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But What About the Commercials?
So the Big Game is over: I actually watched the whole thing this year. Had a cool time with a bunch of the guys (If you're reading: Thanks, Jon! Great shindig). But of course the real story each year isn't who won and who lost, but the ridiculously expensive lavish commercials. At $2M a spot, its gotta be crazy... huge numbers of
the ads were for dotcoms and soda. What were your favorites? The E*Trade Monkey ad was my favorite, followed by the Mountain Dew leopard ad and the 7up ad where the truck hit the machine.
It is, I consult for them :)
Well, I did go to monster.com (and I must admit, it was pretty good). I guess they suckered me into it.
Why am I even doing this?
If you missed the super bowl but want to see the commercials, this link should do the trick: MSNBC's 'Commercial' Site
My favorite Ads
Least Favorite
The game was okay, too.
Put my clarinet beneath your bed 'till I get back in town.
Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation
Um, sez you. I'm a homo. I haven't been very vocal about it here though, since I haven't been feeling very militant lately.
Not by a long shot... luser.
I can see it now. Next year VA ad:
"anyone can herd cats, but I can herd penguins"
--nick
Everyone knows that God put retards on the Earth for all the normal people to laugh at. My e-mail is kurt@no!spam.n2.com. I trust the spam block isn't too outradeous. Heh. One day I'll have an account around here.
Wow, those Super Bowl Commercials must have been something, too bad I didn't get to see them (here's why): Global, a TV network in Canada regularly blocks out any US based ads in programming, not limited to the Super Bowl (Blame the CRTC for that one). This goes for EVERY tv show that is on, and attracts an audience, and while they're at it, they even block the us feed, so I see a "Global" logo on my Channel 7 (ABC)...
As someone who's gone job hunting on kforce, I can assure you that nothing is remotely clever about it. Javascript and disorganized tables as far as the eye can see ... ugh.
I think fedex took the cake with the munchkins that sucked helium to get thier voices back. Reminded me of the nitrous-heads at a Grateful Dead show. Had me rollin' on the floor!
... for someone reading this thread -- no. that link is not worth visiting. don't go. please. don't do it.
Now even the ladies here aren't good enough for him! I'll bet he's not gay - he's probably a closet goth, who never got up the nerve to wear black in public without the camaflauge of the orchestra/symphony. My husband taped the SuperBowl for me so I could fast forward through the game and just watch the commercials. He didn't watch any of it, and I fast-forwarded through the game and half-time show (an ad for Disney). I liked the eTrade commercials, especially the Monkey one, the Visa commercial with the swimmers, and the EDS one. I thought the Visa commercial with the pole vaulter was stupid. So they like women, so what? A lot of people do. That's how chicks get dates. Pithy
How/why the hell do you figure out I'm French? I'm not. You're stupid.
Of course I can tell. Shit, the people who demanded a Katz-filter, couldnt they "tell" a story headed JonKatz: was a Katz story? Uh? The people who filter Linux stories cant tell "...Linux..." is a linux story? Of course they can. Thats not the point. And you know it.
just because they don't live in the greatest country in the world
That was an attempt at a joke, right? Whats funny about America is that they still really believe they're the greatest country in the world. I mean, I'm not saying my country is any BETTER, I'm not saying the USA is any WORSE. Its just that every other country can acknowledge their own weaknesses.
Yes, unfortunately. The Toronto Star even trotted out it's annual boilerplate ar ticle about it.
In the past, when the game was on FOX, it was a common practice to use rabbit ears to see the ads on WUTV-29, then switch back to CIII-41 for the action. Unfort, WKBW-7 (the ABC station) is a little trickier to pull in.
BTW, what did viewers who saw the Global version think of those fake ads they inserted using digital trickery on top of the scoreboard at the Georgia Dome? I was watching it with a friend who WORKS at Global and he was just shaking his head in shame...sadly, the over-the-top hucksterism at Global is making The New VR look professional...
So if someone watched the Superbowl on iCraveTV, they'd not see these $2 million dollar spots of advertising glory, but rather the standard Canadian "boring" commercials we regularly see.
Not to mention the cheesy "party updates" they kept carrying in some commercial blocks.
I wanna punch that sleazebag computer coming on to that poor lady in that Sprint Canada commercial.I never thought I would miss Candice Bergen, but I do. However, those "Get Smart" spoofs for Buck-a-Call are currently my pick for most annoying ads.
Any followup theories?
I don't think the fact that people would be subjected to the Canuck ads was much of a factor at all. If anything, perhaps Global put some pressure on the NFL because they knew that people would be using Icravetv to see the Yankee ads. (I know I was planning on it.)
Egypt
South Africa
Zaire
Somalia
Ethiopia
There you go.
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Nicotine free Amish .sig.
What, no Apple commercials?
spam, spam, spam, spam, e-mail, news and spam.
My favorite was the Mountain Dew leopard one.
:)
The 7-UP Show Us Your Can commerical was #2.
The Sodas win the day.
--
I love pepsi one so much, it rules. Ya, you will never know the difference between it an coke! PEPSI!
"If a man watches 3 football games in a row he should be declared leagaly dead" - A
It was Queen's Bohemian Rapisody, not Def Leopard, but it was cool. E-trade probably had the best overall adds. followed my mountian dew.
I noticed three seperate online job finders with ads. Kinda strange since basically everyone who wants a job has one or can get one right now. I think it shows just how far these companies are wil to go in order to get their e-foot through my e-door. Irony here is that they spend so much money advertising on 50 year old technology (TV). I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same.
"I mean, All you can definately say about a fellow who thinks he's a poached egg, is; He's in the minority." James Burke
Windows? Blech, no real geek has....or uses windows
Superbowl? What Superbowl?
I didn't see any of the ads. I was skiing, and boy am I glad I was.
why would a hacker read C++ for Dummies?
Take a moment and laugh at this guy.
I liked the cat herding ad too, but I don't think it was very effective in that I've already forgotten what company/product it was for...
Forgot the name of the company, but the rest of this may lend a clue to that. It was the one with a yellow screen and typewriter print, one of the ".com"s
They are a firm here in Reston, VA that did not have a commercial ready and wanted to drop out, but waited too long, so they just slapped that commercial together.
Much like this post, but much more pricey.
BTW, as I write this all of the DC area is playing bumper cars because nobody here knows how to drive on dry pavement, much less the several inches of snow and sleet we have now.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
ah yes, the Bud dog. I think that one will get lost in the static because it was SO early. it was the first commercial after the start of the game, right? Maybe that's a bad place...
I definately enjoyed to E*Trade monkey ad, as well as the Mt Dew cheetah. But I also loved the Mt Dew Bohemiam Rhapsody as well. Not as many good ad's this year as there have been in years past, but it surely had its highlights. And the game was somewhat decent as well.
SYSOP ('sih-sop) n.: the guy laughing at your typing.
Well, I watched the Super Bowl with a few of my close comrades, over a fine dinner of lobster and wine. While I am not exactly what you would call a big football fan, I make it a point to watch this sickening ritual every year. I think it's important to keep an eye on the capitalist establishment here in the "good old" US of A, and there is no better time to check up on these scoundrels than during the advertising spots during the Super Bowl, which has served as a capitalist Mecca for the better part of the past two decades.
.. we're wasting it!" This isn't criminal, but it should be.
These ads are very telling. They are more about large corporations thumbing their collective noses to the working public than they are about selling goods and services. Capitalist corporations are already in a position to force you to purchase and consume their product via monopoly powers (see, for example, Microsoft.) They don't need to advertise. It is completely redundant. So when these companies shell out millions of dollars to put ad spots during a football game, they are really making fun of you, and attempting to reinforce capitalism's image as an acceptable, moral economic system. Well, I hereby call "bullshit" on the corporations. I'm not buying it, and neither are mainstream Americans.
By far the most indicative advertisement was the one by E*Trade. They put a monkey and two old guys in the back of a truck and had them dance around for thirty seconds. Then, they gleefully bragged about how they had just "wasted" two million dollars! For crying out loud, can you be any more fucking blatant? In a country where there is a huge (and I do mean huge) rift between the "haves" and the "have-nots", this is downright offensive. It is saying to the downtrodden and oppressed working class "Hey, we've got all of your money, and look what we're doing with it
The two million dollars wasted by E*Trade could have gone towards building a glorious new tractor factor in Iowa. Or perhaps they could have used it to purchase fuel for government vehicles. There are literally millions of ways that the money could have been put to use to advance the working class as a whole, but instead it was wasted on some uppity primate and two geriatric bozos who probably keeled over from miocardial infarction shortly after they finished shooting the advertisement.
Wake up, America. The sooner that people realize that capitalism is an evil, oppressive economic system, the better. Millions of workers are enslaved by it, and their emancipation will be no less important to the history of the country than the emancipation of the African-Americans by Abraham Lincoln (which marks the last honorable deed ever performed by a Republican.) Get out and vote. You might think that your lone voice doesn't matter, but if we all band together, we can make a difference.
6 hours of photoshop? that sounds like work. watching the superbowl is fun, in contrast. your roommates ended up seeing a capital football game, you ended up with a few changed bytes on a hard drive. I guess some people have different priorities, eh?
You can see a lot of these at http://promotions.yahoo.com/promot ions/superspots/ also can everyone please associate ads they're describing with company names at all possible so if we go to this page we might know where to look find this ad.
Was that today???
...
I was going to watch -- "for the ads", like the people who read playboy "for the articles" -- but I can't stand football. A big ceremony to toss a coin? Blech. Anyway, I hope some of the companies that made good ads put them up on their websites for download. If anybody has links, post 'em here!
___________________
rooooar
the setting is a party inside someone's home. many teens are in the bankground, dancing, drinking punch and chatting. a disco ball hangs from the ceiling and reflects differently colored rays of light in all directions.
teen boy: anybody who's anybody knows that hot young actresses are in!
teen girl: they're everywhere!
teen boy: getting your favorite hot young actress usually meant open sourcing each one separately.
teen girl: that was before this hot new k-tel cdrom compilation!
teen boy: now you can have all of your hot teen actresses in one place!
teen girl: check it out!
dissolve to flat blue screen with popular hot young actresses scrolling by. announcer reads the names.
dissolve to various street scenes.
unsolicited street-person testimony #1: i've never scored before in my life. k-tel changed all that with their hot young actress cdrom compilation! now, i've scored with more hot young actresses than john kennedy!
unsolicited street-person testimony #2: my sex-life used to be less exciting than an aquarium. that is until i bought k-tel's hot young actress cdrom compilation for my husband! this cd is better than viagra!
unsolicited street-person testimony #3: i used to have to buy one cdrom for every hot young actress i wanted to score with. now, thanks to k-tell, i have all of them in one, open-sourced place!
dissolve back to party scene.
teen boy: order your k-tel hot young actress cdrom compilation today!
teen girl: it's k-rad!
dissolve to ordering information.
thank you.
And I don't want to know, so don't tell me.
Seriously, though, did anyone else deliberately not watch the game? For me, this was a protest against television, commercials and hype. What about you?
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The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
"The Source will be with you... Always."
It gets my vote.
I busted a gut on the Bohmeian Rhapsody Mountain Dew ad - the song is so cheesy and the original video even more so that it was hilarious to take it to the next level of cheese with that ad.
Enjoyed the cat herding, the cheetah, and the dog crying too. Missed the E*Trade monkey - too bad.
While this is the first (non-video rental) television I've watched in a couple months and the first ads I've seen in even longer since I usually watch PBS when I watch, I did enjoy many of the ads, even as a true cynic. It seems to be the one time when the ads are truly creative and have a bit of spark to them. Besides, after the recent Doubleclick fiasco having forced me into installing the Internet Junkbuster, I have to stock up on ad impressions for the lean times ahead.
Now, this is one of the few events where advertisers have to appeal to basically the entire breadth of population. Everything from a typical NFL fan, a housewife, a businessman, a famer, etc. must be taken into account when designing a broad base of ads.
