AMERICAN CAR MAKER OWNED BY AN ITALIAN COMPANY WITH A FRENCH MARKETING CHIEF?
It's almost hard to believe that an operation with this kind of cred was able to generate that commercial.
The spot is, after all, uniquely American.
It heralds the underdog Detroit, the gritty, down-on-its-luck city synonymous with Chrysler and American drive.
Not that any of us necessarily thought that on Saturday last.
But after the filmmaking finesse that dovetailed those ideas in ways that (a) nobody has ever quite considered and (b) surprised us, it's fair to say that in the legacy match up between Green Bay and Pittsburgh, the winner was Detroit's Chrysler.
PROPAGANDA, PURE & SIMPLE
Yes, indeedy.
The hardcore direct response marketers of our generation are all going to armchair quarterback the ads (they started doing it a week before the game, even), scoffing at how many millions the brand advertisers waste in their effort to amuse and entertain rather than sell.
I understand why they feel that way. I've often shared their antipathy for pointless "get your name out there" advertising that has neither head nor heart at its core.
But they underestimate the ability of a message like Chrysler's to bore into the American psyche.
No, you might not be able to measure instantaneous results in the form of phone calls or unique web visits.
But that, my friends, is bean-counter thinking.
When the game is being played on a field the size of the Atlantic Ocean, and you're trying to alter the course of a supertanker of a brand like Chrysler, turns don't happen on a dime.
WHAT CHRYSLER DID ON SUNDAY WAS TURN HEADS AND, IF ALL GOES WELL, WIN HEARTS AND MINDS
They convinced America to give Chrysler a second look.
It's the difference between effective direct response marketing, and effective brand building.
Both have their merits.
But brand building at this level does something a bit different than DR.
To borrow from the Wikipedia definition of propaganda, we're talking about "a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position."
And nobody stands around the water cooler and talks about the great direct response ad they saw on TV yesterday.
But they're talking about Chrysler, guaranteed.
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