I think a lot of new .com e-commerce sites launched their first ad campaigns today. Sponsors put their names on everything from the kickoff to the half-time show. I don't know who in their right mind would associate MICROSOFT with the NFL, but they did it.
Advertisers love the fact that they get to mass-sucker a lot of people all at once, so they're naturally going to shell out the maximum amount of cash to make sure enough people see their ads.
Incase you didn't notice, there was actually a football game behind all of this. It was actually a very good game to watch... if you didn't mind it getting dragged out by advertisement.
"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
I watched from the half-time show on. I saw only ONE commercial (mountain dew)that really even was decent. Well, I guess the E*TRADE one was okay.. But I think companies paid so much for the slot they didn't have the funds to make a decent commercial.
Whatever..
i'll be perfectly honest, i didn't know the superbowl was tonight until i checked the UserFriendly strip this morning when i woke up :)
I'd rather take your opinion with a grain of cocaine! In fact, I think I'll just have the cocaine!
Still interesting.
-- The meek shall inherit the Earth. In very small plots, about 6 feet by 3.
It seems that the advertisers are forgetting their main purpose - to make me want to buy their "stuff", or use their service. The successful commercials did this well, such as the monkey E-Trade ad (what are you doing with YOUR money, they just wasted 2mill!), and the Gladiator movie trailer... VERY cool!
:)
:/
The Budweiser overkill wasn't bad, but they've done better with their advertisements as well. What happened to Millertime? Didn't see ANY of that, I used to love those (i haven't watched TV for quite some time).
Now my idea for these commercials would be something very simple... such as having some AMAZLINGLY hot girl pouring whatever Beer all over her naked body, which is covered by VERY small little black censor boxes. WOW, i'll support that beer! you know?
Another idea i kept yelling out is that they should just have NINJAS come out and beat the crap out of the idiots in the commercials.. how great would that be?!
Or have one of those BMW commercials where a BMW just flies by going 150 and TOTALS a Lexus or something. WOW! That'd be amazing..
My point: the commercials are NOT giving America what they want to see. And it's very simple: Sex, violence, substance abuse (this would be limited to alcohol in this case), and strong humor. The advertisers must look at who's watching these games and appeal more to it.
one more thing: The dotcom commercials were horrible. i dont like having idiots walk through the street blabbing about better jobs or whatever, it could hvae been done better. And knowing that there'd be SO many dotcom commercials, they should have found a better way to implant the domains into the viewers heads, because i can't remember most of them that did advertise their domains!
The advertising should break through and stop it with the same boring stuff, and make me want to GET what they got! They didn't make me thirsty/horny/excited enough! Stimulation is what is needed... good thing it was a great football game at least! I almost won the pool
- Mike Roberto
-- roberto@apk.net
--- AOL IM: MicroBerto
Berto
Well, that and, "Whaaaaasssssuuuuuaahhhhh". Personally I think this should be adopted as the official greeting for all Open Source people.
BTW, did you know that all the "DOT COM" companies had to pay their fees up front in cash? Not the normal way the commercials are sold.
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--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
Apologies.
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Nicotine free Amish .sig.
My UK friends subject me to flavors of rugby (not one, but several) and cricket. The rest of the world (and even some in the US) to both soccer and basketball. Business friends in the US want to talk about the SuperBowl as they have (wannahave) cool seats and all. ... the Christopher Reeves thing strikes a chord as do the kids talking about smoking. The monkey makes a statement ... but ...
At least this year, it came down to a competitive last few minutes in a close game that had drama leading in, a very close finish, and didn't drag on through 20 minutes of contrived delaying tactics.
In general the ads were too cute by 100%. Some positive messaging counted
For around 20% of my total annual TV viewing, for a change, it was kind of worth it.
FYI: Netpliance uses a variant of QNX Linux OS on its "mini-computer"... Although it is not primarily a Linux company, its a start.
I love being unnecessarily cynical about everything that people do! When on Slashdot, I love to flaunt my obvious superiority by putting down the actions of mindless cretins who dare to have a little fun! I enjoy pointing out that because large corporations do some bad things, everything they do must be inherently evil by association and nothing they create can thus be of any value whatsoever! I really relish insisting that everything everyone does must be global, that no one is allowed to talk about things that are going on in their own country! In fact, I should yell at myself because I'm talking about me, and I only exist in the country I live in. But it doesn't matter, because I'm superior to all of you! Long live unmitigated cynicism! Down with fun!
This year it seems the commercials weren't that good as they normally are. Mostly got to see ads for ABC's sitcoms. On the other side, the game was actually worth watching. This leads me to:
:)
The quality of the commercials during the Super Bowl is inversely proportional to the quality of the game being played.
Think it will fly? I wrote it first
Haha, I noticed this immediately as soon as I heard the music.
;)
Something about school making you insane?
My favorite commercial today wasn't even on the Superbowl--it was on Cartoon Network's "The Big Game."
For those of you that missed it, it was a spoof of the GAP "Just can't get enough" leather ad. A bunch of toons are singing the song, with the same weird cuts and shots as the GAP ad. There's Yogi Bear, Booboo, Cow, Chicken, The Red Guy, I.R. Baboon, and a bunch of old Hanna Barbera toons. When the song's over, the following flashes on the screen:
Everybody in no pants.
And then it cuts to I.R. Baboon and Cow mooning the camera. Basically, all the toons in the commercial were those that regularly appear without pants.
Cartoon Network always has the best promo commercials, IMHO. ^_^
Yes, Cat Herders was awesome. The tough looking cowboys with allergies and claw marks is a hilarious idea. I think it's a tie between that and the FedEx Wizard of OZ commercial with the lollypop gang.
Well, from the 3rd quarter to the end. :)
Since the i-Opener uses QNX, what does this have to do with Linux®?
Linux® is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
I'm confused- you used the time during the superbowl to take a nice warm nap, or you used the time spent writing your comment to take a nice warm nap? :) Anyway- if you're refering to the claim that women are physically abused more on SuperBowl sunday, that was shown to be a hoax of a study a long time ago. I dislike football in general, and really don't understand anyone who'd rather watch a bunch of cocaine addicts pummel each other instead of just going outside and playing games themselves. If your husband ignores you or otherwise annoys you during the Superbowl- get another husband. Nothing is worth ignoring your wife's feelings.
Yes, Cat Herders was awesome. The tough looking cowboys with allergies and claw marks is a hilarious idea. I think it's a tie between that and the FedEx Wizard of OZ commercial with the lollypop guild.
But I still like the monster.com ad from last year. I want to claw my way up the middle management. I want to a yes man. Yes woman. Brown nose.
The pepsi ads a few years ago were very good.
But, nothing can surpass the old Apple ads that appeared about 15 years ago. There were two of them. The 1984/Big Brother ad is well known. But there was another one that had a bunch of businessmen walking off a cliff while whistling. The last person stops and takes a peek of the cliff from his blindfold. The key thing is that Apple really pioneered the "interesting" Super Bowl ads. This is called innovation. This year I looked forward to watching the ads. A long time ago, the only ad that mattered was the Apple ad.
But I'm glad that some of the ads sucked. It gave me a chance to answer Mother Nature.
I love these .commie posts, keep 'em coming.
The blimp, showing the outside of the domed stadium (no apparent reason) seemed to always have the CNN sign in them.
Seriously, I agree with this. I'm sorta miffed that Rob even posted this so called "story". News for nerds my ass. Sheesh... he even went to a frockin' Super Bowl Party! And I don't even want to hear that crap about just doing it to see the commercials.
Any real geek would have spent the night playing the One True Sport of Kings... Q3A, fragbitch! ;-) Or at least watching something more geek-friendly, like your Matrix DVD or your pirated copy of Episode One.
Please, real geeks, post here and tell everyone what you did *instead* of watching that bullshit. Even installing NT is more exciting than watching sweaty 300 pound men in tight pant run into each other. But hey, whatever floats you boat, d00d. Maybe it seems more interesting after a few beers, eh brah?
Also, someone please let us know when these commercials are available online, preferably in a format not constrained to Microsoft products.
***
--
The shareholder is always right.
Boy, you fuckin' moderatas are some real fuckin' pieces of work. You take a legitimate post and moderate it the fuck down? Jesus fuckin' Christ, I'd expect this type of shit outta you. If you don't moderate this motherfucker back up, I'll wack every last one of yous.
-- Tony Soprano
AFAIK, all the streams are only in QT(4). Guess Linux users can't watch.
:(
Just a warning so that you don't wait for the page to load for nothing. (It's going pretty slowly now, probably due to superbowl/slashdot hits.)
Dual Boot? Try shutdown -r now
.sig last updated Jan. 14, 2000
Seriously, I agree with this. I'm sorta miffed that Rob even posted this so called "story". News for nerds my ass. Sheesh... he even went to a frockin' Super Bowl Party! And I don't even want to hear that crap about just doing it to see the commercials.
Any real geek would have spent the night playing the One True Sport of Kings... Q3A, fragbitch! ;-) Or at least watching something more geek-friendly, like your Matrix DVD or your pirated copy of Episode One.
Please, real geeks, post here and tell everyone what you did *instead* of watching that bullshit. Even installing NT is more exciting than watching sweaty 300 pound men in tight pant run into each other. But hey, whatever floats you boat, d00d. Maybe it seems more interesting after a few beers, eh brah?
Also, someone please let us know when these commercials are available online, preferably in a format not constrained to Microsoft products.
Now I'll have to hear about it at work for the next week too... shite.
***
Touche :)
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
Hey! Get it straight, jerky, they're crack addicts. Coke is for wussies!
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Thus Spake Dave
Meine Hühner lachen Nicht!
the commercial that intrigued me the most is the US Census one. it had the background music of beethoven's 9th. now, that is not interesting in itself.
the interesting thing is that it was the exact same part of the ninth that was being played in 'A Clockwork Orange' when Alex was watching films to 'cure' him, it sounded exactly the same, kind of like a MIDI.
so, if you are planning on having sex or killing someone in the next few days or so, watch a quentin tarantino movie first to expose yourself to sex and violence.
'Mullethead. A hairstyle that's a way of life'
Ummmm... nope. Strike one. Try again. I'm not even particularly interested in impressing anything but a rather small minority of women who probably don't even read here. The .sig is just my shameless self-promotion.
Care to take another guess?
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
The music FOR the halftime show was vell composed and very well performed. Why couldn't they have left it at that?
:-(
What the HELL was with all the costumes, all the people banging on drums, that thing that looked like an angel, and all the bizarre things that they were carrying around? What was with the narrative about celebrating the "magic of the millenium"? It seemed like they were trying to present a philosphy that was completely nonsensical, but at the same time, it was twisted and sick. I kept watching it for the music, but the whole imagery they were associating with the music made me feel uncomfortable and made me want to throw up.
And at the same time, I'm at a loss to specifically explain why it upset and disturbed me so much. It just did.
And talk about how these are two teams that shouldn't even be in this game, and the horrors of NFL parity, and how it's a shame that teams hold their cities hostage for stadiums and that the commercials have become the highlight of the game, but...
I'll just list my take on the best ads:
3: The Budweiser ad featuring the upset dog. Very funny, though they already used the running into a truck idea with the "I have to run" ad they've been using for a month or so.
2: E-Trade and the monkey. It's right up there with the ad that ran a while back saying "If your broker's so good, why does he still work?" Sponsoring the lame-ass halftime show was dumb, though. The WWF halftime show on USA was better.
1: EDS, "Herding Cats". Need I say more? I suspect all tech people (and especially their bosses) "got" that one instantly. A lot more people, though, were probably scratching their heads. I loved it.
That was also the concensus at the engineer-heavy party I just was at.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
My point *exactly*. Well, pretty close to exactly.
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
I am so disappointed that Budweiser decided to drop the Bud Bowl. I used to bet more money on Bud/Bud Lite than the actual football game.
http://talk.to/RageDemon - now that is completely unrelated, but damn, I almost cired laughing.
There's an old saying, "A picture's worth a thousand words". Isn't interesting that a TV commercial can be summarized in three sentences or less?
Food for thought. :^)
--- Journals are boring; Go to my web page instead
I agree with you, actually. It's just the attitude in general. "Honey, get me a sandwich. No, SHUT UP, it's about to start again..."
My personal opinion is guys like that don't deserve to be married. But then again, that's my personal opinion, which I'm entitled to.
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
> what windows? and all my woman come
:-)
> in jpeg format
Ha! I retract my nasty comment in the face of a funny rebuttle.
"watching the superbowl is fun, in contrast."
Uh. Only if you LIKE football. I'm lucky- I'm attuned to the negative metabolic effects of the tube and do not react positively to them.
Contrast.
Fun = spending nine hours at a coffee house you haven't frequented in years and discussing various occult systemology with friends, while at the same time doodling and making shorthand notes of the whole event.
Yeah, the Photoshop WAS work- about 200$ worth, thank you. And if I had not been tasked with freelance, I would be reading or working on personal artwork. I've had my dose of entertianment at the coffee house- it was real, it was tangible, I could SMELL it, and there weren't any commercials. I spent the day doing something memorable, and worked off the coffee-stasis hangover bitshifting, rather than lowering my metabolic rate in front of the idiot box.
sure, I may have liked others more, but do we remember what they're for? (remember the Outpost.com commercials from last year? They were fast to tv spots, but most people didnt know what the site was!)
In my book, the most effective today were:
pets.com (which elicited a positive remark from all the non-tech people in the room)
and the mountain dew w/ the wild cat
also, etrade spent so much money that its hard for me not to remember (note: Ameritrade was absent, but expect more from them now, in the week after the bowl)
But, here's the thing: come back in exactly one week and ask people what their favorite ones were. I'm not kidding. If JonKatz is reading this: [make yourself look smart and write about the bowl in a week or even a month!] It's then we'll know. Also, what will these do to the bottom lines to the various companies 6 months from now?
Wait 'n' see!
.sig last updated Jan. 14, 2000
E*Trade definitely has some of the funniest commercials out there. My personal favorite has to be the "Blow'd Up" ad; it starts out as an advertisement for a "$200 million blockbuster" starring Anna Nicole Smith and George Takei (Sulu from Star Trek, playing the megalomanical bad guy), and features lots of stuff getting blown up (including, improbably, a picnic basket). Tagline: "This movie's gonna blow." Then we realize someone's watching the ad on TV, and he liquidates his shares in TriMount Studios, the distributor of the movie.
I have to say, though, the best ad I saw this Superbowl was the Herding Cats one, even though I can't remember what it was for anymore.
My Blog. Sela Ward can sell me long distanc
Its amazing to see that so many people fail to notice that there are millions of winblows users out there and they all seem to have money. Hmm, I earn a pretty good living off the winblows morons. And I'm not ashamed of it. I use linux also, but the $$ potential isn't as great for me. So spending 18 hours a day in front of a monitor a having winblows on my machine makes me "not a geek"?
If ignorance is bliss, the world is full of blissful people
wwf!!!
My girlfriend watches skating, and she ignores me during it. I have no problem with that. And I don't ask her to bring me things when I watch football. I can get off my own lazy ass if I want something. That's what commercial breaks (usually), timeouts and injuries are for.
---------
Thus Spake Dave
Meine Hühner lachen Nicht!
One of the things I find most interesting is that some of the commercials were not aimed at consumers. What does the typical individual buy from EDS, after all? Quite a few of the commercials were geared toward "business decision makers," who only represent a small fraction of the viewing audience. Interesting that it was worth spending that kind of money to reach a relatively small part of the Super Bowl audience.
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
The server is gone. Anyone have a mirror of any of the ads?
--
The shareholder is always right.
.. and some would rather die!
I liked the one with the lady running with the police troopers chaseing her, then she runs up to a big telescreen with Bill Gates' face on it and throws a sledgehammer into it....
Oh, wait... did you mean this years Super Bowl?
Sorry.
No kidding, which president? ;)
Just looked like some guy saying that the WWF commercial was his favorite. Wasn't mine, but there ya go.
Are you gay?
No.
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
Why not? It would be fun.
Sig Return: 204 No Content
.. then let them die, and decrease the surplus population.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/promotions/superspots/
I agree - that was the best one. I'm not sure where they were trying to make the connection, but some months ago my father was working with them on a project and told their ceo "This sucks; it's like trying to herd cats!" I dunno if that had anything to do with it but it's interesting. Especially since he was using it as an example of how much EDS sucked.
Although, the overall quality of the commercials was not up to Super Bowl par I thought--I was disappointed.
Agreed. Lame-o. The world needs fewer .com companies.
Ok, I have a huge complaint every year, but yet it always continues.. How come companies spend 2Mil on a commercial spot, but then don't bother spending any money making a new commercial for the spot.. I guess I don't see the point when so many people are watching for new commericals to talk about.. my rating 1) E*Trade/monkey 2) MtDew/Cat 3) EDS?/cat hearding Well.. just my opinion.. thought I'd toss it out there..
Yeah, it's even more amusing when the teams that are playing deserve to burn in hell. Both of them stabbed their hometowns in the back less than 5 years ago. They're the worst thing about modern professional sports. They represent the team owners today who bilk cities for millions of dollars in blackmail tax subsidies, do nothing to hepl the local economies, and have no city loyalty, even though they themselves depend on hometown loyalty to fill stadium seats.
Well, in the case of the Rams, you couldn't be more wrong. The ones without loyalty were the fans in LA--or the prodigious lack of them. Why do you think the nation's second largest TV market lost both of their football teams within a year (the Rams to St. Louis and the Raiders back to Oakland)?? Because nobody in LA cared about football. Sure, the Rams were a mediocre team...but their attendence the last few years was abyssmal. Indeed, no one even lifted a finger to stop either team from moving.
Meanwhile, the Rams sold out nearly every game in St. Louis for the past 5 years--and believe me, they sucked for the first four of them. As for the assertion that neither of these teams has helped the local economies, that's clearly absurd. And even more than that, getting to a Super Bowl unites a city and makes it exciting to live in (if St. Louis can ever be called that...but that's another story) in important if not economically quantifiable games.
Both of these teams played their hearts out all season and in tonight's great game. Don't you have anything better to do than disparage them?
Everything of value that sports promoters create you can have better, in your own backyard, for free, with a couple of your best friends. Is it wrong that I think the Superbowl and professional sports in general is a lousy cultural institution? I don't think it makes me superior, it just pisses me off that so many cities have been screwed over. In fact, without the practice I just refered to, GWBush would still be living with his mommy and daddy instead of convincing a city to litterally hand him and his partners millions of dollars in tax money and free land deeds for a staduim that has HURT the local economy. Is it wrong that I think that's sick, and that the values that support it suck?
Yeah, that's fine, but it's the *attitude* that I'm referring to. One can have other interests... but to me, football worship/superbowl is just a symptom of a larger problem... of guys ignoring their mates. Maybe this isn't the case in a lot of situations... but more than I'm comfortable with, to be sure.
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
Yes it does. Those damned GAP people actually _getting_hit_. /jbm, too lazy to dig up his password. josh at josh is a nerd dot com
The Multigazillion dollar Incredibly-Stupid-Shit-That-Passes-For-Product Cartels have tricked people into thinking advertising is really content. They're not just cramming it down peoples thoats this time, they've actually tricked them into liking it.
/. story where Altavista was thinking of replacing the first hit of every search with a advert link disguised as a real hit.
This is a disturbing trend. It reminds me of the
Buy more plastic trinkets! Consume! Die!
This sig is false.
I'm serious. Fun is ok, have some. If you really can't have a few minutes (or hours) of fun, and you scorn other people because they can, you need a little help. Sure, bad things happen. Good things happen too. Depriving yourself or others of the good things doesn't cause less of the bad ones. The superbowl is only once a year. The poor will always be with us. Help 'em at halftime or in the morning. --- BTW: It was a great game. The cheetah commercial was the best one.
True
You can go to USA Today where they then have a link to Ad Meter which is where you can vote for the best one. They don't have every single one on there but they have most of them in RA format so you can go and watch them.
--MD--
--MD--
MICROSOFT PAID TENNESEE TO TAKE A DIVE. Everything they touch turns to shit!!
If your are confused by how people can find a showcase of the best the ad agencies have to offer compelling than you don't understand the USA's culture very well.
We define ourselves with our ads. It's who we are. I'm not saying you have to like it, but do try to understand it. And for the sake of cripe, don't deny it.
Quick, name 5 countries in africa. Name 5 people who signed the Declaration of Independance. Give me 5 soft drink slogans.
Which came easier?
Yeah, but it's News for Nerds, and it Matters.
Yahoo has a commercial voting link on their home page with the ads in Windows Media Player and Real Player formats.
/.ed? Interesting convergence theory there...)
(I wonder if I'm about to cause Yahoo to get
i liked the commercial with the man who poured a bowl of hot grits down his pants. thank you.
Did anyone try to replace a football team with a beowolf cluster of 11 computers running Linux?
Even tho E*Trade dished out buttloads of money for that commercial, it has been aired previous to the Super Bowl, so it wasn't exactly Super-Bowl Original.
---------
Thus Spake Dave
Meine Hühner lachen Nicht!
I'm surprised this isn't a slashdot poll rather than an article!
Nathan R. Ben-Attar
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
Wonder if that's where they got it....
--
The shareholder is always right.
There is no monkey there. It is some absolutely disgusting probably supposedly-pornographic horrifying nightmare image. If you want to see things that make you vomit, you know where to find them, so for god sakes man, don't be fooled by that link. It's a thousand times worse than the incessant Natalie Portman stuff.
I just want to say this is a great post. Honestly, there is nothing else I can say. Sports may not be the most beneficial advancement to human evolution, but both LA and Houston had a chance to keep their respective teams.
Interesting how Houston will be the next location for a NFL expansion team.
Great finish for the Super Bowl!
Rangers Lead the Way!
I agree that the ad was brilliantly produced, & hilarious,
but overall, I found it a total let-down.
They really shouldn't have tried to end it with "we're kind of like that, bringing together &c. &c"
The attempt to link the commercial to the company was totally ineffective. It was so dissapointing after the epic proportions of the cat-herding.
Heh, the thing hasn't even been over for six hours, and some freaks already have a site dedicated to the E-trade monkey. Wow. Check out http://etrademonkey.com.
Well, 7up ads are certainly more entertaining now than their last batch. That "7up underground" stuff was getting annoying. Then again maybe everyone else _did_ want to be an "Un" and fight the "Syndicate". Either way, I'm glad they ditched it for that guy with the puns.
So in short, no, I wouldn't care to take another guess. Please, enlighten me as to what exactly you -are- trying to do here.
During the last 5 hours watching the Super Bowl I didn't see a single commercial...
:)
Were you aware, that out of the 800 million ppl which were supposed to be watching this game, only 100 million were US americans?
Another number they mentioned on austrian TV was, that during the game these 100 million amercians were eating 20'000 tons of snacks. I guess somebody messed up the conversion from those strange US-units to the metric system... or 5kg / person? can this be correct?
Illegal formation at the snap, number 18 on the defense. 10 yard penalty, repeat fourth down!
Pansy faggot. I'm a cellist, and I'm not a pansy faggot like you. Wuss.
Yeah, everyone pitch it to make 2 million dollars so /. can advertise its Web site and get itself /.'ed ;)!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
ok, I think I really need to get this out of my system.. hey everyone, get a @#$%@#@# clue! do you honestly believe that when a corporation spends 2 million on a 30 second time slot that the money dissappears.. it really doesn't matter where they spend the 2 million, because that money gets passed on, to other people who spend it. let's say that the TV station gets all this money.. well, then they spend it.. they have costs, employees, utilities.. and, that money in turn gets passed on to more corporations, or banks, who re-invest it, or spend it.. either way, it all changes hands until it ends up in the hands of individuals through paychecks.. If you want to make a difference in the world, it starts at the individual, not the corporation.. The corporation is nonexistant without individuals, and the money in the end hangs in the balance of how you spend it.. in the meantime, if a corporation has 40 billion in it's bank account, do you REALLY think it's just sitting there collecting dust? haha fat chance.. that money gets invested in other businesses, or in consumer loans.. basically, one way or another it ends up back in the hands of the people.. so, wake up.. who cares if the corporations waste 2 million or 10 billion on a commerical slot..
the ad was for EDS. they have a half-decent copy on their website. Even tho the site implys you need MediaPlayer to view it its just a zip'd MPEG.
a l.zip
URL of the movie itself is: http://www.eds.com/about_eds/homepage/catcommerci
Usually the Super Bowl is a mismatch. Tennesee made it interesting in the 4th quarter.
In contrast, the commercials were almost totally uninspired, trivial, or derivative.
One exception was the EDS commercial, with the cowboys herding cats. That was mildly amusing.
None of the others that I saw were worth mentioning.
Really quite interesting that people would be commenting on a complex that I think that most slashdotters would abhor and usually keep a wide bearth away from.
I can think of only one application of anything geek related in this and that is the use of computers and various graphics programs to create the commercials. Aside from that everything else is just bad.
1. Sports -- generally the goals of sports and computing are opposite of each other. Want proof how many professional athleates have ever written a working program that actually did anything useful? I don't think anyone could really name one at all. 2. Commercials in general. Numberous times I have actually seen quotes that have indicated that television is a medium which is used as an opiate for the masses and is generally one of the vehicles by which we approach a totalitarian state. My question in this case is exactly why is this something that is good?
3. The super bowl. I couldn't think of a bigger waste of a peson's time than to be in front of a television when an event of little political or social importance is going on. Is the victor of the super bowl actually going to become the unquestioned lord and master of the world? No. Does football have anything to do with anything relating in even a smal;l way with computers.
4 Advertising in general. Advertising is not a field that lends itself to openness and the use of fair tactics of any sort. If you disbelieve this just look at how deceptive advertisements for automobiles are. Some bozo is driving his car along a mountain road or along a track at speeds well over the legal limit or some red neck is taking his 4x4 through the most unimproved area he can find and that is supposed to make an impression on people (and hey it's not technically illegal because they have little notices in 1pt fine sans serif font at the bottom of the screen). If this is the direction that the technical community is taking I want out before we have the next release of windows or linux to be codenamed Buckaroo or something equally corny.
5. Taco? Well this is a little suprise but I guess evolution can work in reverse can't it? Most humans usually decrease their mental abilities after age 20 or so and a general atrophy of physical and psychochemical elements also occurs about then so I guess it's not that much of a suprise?
The above comments are not necessarily flames or anything else however does sporting minutiae such as the super bowl actually count as something that is technically noteworthy? Theoretically if the entire human race is enslaved by reptilian creatures from the planet zoron it shouldn't appear on slashdot unless they make the drivers that run their spaceships opensource and run on linux.
To sum up this little post: sports and commercials relating to sporting events are far removed from the sphere of technical influence and necessity of the part of the human race that actually counts that it is almost laughable.
Does anyone have any hard facts about the actual image hardware/software that was used? Did anything actually revolutionary that is technically important actually go down then? PS. I make an offering of a dead cow to the first god that represses the posting of the actual results from the super bowl from slashdot.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
hehe. When I was a kid I would have said "it takes one to know one!". I am not a kid, however, so I won't.
Honestly, I don't care what you think. :-)
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
Wussy boy. Some of us like sports. There were lots of cool commercials. Don't fucking click the article, dickhead.
Everyone's talking about the monkey, and I agree, the monkey was hilarious, but I definitely think the one with the guy going to the hospital. They took a common American phrase that's being uttered more and more these days, "He's got money coming out the wazoo!" and made a brilliant commercial about it.
"Does he have health insurance?"
"What are you talking about? He's got money coming out the wazoo!"
The monkey was just another one of the cheap commercials with a more creative tagline. The ass commercial actually made a very strong humorous play on the amount of money floating around in our economy these days.
And speaking of asses, 7-Up goes from 'Make 7-Up Yours', which is pretty funny, to 'Show Me Your Cans', which is even funnier. They have some good spots now as well.
*clink* *clink*
NOTE: This post may not be allowed through by certain web filters. If you are using such a web filter, it is your loss.
I'm a very experienced developer, and I do own about 5 "dummies" books. Whenever I delve into a new technology, I pick up only 2 books. First, I get a dummies book to explain the basics. Then, I pick up the reference manual.
For many developers, pride and vanity gets in the way of learning.
CNN.com
"something that the person is born with (and IM(not-so)HO should die lonely with)."
I think it's a learned behavior. As for the superbowl, that's a learned behavior, too.
When people feel a need to get together not for anything else but to watch a sports game on TV, there's something wrong there. Whatever happened about just getting together for no real reason?
Dan
Didn't you listen to the commentary? :)
They said the weather sucked too much, so the blimp wasn't flying. They never said exactly what it was instead, but I assume it was a helicopter (although they did say something about an ultra-light(!))
Now I know why ISP's fuck up.
Yes, but the number of people who watch the world cup is measured in billions...
The best ones were the singing dog from pets.com and the "show us your cans" from 7up. that was hilarious
"Oh no, I knitted a sweater and had a deep conversation regarding my feelings toward sea turtle mating patterns with my mother during the Superbowl. Too bad most of America wasted its time watching such drivel."
Wow, it's great that you did something other than get together with your friends (you do have friends, yes?) and watch some TV for a few hours. Not to mention abstaining from partaking in the enjoyment of watching some brilliant strategy because it's so barbaric. "EEeew! Sweat! Yuck! Gross!"
Well, I hope that superiority you feel carries you through your day. You might consider relaxing a bit and realizing that there other people in this world who enjoy things that you don't. It's a rather mature and advanced concept, but it's worth looking into.
Blah.
--
A host is a host from coast to coast...
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
Here in Calgary, the local independant station takes over ABC and spews their own commercials over the broadcast. So I get to see commercials for the local burger joint with a budget of about $200.
It pisses me off because they often screw up and come back to the announcers in mid-sentence and stuff like that.
I had to work this year anyway.
I just don't see it. I've watched the Super Bowl (not to mention regular games) all kinds of places, including a lot of friends' (married and not) houses, and I don't think any of them has asked the female of the house to be a servant. Of course, considering my friends' choices of women, they are usually watching with us :) But my friends could be a minority, who knows.
---------
Thus Spake Dave
Meine Hühner lachen Nicht!
Say how I feel. That's pretty much the extent of it. If a "chick" happens to like it, cool. If she doesn't, cool too. No skin off my nose.
And, oddly enough, though probably borderline, I happen to think it *is* on topic. "have you seen the commercials on the super bowl?" "no. I'm boycotting it and here's why". Seems like a perfectly good response to me.
Do I think I'm better than other men? No. Do I respect the way a lot of other men behave? No. that's it, period.
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
The Apple "Lemmings" ad was a complete disaster for them. It might've been original, but they shot themselves in the foot with that campaign.
I agree with your other ads, though. The only ones that actually made me laugh out loud were the E-Trade monkey and the Cat Herders. Less good, but still very amusing were the Budweiser crying dog, and the Gap singers running from an Oldsmobile. What made that commercial was that I really thought it was a Gap ad (and that seeing them run over would be funny), although I did remember thinking that they sounded especially off-key.
As far as the game went, that might've been the best 4th quarter of a Super Bowl that I've ever seen -- my God, the biggest game of the year decided by one freakin' yard! Since this seemed to be a down year as far as the overall quality of the commercials, it makes me wonder if there's some inverse relationship between the quality of each Super Bowl and the commercials that air during it.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Dude, beyond disgusting...in a sorta good way.
What's the world cup? Tennis? Never heard of it. Must be some European thing like fucking cricket.
For the first time in this thread I totally agree with you, but I don't think the attitude is derived from the game or whatever is being viewed, it is something that the person is born with (and IM(not-so)HO should die lonely with).
---------
Thus Spake Dave
Meine Hühner lachen Nicht!
I expect it's just that 800 million people could potentially receive the transmission.
Seriously - who in Europe is going to stay up late at night before work on Monday for a game they don't understand and don't like? Who in Asia/Australasia is going to get up early on Sunday morning for this?
Who are these 600 million-odd non-Americans?
The NBA final series - now that's a different matter.
CNN Entertainment
I don'y know about you guys, but as much as 20 or so 300 lb "modern warriors" excites me, I was really left wanting by the whole Super Bowl thing. In fact, I couldn't help but wonder, throughout the whole thing, whether our time would be better spent if the geeks ran the whole thing. Imagine:
No tackles, only OS flamewars!
Timeouts would be spent writing perl code to figure out the precise momentum and angle needed to score a field goal.
A chance to pat other men on the ass!
And of course you can't forget the cheerleaders.
And let's not forget: Hemos in tight pants. And he's grunting. I think that's enough, eh ladies?
So what I'm saying is that the new and improved Super Bowl would not only be better, put possibly open-sourced! This would allow modifications by members of the community, so for example, ESR might wish to allow the use of 9mm's, and RMS may wish to ban the abhorrant and reactionary practice of shaving and showering!
Come, friends, let us lead ourselves to victory!
In reference to your concern about violence on superbowl sunday: I believe the study that created this misconception came from a book by Naomi Wolf. This prompted a huge uproar and if I remember correctly, one year before the bowl there was a public service announcement that urged males to stay calm. Unfortunately, the research turned out to be false, and if anything, domestic violence is lower during the superbowl (which makes sense to me). I hate to be even a little off-topic, but this is a fairly damaging misconception IMO.
They don't move teams around, because their fans can stop it, and because every city already has several professional teams which would not want a new team to move in.
Plus, they have promotion and relegation, so small cities are not arbitrarily "colonized" by the major league "farm system", and otherwise excluded from the major league. And, thanks to promotion and relegation, the 1st Division or Premier League really does contain the best teams.
try out adcritic.com they've got plenty o'commercials..
Wizard of Oz
Cheetah and the biker (Do the Dew!)
Kat(yes with a K) Herd
Chimp with Etrades -- bahahah!
the filming of the dog that was supposed to howl -- what was did the van say that the dog crashed into?
I think that's about it...
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
There are no gay /.ers. If /.ers accepted gays, that in itself would be gay, and thus unacceptable. And everyone knows there are no gay developers.
Damn! ;-)
Advertising time for the Superbowl is expensive. Companies buying expensive ad time will usually spend a lot making good commercials. Therefore, to someone who has little interest in football, the advertising may in fact be better than the content.
That said, I didn't watch the game at all. And unlike some of the other posters, it wasn't "on principle". I just wasn't interested.
But then again, I could be wrong.
I think the E*trade with the monkey was the funniest by far, but the one by Computers.com was hilarious also. All these people talk into a camera saying what the internet has done for them, one of which is a kid standing there saying, "The internet taught my dad how to download lots of pictures" and all you hear is someone (presumably his dad) yelling at him off camera. my friends and I were rolling on the floor!
--
The shareholder is always right.
I have a feeling adcritic.com doesn't want people to do this, but it's possible to bypass their slow site (which uses mysql) and get at the movies directly without registering.
Cheetah
Brilliant satire of condescending pseudo-intellectual party pooper prattle.
I really thought the best superbowl commerical I ever saw was the one for Compuserve a couple years back - there was nothing but a black screen, and the busy signal sound - this was back when AOL had just switched to flat rate, and no one could get though.
To actually say that some idiot promoting foolish slogans to get people to easily remember soda is foolish.
What is more interesting is the interface designs that the syndicate used to have a massive monitoring network from all the major vending sites for soda and their product.
Also what was brought up in those series of things was the use of a human/machine interface that was employed to transmit data from the monitering party to the individual who was networked. Quite interesting.
Has any research been done about machine/human interfaces for say transmitting simple words or vould sounds to the person't vocal center of their brain?
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
We BUY the stuff they advertise, it's just as much our fault... we spend FAR more than 200 mil, collectivly, on pepsi alone. the human race is evil and deserves to die. burn humans burn!
did this SB have too many sexual overtones?
Titans vs. Rams? Sounds like a condom ad.
As a womyn I am very offended by you male pigs!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA :-)
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
http://www.yahoo.com/promotions/superspots
Why don't we put that up a Slashdot poll. My personal favorite was the cat herding commercial. It's funny watching all those cats run through the river. The budweiser commercial with the dog and man was also funny.
--------------
The sun beams down on a brand new day, No more welfare tax to pay, Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light...
Plus it gives you something to talk bout around the watecooler on Monday. Life isn't all about being cooped up in front of some computer terminal.
I laughed histerical at the: "He's got money coming out the wazoo!" commercial. I was really shocked at the: "Chrsitopher Reeve" commercial. One one or two really sucked, but most were pretty good. Where was the bud bowl? I guess that phase has ended with Apple.
Let's all pitch in five bucks so next year Stallman can be on thirty seconds during the Super Bowl, talking about free (as in speech) software.
Oh dear Jesus... That'd be like putting Charles Manson on there to talk about race relations. At least get ESR on there - unless you want to alienate everyone and ensure Microshit's survival for the next 200 years.
Posting anonymously because I know I'll get moderated down. Screw it - I know it's not flamebait...
From what I've seen, most guys force their wives to slave away and make sammiches for all their buds while acting like completely irresponsible, inconsiderate jerks, since it's up to the duty of the wife to keep her hubbie happy.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
Hey guys. How does this sound? NEITHER of you wasted 6 hours. You both enjoyed yourself, right? What does it matter that you did it different ways? Rather than get into a screaming match, just accept it that there is more than one viewpoint in this world. Geez.
This same kind of thing causes so many problems all over the world. How much good does it do the Linux community when someone starts calling every person who uses Windows a moron, and proclaiming that they have turned their brains off? I'll give you a hint: Rhymes with very little.
Sure, it may be obnoxious to someone that the Backstreet Boys are plastered all over everything, and that millions of screaming little girls are obsessed with them. Does that mean that everyone who doesn't automatically turn off the radio whenever they come on and push away every person who has the
My point here is, just because someone doesn't get their kicks out of the same thing you do doesn't make them a moron not worth your time. Insulting, shunting, mocking and stereotyping people because they don't think exactly like you hurts everyone and doesn't help anyone.
---
"What is that sound its making?"
---
"What is that sound its making?"
"It thinks it has a virus, but its actually just linux."
Natalie Portman!!!! Hot grits!!!! Linux sucks!!!! MS Rules!!!
First Post!!! Jon Katz you suck!!!
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I just wasted 2 Karma points. What are you doing with your karma? crayz.
-- neil posting anonymously
when that cow started singing I just about lost it. I've never seen such a hilarious commercial in my life.
Blah. ABC/Disney will call it a decision based upon family morality. It's more, "Let's engage in masturbating ourselves during the commercial breaks." That's undoubtedly why most of the commercials sucked this year: a large portion were Disney and ABC, so you got less room for really innovative, funny commercials. Note that some of the big companies that normally would have 3 or 4 good commercials -- like Pepsi -- get knocked down to one lame commercial because there's much more competition for the spots, and it was just which dotcom could throw more money at them.
If a corporation is a personhood, is owning stock slavery?
How suer are you of your numbers? I seem to have this impression that the population of the US is somewhere in the neighborhood of 265 million. So, 133 million viewers would be about half.
-Noodle
Both this and the original posts are works of art.
Too bad they will not be appreciated by the unintelligent and humorless slashdot public. This is precisely the reason I stopped posting similar things myself.
P.S. Last Post?
I cant believe noone has mentioned the pets.com
commercial. I thought it was GREAT! actually I like all their commercials but this one was very good. The crying turtle was a nice touch:) The EDS
cat hurders one was good to... Just like work every week.
Malice95
That was the only good Salon article I've ever seen. It was quite a hoot!
Someone should give a ref to that "800 million". Which 800 million? You say 133 million in the US - and we'll say the whole of Canada - that still leaves over 600 million elsewhere. I'd believe 600 million could _potentially_ see it - but they didn't, because they were asleep or hung-over and would've preferred Gilligan's Island re-runs anyway than a game that due to the fact that they don't understand it, seems particularly long and boring.
There's a American football league in Europe, but it doesn't get close to the coverage of darts say, or handball or luge.
I believe Australian Rules football does great business when they do their exhibition games in the States - but do you stay up for the AFL Grand Final - which since it is viewable in the States and Europe has an "audience" of 600 or so million?
I win
Sorry, mate. His was better. :)
Ref? Ref that these people actually saw the particular final game?
Remember that's some pretty large proportion of the rich world that didn't sleep on Sunday night or didn't go to work on Monday if they actually watched the game.
I avoid watching the super bowl as a matter of principle. I don't really like the physical violence of football, and I don't like the way that the wives, in general, get treated on super bowl day. So I boycott it. Thus, I didn't see the commercials. Thus, I haven't added anything constructive to this discussion. :-)
I used the time to take a nice, warm nap.
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
"So, were you two an item?"
"I'm not saying"
"Aww, come on. Throw me a bone."
Oh it was great. It ended up with someone calling the control booth and telling them that the camera was on in there instead of out on the field.
Later...
KangarooBox - We make IT simple!
Remember a few years ago that there was a Budweiser commercial with ants carrying a bottle to their ant hill? Anyone got a video file copy of it? I used to have a copy of that, and I regret deleting it :(.
:)
How about the horse football one? Anyone got that too?
Please e-mail me if you do. Thanks!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
The Mountain Dew / Bohemian Rhapsody commercial was best, simply because it received more hype than the actual game did.
Disclaimer: The concentration of Mt. Dew in my bloodstream is so high that it has attained sentience and controls my actions.
-sig-
That "Cat herding" commercial by far was the best commercial ever! There is nothing like bringing in Half a million short hairs. (And it was a good game, The Titans put on a hell of a show!)
My $(1/50),
--Evan
I took a nap :-)
Shut up you fucking retard.
so where does one get to watch them online?
No, it's really 800 million viewers. Not quite the World Cup, but much much bigger than "Just American".
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
Spoken by a true Nerd. Illegal formation on the defense? 18 is usually a QB number. 10 yards, try 5 yards when an Offense does it. Stick to being a Nerd.
I watched the game last night on Sat 1, (From 12:30 to 4:00a.m.) Unfortunately, Sat 1 just took the ABC feed of the game, used its own announcers (Superbowl in German!) and used it's own advertising. What this means is they took the same commercial breaks as ABC, but just filled them with the same spots over and over. I saw advertisements for:
1. Kinder MaxiKing (chocolate treat)
2. The Nike "What are you getting ready for" commercial where the guy runs up the hill in full pads and jumps off
3. An ad for Nutella with the Frankfurt Galaxy football team (where they make the Americans on the team look like idiots
4. A couple of other ads that were so nondescript that I can't even be bothered to remember them
I guess the good news is is that if the ads were especially funny or clever, they'll make their way into the mainstream, or be featured on "Die Dickste Dinger" (a weekly show about funny commercials)
Bjorky
"Dogs love me cause I'm crazy sniffable/
I bet you never knew I got the ill peripheral"
-Beastie Boys 'The Move'
-----
"Defenestration" is to throw out of a window; what's a word for throwing 'Windows' out of something?
DUDE! I did /NOT/ need to see that!
I didn't really think there were any amazing commercials at all. The leopard one was pretty cool, but they need to come up with some new effects. I'm sick of seeing Matrix-like rip-offs (i.e. the car commercial.) Also, it's pretty much an example of the direction our society is going if you look at the commercials that were on. I would say 90% of them were Internet sites.
--
The shareholder is always right.
i think my favorite was schwab retirement commercial....i don't remember any other great ones...help me out guys?
~sig~He who waits for opportunity to knock will never hear the doorbell~end sig~
"Please, real geeks, post here and tell everyone what you did *instead* of watching that bullshit."
I played some Grand Theft Auto 2 and a lot of Q3A . . . some online, but not much, because my ping sucks. So I worked on a level, too.
"Maybe it seems more interesting after a few beers, eh brah? "
I do live right across from a liquor store . . .
later
Dan
Also, for those watching the ABC commercials, Christopher Reeve is going to be on Good Morning America tomorrow to talk about why he did the commercial. Obviously, the people doing the commercial anticipated that some people might be somehow offended by the ad. I personally think it's great the we have someone like Christopher Reeve who uses his name recognition to solicit funds for research which will help many more people than him.
You will confuse the Don Knots guy.
I don't give a rat's ass about the commercials... I just wanted to see Bocephus!!!!!!!
Stop spamming /. with your stupid CNN parody.
Even installing NT is more exciting than watching sweaty 300 pound men in tight pant run into each other.
It's worse than that, it's men all chasing after OBLONG BALLS. At least in soccer the homo-eroticism is more friendly. Players that score get kissed and grabbed by their team-mates. It's a more natural sort of thing, but the American football thing is really sado-masochistic with all the aggression and the tight, shiny constraining uniforms. Bizarre.
But you say want the commercials? I don't get it. Maybe they should sell a collectors edition. Or they could have a special version of the game with the game edited out. Man *shakes head bemusedly*.
And he's talking about the guy racing and catching the leopard, not the Bohemian Rhapsody commerical.
--
I thought the E*Trade monkey commercial was awful. "Well, we just wasted $2 Million. What do you want to do with your money?" Ummm... how about, for starters, I not send it to a someone that's going to waste it??
I also thought the Christopher Reeves commercial was awful, and tasteless. If it were for a charity, or maybe even for some medical company, I could understand. But an investment firm?? C'mon!
My favorite commercial by far was the cat herding commercial (download a crappy realaudio version of it at www.eds.com). They showed it a second time and I laughed even more because there were little bits I missed the first time (from laughing so much) -- like the guy rolling up the ball of string.
Other good commercials:
The "He's got money coming out the wazoo!" ad was great (I think this was an E*Trade commercial too). The 7-Up guy putting the soda machine in a "high-traffic area" (the center lane of a freeway) was great. There are a few others but those stick out the most in my mind.
Other bad commercials:
The car commercial that was a rip-off of a gap commercial. This was not a parody, because there was nothing funny about it. It was just a dumb rip-off.
The "Pepsi One tastes just like Coke" commercial. First of all -- ewww! Those people are giving each other germs. Second of all -- Pepsi One does not taste like Coke. At all. Get over it.
To the people who don't like football:
You don't have to like football. That's your choice. But for some reason a lot of you come out of the woodwork around the super bowl to try to make those who like football feel guilty about it. The only reason I can think of for this is that you are jealous that a lot of people are enjoying an event that you aren't enjoying, even though you *choose* not to enjoy it. Maybe I'm wrong.
And for the person who thinks wives are mistreated because of football -- get real. First of all, there are lots of females that love football. Second of all, I don't know of any guys that hide their football 'habit'. The women who get involved with these men know what they are getting into. If a woman doesn't want to be ignored 20 Sundays out of the year, she should not get involved with a guy who ignores everything but football when it's on. There are plenty of football fans (like me) who enjoy it but are fanatical about it, and don't have to watch every game. Bottom line: Don't blame football for people's relationship problems. Those people need to take responsibility for their own problems.
All of the dotcom ads sucked(as well as a lot of other ads) and there were too many of them. I would rather have the cool soda and beer ads. The bud bowl would be really cool to bring back.
first post! eh? eh?
but wasn't it chimp change?
pronoblem
IT'S A ZEPPELIN!
I would pay good money to see an ad where those idiots sing their idiot songs like happy little conformists and then someone comes in and mows them all down with a fucking BFG 10k.
Anyone who watches those ads and thinks those people are cool is not a member of the human race as far as I'm concerned.
Every time I see one of those ads I see where the unabomber was coming from. Or, as Chris Rock would say "I'm not sayin he shoulda killed her.... but I understand."
Hey,
While I agree the CRTC does go a little overboard at times, they are not keeping the American commercials from you in order to make your life more difficult. The reason we don't get the American commercials is quite simple. A Canadian network payed for the Canadian rights to the superbowl. They should therefore not have any comptition for Canadian viewers as they own the Canadian rights. To solve this problem, which can't happen in the US because they don't import Canadian networks like we import American networks. Cable companies/Canadian satelite companies have to show the Canadian channel everywhere on the cable grid the same show is playing. Whenever an American network and a Canadian network are showing the same thing at the same time we see the Canadian network's broadcast. Watch ER on CTV on a Thursday night on channel 15 (Buffalo NBC) and you see the exact same thing on Channel 8 (Rogers CTV). It is only fair, the Canadian network payed for the rights to the show and should get the viewers.
As for the ads themselves some aren't even legal to show in Canada. Take Wayne Gretzky's Zamboni beer ad which aired during the super bowl. Wayne would be considered a "Role Model" for young people therefore he can not be used to sponsor Alchoholic beverages in Canada. The ad will most likely never be shown on a Canadian network because of this law.
While I agree it would be nice to see these ads, especially considering the amount of 'net companies involved I can completely agree with the CRTC on this one.
The above reason is one of the reasons it is illegal to use American sat dishes in Canada.
Perhaps more new bowl ads will come to Canada next year. It only costs $70K for a super bowl ad in Canada.
Paul
---
Mens' tennis national team championship is the Davis Cup, this year won by Australia (though, to be fair, Andre and Pete didn't play). The women's equivalent is the Federation Cup.
As for other World Cups, there are many of them, but perhaps the biggest one that you haven't mentioned is the cricket World Cup which was (you guessed it) won by Australia this year. It might seem like a really strange sport to Americans, but go ask an Indian or Pakistani expatriate about cricket and see the reaction you get. Better still, ask an English expatriate about cricket and watch their downtrodden look . . .
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I made a fake account:
email: fake@emailadress.com
gender: male
DOB: 01/01/1962 (It didn't like 1900)
ZIP: 90210
Have fun!
The question was: What is my IQ?
x
Sports?! No self-proclaimed geek would ever get caught doing something as primitive as watching sports, specially on an inferior device such as a TV! ;)
I like it, I like it. The old "lighten up we're having fun, don't be such a PC git" doesn't really cut it anymore. Good job on satirizing the satirizer of the satirist. Let's all go out now and have some good clean honest fun.
I tried it for a little while during the pre-game show before I went to watch the game on a bigger TV. (screenshot) It consisted of two things: a trivia game and an auto-refresh panel for whatever was going on on the TV. It shows player stats, etc.
Not the most useful thing, since it's more passive like TV and less interactive.
F0 07 C7 C8
The cat herding commercial.
:-)
Some dot com company, but can't remember which - heh, now that's advertising money well spent.
You raise some excellent points, and I'd love to sit down and debate them with you if I hadn't already smashed your little face in and left you a mangled, teeth-sticking-every-which-way drooling dent-headed retard. You notice I didn't talk about fucking that new orifice that I made by rending your flesh so that your ears, mouth, eyes and nostrils all became one giant, wet, bloody, mucousy, teary hole, right? That's because you disgust me.
Ay caramba.
From the bottom of their homepage:
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______________________
"Don't try to confuse the issue with half truths and gorilla dust."
Bill McNeal (Phil Hartman)
Spoken by a true /.'er -- quick to point out when someone is wrong, doing anything possible to make yourself feel superior.
Packers rule!
You lame fuck. The Man stopping you express your freedom? Poor little bastard. Tell you what, I'll sell you a video tape of them.
With that many cats, how did they do that commercial? Those cats could run away easily =).
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
It's completely dumb at worst, and mildly interesting at best.
Everyone donate one dollar, and we can make a remake of that '84 Big Brother ad, but for Linux.
"Think really different." And a picture of Tux.
Eh, I'm dreaming again. Sorry. (Score: -1, OffTopic)...
.sig last updated Jan. 14, 2000
The catherder ad was for EDS.
i think it's so sad that the world has come to this--everyone goes on and on about the goofball commercials, about the goofball football...
but what about the rest of the world, is maybe what he meant to ask? but why does everyone devote four hours of their time to sitting on a couch, critiquing COMMERCIALS of all godforsaken things?
when there's so much *good* that could be done around the world! what if all 200 million (or howymanyever) people just got their cans off those cozy armchairs, and pitched in for their communities?
and no, linux communities don't count! there are starving people out there! cold people out there! and i guess it's kind of stupid on my part to even consider the thought that a SUPERBOWL should inspire people to look beyond their television (or monitor!), but oh well.
it's a day for foolishness, after all.
It's funny.
"the leopard one" doesn't cut it for those of us that missed that particular ad. Could someone _describe_ the ads everyone is talking about?
I agree. The cat herding commercial kicked all kinds of ass. My roommate and I were rolling in the floor, laughing at that one. Much better than the E-trade chimp commercial (which also kicked ass, by the way).
--
Okay, I got Linux installed. So where's the free beer everyone keeps talking about??
Do you remember the other E*TRADE commercial though with the guy jumping out of the window? How messed up was that? Does the make you want to use E*TRADE?
E*TRADE musta spent a ton of money though. They had a commercial during almost every break.
After the game I picked up some budweiser, submited my resume to monster.com and traded some stock on e-trade. ;)
I would of surfed the web, but I couldnt remember those bland commercials websites...
2 million well spent NOT!...
IMHO - The funniest one was the Dancing monkey from Etrade.
This was a true classic. Also kinda interesting was the one w/ Christopher Reeves.
The budweiser one w/ the horse was pretty incomprehensible. Also the "who can spend the most money looking cheap" contest among the dot coms was pretty worthless. But gee, I'm glad E*Trade is actually boasting about how they waste my commision money.
Don't know about this year, but only 133 million watched in the United States last year. Worldwide, though, over 800 million people watched it, with the game broadcast to 144 countries and territories, in 17 languages. I'm sure a lot of Europeans watched it, since there is (or was, anyway) an American football league there. American football also always does great business whenever the teams play in Mexico and Japan.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Ok, for those of you who missed it, heres the most awesome commercial on this years Commercial Bowl.
A chimp is standing on a box, wearing an etrade tshirt. There are 2 clearly senile old men sitting next to him. Some annoying song starts playing, and the men start clapping along while the monkey flails about and screams a bunch. This goes on for 25 seconds.
At this point, all of america is saying "This is the dumbest commercial I've ever seen."
Then it cuts to a text screen.
"We just wasted 2 million dollars. What are you doing with your money? E*Trade.com"
An interesting side note: There was a football game worth watching interspersed in all the commercials. I was confused.
---
"What is that sound its making?"
---
"What is that sound its making?"
"It thinks it has a virus, but its actually just linux."
Let's take a relaxed attitude towards work and watch the stock ticker on my IE channel.
Dot-Com is my favourite squadron.
I believe they can win the Nasdaq trophy in the next finals.
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Wow!
Thank you so very much for this video site!
Every year when the super bowl rolls around, I get more and more pissed off. I live in Canada, and while you lucky americans get to see the $2M + $Production commercials, we get to see the ever popular "Cunard Restaurant" (a $99 dollar commercial, including production (-; ) and Taylor Ford (some tool with their Hi8 taking bad product shots of a local car dealership). ABC was simulcast last night onto a channel called Global. This happens for a lot of shows, and it's completely ridiculous. I hate our cheap commercials that the broadcasters here show because it's cheaper or because of the stupid Canadian Content laws.
I hate the CRTC.
Was it just me, or was the quality of the comercials way down from usual? There were way too many comercials for ABC shows. It seemed like every other comercial was for thier Tuesday lineup.
But in general, the commercials were lame. Concur?
Definitely.
Aside from a handful of standouts (most of which have been mentioned by now), this year's offering really didn't live up to the distinction of being "Super Bowl Ads."
A good one that hasn't been mentioned yet was the Oldsmobile spot spoofing The Gap's "Just Can't Get Enough" ad. It started off looking like the spoofee, but the people just kept getting uglier and uglier until the car finally ran them off the soundstage. The group of people I was with literally hit the floor laughing at that point.
Didn't quite compare to the dancing monkey and cheetah commercials, but it was light-years ahead of the majority of the *.com ads.
James A. Garfield
I thought the Budweiser commercials were great... Namely the one where they wanted the dog to cry...
However, the E*Trade monkey commercial was by far the best.
hmm, I am a "fucking retard". You are the pansy that won't show his name b/c you not only have a computer screen between you and I, but also an anonymous post.
e-trade needs to grow up and so do you.
Dear Troll, I love your posts. I am really interested to know something though: how many levels of indirection are there between what you say and what you believe? Are you really just a little boy crying out to be heard? Sickened at the inhumanity around him, he masks his dearest plea in insincerity? Interested, Little-L.A.-By-The-Desert
> They don't move teams around, because their fans can stop it, and because every city already has several professional teams which would not want a new team to move in.
... thanks to promotion and relegation, the 1st Division or Premier League really does contain the best teams.
I think that in an area with a much higher density of teams, the simple fact that every market has one or more teams probably prevents management from considering a move than any fan or club pressure. If there is no place to move to, there is no incentive to move. Part of the problem with this in the US is that the potential number of markets is huge - probably at least as large as the entire number of European football teams. I simply do not think that there is sufficient talent in any of the American major sports for the quality of sport to be professionally viable. A football team has a roster of about 45, baseball about 25 and with those numbers the injury rate in football would guarantee that none of the teams was ever that good. There probably are not enough players interested in pursuing a professional career to stock as many football or baseball teams as there are European soccer teams.
>
With the proliferation of professional franchises in all the American professional sports, I think a multi-tiered league with promotion and relegation would be an ideal arrangement. Each league could have its own championship series, so there would be plenty of playoffs to keep the greedy owners happy, and the level of competition between teams would be kept pretty even. You could divide the league levels into two divisions to provide the appropriate rivalries and to make the playoff matchups meaningful.
I always like to check all of the sites that advertise on the superbowl and see which ones had enough forethought to actually build a site that can withstand that type of traffic. If I remember correctly, HotJobs had to apologize to its users last year.
This year the "shot yourself in the foot award" would seem to go to KForce.
First of all, KForce's site didn't go up until today. Given how much extra publicity these sites get in the week before the superbowl, it was a waste of the beneficial side effects of adverising a dot com company on the superbowl.
Second, the site was in yo-yo mode for most of the game. I got the default page for a Domino server a couple of times when accessing KForce's site. Ooops! And it was very slow even when it worked correctly.
Deduct extra points because their home page was bloated and filled with annoying Java and JavaScript. Haven't people learned to make their home pages lightweight yet? Death to scrolling text Applets.
Deduct additional points for running Lotus Domino (yuck) on NT (yuck again). No wonder they are having problems.
Can we please cut the US specific crap? Stuff about the US presidential elections, the US educational system... hello!?! Do we look like we care? If you insist on ignoring the international multicultural nature of the internet (what makes it so great), at least put this shit in a separate "USA" category so we can filter it out...
There really wasn't much worth speaking of commercial-wise this Super Bowl... e-Trade's monkey ad was great, and will probably get lodged in our mid-term memory as the best one of this Bowl. I wish they'd done more with the "Make Seven / Up Yours" guy as well...
But in general, the commercials were lame. Concur?
I agree, the commercials were insanely expensive. I didn't see too many that I will remember, so I'd have to say that last year's Super Bowl had better commercials, however, the cheetah one was great :P
- If only I'd remember all these passwords!! -
Anyone with an mpeg viewer can download it from their site if they are so inclined. www.eds.com
The joke of cat herding is actually a very old one. I remember a Far Side cartoon with that punchline many, many years ago. Never ceases to be funny, though :)
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
I'm distressed by the trend to use songs, old movies, famous people, famous dead people and such in ads. That mountain dew commercial with the reworded bohemian rhapsody made me mad. Seems like a trend that's been going on for a while. Like the wizard of oz fedex ad. Or the budweiser ad a few years ago with john wayne footage. I don't know why but it irritates me to see a company using john wayne's image without his permission (for obvious reasons) to sell stuff. Anyway, that's my $.02 on the subject. As for good commercials, I like the "we just wasted 2 million bucks" etrade commercial, and the commercial with god and the tabasco sauce.
One more drink, and I'll move on. --Dave Matthews Band
Sorry if I double posted. :(
-----------------------
Nicotine free Amish .sig.
Gotta respect the cat herding commercial. I was roflol.
I love being unnecessarily cynical about everything that people do! When on Slashdot, I love to flaunt my obvious superiority by putting down the actions of mindless cretins who dare to have a little fun! I enjoy pointing out that because large corporations do some bad things, everything they do must be inherently evil by association and nothing they create can thus be of any value whatsoever! I really relish insisting that everything everyone does must be global, that no one is allowed to talk about things that are going on in their own country! In fact, I should yell at myself because I'm talking about me, and I only exist in the country I live in. But it doesn't matter, because I'm superior to all of you! Long live unmitigated cynicism! Down with fun!
I love being unnecessarily naive about everything that people do! When on Slashdot, I love to flaunt my obvious simplicity by putting down the actions of the thoughtful who dare to question me as Ihave a little fun! I enjoy pointing out that even though Nazis do some bad things, not everything they do must be inherently evil by association and somethings they create can thus be of any value whatsoever! I really relish insisting that everything Amerikkka does must be global, that no one is allowed to talk about things that are going on in their own country! In fact, I should yell at myself because I'm talking about me, and I only exist in advertising fantasy land. But it doesn't matter, because I'm superior to all of you! Long live unmitigated cynicism! Up with fun!
The only one that was laugh-out-loud funny. I also liked the Queen parody Mtn. Dew commercial and the E-trade monkey. Over all, I was pretty disappointed...
And what was that about herding stray cats???? Not exactly the association I'd want my business to have with E-commerce. What was EDS thinking?
I thought the best ad was the won with the cat herding. I could not help but laugh at cats crossing the river I do not remember the name of the company though i so i guess the add was not too effective. The e-trade monkey and the mtn dew ads were also good. The worst ads were the monster.com one and the boxing one(webmd.com i think). Great game though. Of course I was disappointed with halftime heat on USA. I wanted a title match dammit not a stone cold interview!!!
I couldn't believe the snippits of dialogue that I heard from the trailer for Mission to Mars...
Guy looking at a screen with a computer generated graphic,
"That looks like human DNA!"
Cause at a glance, I wasn't sure... The effects did look pretty spiffy, but that doesn't cut it for me.
"I have a cunning plan..."
Without chasing everyone over to my weblog for the grind, the favorite in the room I was watching in was the Tabasco spot (the 'log has a link to the QT4 file), followed by the Clydesdale spot, the FedEx/Wizard of Oz spot, and the VISA 'swimmers' spot, in differing orders of preference.
We did like the Christopher Reeve one, too. And the "slidewalk/credit card fraud" company's stuff sounded pretty cool, too... who were they again? :-)
Cheers,
-- jra
-----
I will only say this much.
This particular bit of annual nuttiness didn't get nicknamed the "Stupid Bowl" for nothing!
It's actually a relatively simple idea. Since the cameras are not moving, orientation-recording sensors can be placed on the tripod and camera. Thus, you can always get a geometric/mathematical depiction of the camera's current field of view, in relation to the field. Then, a laptop uses a tried and true video/film method called chroma-keying, in which a certain color or color range is replaced with another image, to place a yellow line which was computed on one or several laptops using the orientation info from the cameras. It is done in realtime. You won't see it on a replay unless the replay is of the recorded (broadcast) video and not straight off of the camera (as it usually is).
The $20K cost, I'd posit, is in keeping the equipment calibrated, transported, and maintained, and paying the expert staff required.
-La'Choppe
[X] - Drive nail here for a new monitor
-- "With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine." -- RFC 1925
Geez. I happen to think this corporate internet thing is pretty cool. I LIKE being able to trade stocks for $8 instead of paying a brocker $35 - $75 a trade. What the hell is wrong with that? I'm starting to think /. is nothing but a bunch of socialists!
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DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
The "bohemian rhapsody" Mountain Dew commercial. My wife and I laughed our ass off.
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DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
Both of these teams played their hearts out all season and in tonight's great game. Don't you have anything better to do than disparage them?
For the kind of money they make, should you expect any less?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
This has GOT to be a troll.
1. Commercials are better than the vast majority of PROGRAMMING. And they are almost always better than the actual game.
2. Corporations have no moral, ethicial, or practical need to have "democratic representation." If you don't like the one you work for, start your own!
3. The super bowl is the single most-watched televised event in the world. The author made an assumption that 99% of the people would know the Super Bowl was yesterday.
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DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
For the first time in a while, the game was actually better than the commercials, (well, ok just the second half.) Esp. compared to last year. although it was fun to see all that corporate money flow down the drain! What s not to like.
Wow, that was some fast moderation. I'm amazed that you actually passed up a chance to add your own comments to this extremely valuable and exiciting topic to simply moderate away some of my vast karma reserves. I have more than you can ever take away girly boy. Bwahahaha!
The Bud-dog-hedge-van was the best. Everybody at the party cracked up upon seeing that one.
All the rest left us wanting.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
And the sock puppet (pets.com ?) slaughtering Chicago's "If You Leave Me Now" was right up there as tackiest use of a song.
There's a difference between using Windows and being a Windows user. Although people who are Windows users may sometimes be geeks, I think it's fairly obvious that it is much more difficult, since you have to shell out big bucks to get a version of Windows that can actually do anything useful (like NT Server.. what's that at now, $1700?). Linux is exceptionally good for hobbyists for this reason. Plus you gotta spend even more money for a compiler of some sort, since Windows doesn't come with anything of any utility built in that can be sold seperately.
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
There is another Reston, VA co. that really has perks! During the Superbowl, the owner had rented FedEx stadium (the one the Redskins play in, MD) the WHOLE THING, for all of his employees to watch the game and party in the skyboxes (or other party facilities). Also, the boss takes the whole company on a "spouse-free" cruise every year. I *think* it is Microstrategy.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
I love commercials! Clever and entertaining ways for large, rich corporations to overtly and/or subliminally influence my thought patterns are a great reason to turn on a television that I try to avoid as much as possible. When discussing commercials, I really enjoy pretending that everyone in the world watches in the same country and sees the same commercials and assuming that everyone knows what "the Big Game" is or even what sport I'm referring to. Long live powerful corporations with authoritarian internal structures that make a farce of democratic representation!
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
Yahoo has a "vote for your favorite" thangie with streaming copies of the commercials. http://promotions.yahoo.com/promotions/superspots/
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Should be interesting to see how fast everybody who was going to boycott the major studios to put pressure on DVD CCA caves in when the big movies start coming out.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
For some unknown reason, he agreed to it. He's on an interview with Diane Sawyer (everyone's favorite... snore...). I think it's tomorrow.
Definite agreement on ETrade. I definitely cried from laughing so hard. The Budweiser commercial where the dog leaped into the side of the van was hysterical too. It'd be a close tie between those two.
Well, thar I was, sittin' thar with my wife and 'er friends arounds the picksnick table, when I gots up to go and gets a soda. I did. And when I gets to the mans with the soda, I get an orange and then, suddenly, a crowd came by and I had to go with them because they pulled me through this gate, they did, and they made me spill my orange drink all over the fronts of my shirts, I did, and thar was this feller thar that says to me "Tickat sir," and I goes "I don't have one, they just pulled me through here." And so he says "Well, just come on through when ya can." Sos, I goes and I sits down in this thang that looks kinda like a cow pasture with lines drawn all over it, and so I sat down. I did. So, then there was like 40 guys runnin' out of the end of this outhouse, there was. And after they all ran out and one sides of the pasture was cheering, 40 guys ran out of the other end of the outhouse. There was. And then the other sides of the pasture starts cheering and yelling and I asks the guy next to me, "What's exactly is goin' on here?" and he looks at me and laughs and slaps me on the back and says "Hey, buddy, have a drink." and I said "I think I will. I'll have an orange drink." and I did. And then there was convicts comin' up all over the cow pasture and then about 10 of each group of fellers ran onto the field and then one of the convicts came up and took something and through it up in tha air. And I guess they were flippin' a penny or somethin' and then one of the guys got really upset, and then the convict gave the upset guy this thing that looked like a pumpkin. And, I tell you my friends, I will, that these fellers had had the biggest fight I ever did see in my life, yes I did, and I think it was all about this pumpkin, but I don't know if theys wanted to eat it or anything because they kicked it 'round for a good hour and it never did bust open, but then the feller that asked me fer that ticket back thar came back and found me and he says to me "You're gonna have to leave sir cuz you ain'ts gots no tickets" and I'm like "okay." I was. And I got up and I went, and I never did tell my wife what happened, I didn't. And I still don't know what they're doin out on that cow pasture, but I'll tell you one thing, they didn't look to brights, they kept runnin' into eachother, and it's just givin' me a headache right now talkins to you abouts it.
G'day.
Dan
...but you see, they didn't waste it. That commercial, by being hilarious, was the best of the Bowl. It'll likely get a lot more customers... and if eTrade's got tons of customers, they can lower their commissions per-user.
And you'd like that, wouldn't you?
Yeah, whatever, football nerd....
"Nobody owns the fucking words man." - James Dean
I dont know which was my favorite, but did anyone else notice how many lame .com commercials there were? Personally I'm getting sick of the corporate internet. However, if you want to relive all the great commercials, check out www.adcritic.com, where you can view commercials in Quicktime and rate them. Not just for the superbowl but always.
Pitch Dark is supposed to be a tepid aliens ripoff. Beh...
Mission to mars is getting extremely good script reviews and the SFX look stellar. Not very sciency or whatall, but looks original at least. I will be in line.
U-571 is supposed to be very good to excellent. I will be in line too.
-troll taker
Which as correctly pointed out, was a cheetah.
Either way, there's a guy on a bike racing a cheetah through a desert. He eventually gets close to it, jumps off his bike and tackles it. They pace around each other, he reaches DOWN its throat (yuck) and pulls out a can of Mountain Dew with cat-fang marks in it. He looks at it, shakes it to see if it's empty, then says "bad kitty! BAD KITTY!"
Cut to his three friends on top of a mountain. One turns to another and says, "see, that's why I'm not a cat person."
--
#1 - The ETRADE ad was brilliant - a bunch of us who didn't even know the Titans were an actual football team were sitting around waiting to see the dotcom ads and were not let down. Did anyone notice Geech and Cousin Merle clapping along with the monkey? That killed me. #2 - Why didn't the Pepsi One ad have the people not being able to tell the difference between Pepsi One and regular Pepsi? It seems kinda self defeating to have them not being able to tell Pepsi One from Coke. (Whatever, I'm a Diet Coke drinker, addicted to the delicious aspartame). My $.02, thanks for your time.
These comments and opinions are mine and mine alone, although they shouldn't be.
A few of those ads are clever, but most are unbelievably stupid. I wish I could be CEO of one of the companies advertised, so i could fire both the ad agency that produced the commercial and the idiot who hired them.
Maybe, instead of ranting, you could explain how moving a football team out of a city that in no way shape or form supported it can be considered carpetbagging? Perhaps you could weave in some brilliant insight as to how this could happen in the 2nd largest media market in the nation as well. While you're at it, maybe a quick lecture on how it happened twice (Rams and Raiders)?
I have all the respect in the world for Christopher Reeves, but I have to wonder what he was thinking. And what exactly did spinal cord research have to do with an investing fund?
Whatever.
uhmmm...
No kidding. The GAP-like commercial was for Oldsmobile.
cagey
These were the worst commercials I can remember. There was only one Budweiser commercial I liked and that was the one with the dog jumping the hedges and smashing into the side of a truck.
Please bring back the lizard!
The etrade commercial was the best. The one that said "We just wasted $2 million on this lousy commercial..." That one was pretty funny.
That was a good one - although I missed everything that was said after "That's why I give him Budweiser" - because the people I was with were laughing so hard!
A related thought - you see people taking dogs for walks - have you ever seen a cat be taken for a walk?
Yep. The way to do it is to stand still with the cat on the leash until it walks a few steps the direction you want to go. Then stop and wait again. And again. And repeat. And occasionally prod the cat with your foot when it lays down in protest. Then give up four hours later and carry the cat home.
Steven E. Ehrbar
My personal favorite was the Titan A.E commercial. I had shivers
I've always referred to it as "taking the cat out for a drag".
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Loved the cat herding comercial. EDS really hit the nail on the head. 7up commercials were greate too.
Man, at least warn us...I was at work when I hit that URL...sheesh
In the meantime, I wouldn't mind seeing some of the ads. Hopefully the better ones will make it onto normal TV hours, but that seems to happen so rarely...
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
Netpliance actually has a pretty good idea there - I went and looked around thier web site. It appears that it's hooked up via phone line, but trys to stay as disconnected as possible.
If anyone picks up the phone, it autmatically disconnects and waits until the phone is free again before continuing. It also detects call waiting and lets calls through in the same way. In these respcets it is way ahead of any other internet appliances...
It's also instant-on - no boot time.
I wonder if it's using the Transmeta chip?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
As much as I hate Nike, they usually have a cool or clever ad on during the SB, but I didn't see one this year. I didn't watch the whole game so perhaps I missed it. Was there one?
I'm not a big sports fan, but the best part about the Super Bowl is when it's over, and we can finally talk about baseball again, a far more elegant sport.
Ignore Alien Orders
Supposedly ABC is also looking at using the Enhanced TV to supplement Who Wants to be a Millionaire
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
My favorite was the Oldsmobile commercial that was a complete spoof of the gap commercials. Trendy lip synching of Gary Numan's 'Cars'... only to have to run to avoid getting run over...
Doesn't get much better.
Celebrate Excellence!
Actually, I just watched the commerical now, and I don't get it. I just see some guys herding cats instead of cattle. I still haven't "got" it yet.
The Commercial Archive has commercials from Superbowl XXXIII and XXXII, but nothing from tonight. It may be a bit pre-mature to ask this, but does anyone know of an archive of today's commercials (preferably just the good ones)?
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
What happened to the lizards and the ferret?
I loved how E-Trade basically mocked the entire commercialization thing by saying "Well, we just wasted $2 million...what are you going to do with your money?" (Paraphrasing)
----------------
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
This is one of the problems about living in canada. The CRTC puts a stop to us getting to many of the US's ads. It pretty much seems that the commercials during the superbowl were about the same as they always are up here. Really dull. It is actually quite annoying. If anyone has links to any of the funnier commercials, some of the canadian /.ers would enjoy watching them. I really hate it when the government trys to limit what we can watch on tv.
uhmm...
there was an apple commercial, one for the iBook. it was during the first or second quarter i beleive, probably near the end of the first quarter.
However, my personal favorite was the Buick commercial... it started off like a Gap commercial, but then the people started getting ugly and becoming really bad singers and getting scared looks on their faces. Then a car comes power-sliding into view and all the people run off. then the buick logo comes of and under it it says "Its not what everybody else is doing". thats when i totally cracked up... i think this had to be the cleverest, and most satiristic(is that a word?) commercial of them all, although it may have been a little too subtle for some (the logo, with the slogan --and punchline-- was only shown for a split second).
--Chojin
PS for those of you that dont know, the Gap (and its commercials) is a clothing store that gives new meaning to trendiness. They'd make you think wearing blue when most people were wearing red was individuality.
The best was the herding cats commercial for the multiple genuinely funny jokes. The worst was the horrible sellout of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody," hijacked by a sugar water company. They turned a classic, if cheesy song into a disgustingly trite piece of music video trash. I have never witnessed a commercial charged with such magnatudinous, fire eating stupidity.
I am not a lawyer.
Let's put it into perspective: While your room mate was enjoying the company of other human beings, while he was sharpening his social skills, having fun, and associating with his peers, you sat alone at your computer for six hours.
Get out of the apartment! Meet some people! Interact! Have fun!
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
What the fick are you talking about? Is this an example of a "news item" where all of /. is going to assume we are all US based?
they have quicktimes of all the commercials up.
Yes... I don't know if that was good or not (I assume it was intended)... when I first started watching that commercial and heard the "hot jobs" phrase, I thought, "Oh, a HotJobs.com commercial." Then, when they said "monster of a job," I thought, "Oh, a commercial for Monster.com." Finally, when the revealed that it was a commercial for kForce.com, I thought, "The hell is kForce.com?"
Not a very effective commercial IMHO.
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
I liked the Farm & Fleet commercial. I didn't know that you could find value at Farm & Fleet.
sup
You forgot to mention that they had this great "Cat" logo (in the same font and box as the "Gap" logo afterwards.
But yeah, their promos are kick ass. I'm not to fond of the Johnnys but the "Power puff girl" promo with these not-quite-slim women in green leotards run around is hillarious. Also the Dexters is great.
Or what about the scooby doo project, with Shaggy going on about "oh I am soo scared" and a little scooby doo totem made in the same style as the one in the blair witch. Brilliant
irony done well is just to funny
Please indicate exactly where you find irony in this commercial. I thought it was funny, but not because it was ironic.
Chimps are funny.
Of course Stanford CS undergrad was heavily focused on Macs at the time, so I'm sure that her degree holds no weight here.
Heh, my personal favorite is the one where "the boss" calls a guy into the office...
Boss: It's always hard to say this...you're fired.
Guy: *pause* No I'm not.
Boss: *matter-of-fact* Yes you are.
Guy: No I'm not.
Boss: Yes, you are!
Guy: No I'm not!
Boss: Yes, you are!
Guy: *thinks* Yes I am!
Boss: Yeah, you are.
Fade to black, text on screen: "You are not bugs bunny."
Or what about the scooby doo project, with Shaggy going on about "oh I am soo scared" and a little scooby doo totem made in the same style as the one in the blair witch. Brilliant
There's actually some .rm files of these at http://ghostbusters.inte rspeed.net/cats/cartoon/shorts.htm. But yeah, too many great ones to mention!
you can read the review in Style here.
(btw, that Abio ad with the waving tail is driving me nuts. It doesn't help that Netscape doesn't seem interested to ungrey the Stop button until the animation has run through one complete cycle. If only there were a way to disable gif animations by default... Mozilla, I suppose.)
What would really be cool is a web site that shows nothing but popular commercials on demand. It would get lots of traffic! (e.g. You see a funny commercial, you tell your pal to check it out on the site x lots of people.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~ Read my lips; no new faxes ~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Huh? What commercials? Up here in Canada the damned CRTC rules that if a canadian station is broadcasting the same show, that your cable company has to air their coverage on the US station. So, a local station was rebroadcasting the ABC coverage, the only change the local station made was to insert local/canadian commercials, and the cable company slapped that over the ABC channel.
Bloody CRTC they do this all the time... same with The Simpsons, Futurama, X-Files, and too many other shows to mention.
All of the commercials advetising websites royally sucked. The e-trade one was cool, all the others were pretty funny.
While flipping by the Superbowl today I realized something that may be of relevance to the iCraveTV shutdown.
:) I wanna punch that sleazebag computer coming on to that poor lady in that Sprint Canada commercial.
Here in Canada, we of course get American stations along with Canadian ones. However, it's standard practice up here during events simulcast on both an American and a Canadian station to cut the signal from the American station and replace it with the Canadian one.
For instnace, we watch The Simpsons on Sunday nights on both FOX and Global, but it's Global's commercials we get to watch. I guess the clocks aren't quite in sync. Usually the change is quite abrupt. If I'm watching Simpsons on Fox, I get right up to Bart at the Blackboard when it cuts out and starts over again, this time "The Simpsons On Global"
Now we didn't get all those fancy smancy commercials up here in Canada, but rather a lot of Canadian ones, even though we still see the American coverage (ABC, right?). So if someone watched the Superbowl on iCraveTV, they'd not see these $2 million dollar spots of advertising glory, but rather the standard Canadian "boring" commercials we regularly see.
mmm Oh how I fancy a McCain's pizza right now, or want to buy Petro-Canada gas instead of those other foreign corporate gas stations from Texas or Holland... Warm Canadian fuzzy feelings.
Any followup theories?
and you can take 18 of your favorite buddies in style. It can fly New York to Tokyo non-stop(6200 nautical miles) because it has a range of 6500 nautical miles. It has been considered one of the best private jets availible by many people. I'd be happy to sell you one for 100 million then I'd go out and buy one of my own. They are availible used and the Gulfstream G4 is almost as nice for less money.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The one thing that disappointed me was that the Budweiser frogs were nowhere in site. They didn't have the iguanas or the weasel either. I don't know about everyone else, but I love these guys and it didn't seem right when they were not in the superbowl.
Despite the fact that it was aired twice during the game (and I was really paying attention the second time, having been very confused by this ad the first go-around), the ad for WebMD.com, featuring Muhammed Ali, left me completely befuddled. I was mostly confused by the text, which was apparently meant to get the main message of the ad across, since the images consisted only of Ali dancing/stinging for the camera. It went something like:
me.
fighting time.
not time wasted on medical care.
we.
[something about learning about medicine together on the web].
WebMD.com logo - and fade to black.
Huh? I guess it makes sense at a certain level, but am I missing some powerful message here?
UP YOURS!
For example, OurBeginning.com, which spent over $3.5 million dollars, saw a spike on their web site today, from 40 connections per second to over 500 connections per secondb Kby teWmJu&Topic=Internet-News&Nav=na-search-&StoryTit le=Internet-News)
(see http://www.newsalert.com/bin/story?StoryId=Cojpfu
Another advantage of the commercials is name/brand recognition. According to an article (http ://abcnews.go.com/sections/business/DailyNews/supe rbowl_netads_000113.html) on ABCNews.com, HotJobs.com, which had commercials in last year's SuperBowl, found it was much easier to raise VC funds. To quote the article:
I find it funny, though, that the vast majority of the commercials were .com related. It seemed all commercials fit into one of three categories:
One thing I thought was interesting, were the couple of commercials geared towards women (the Oxygen.com commercial, for example). That seems like wasted money, since the demographics for the SuperBowl viewer, I'd assume, are heavily skewed toward the male gender.
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
Frank T. Clark 230 East 9th Street #3C New York, NY 10029 212-831-0882 http://www.dorsai.org/~delchi/delindex.htm http://www.dorsai.org/~delchi/index.htm delchi@dorsai.org
this is what truly sucks about being in the military overseas. yes, we did get to see the bowl live, but all the commercials are replaced by dull public service announcements and military propaganda. so i don't get to watch the superbowl commercials, but at least i know which american president discovered a unique proof of the pythagorean theorem :p
-- the opinions stated above aren't those of my employer. in fact, they're probably not even my own. you know what, ju
Mabey it's just an American thing. But I find the thread of - "and my favorite tv adverts over a five hour period (in decending order) are ...." - just a bit too sad. Some may provide a modicum of entertainment, but is it really - stuff that matters.
Hopefully next year we'll see a commercial from a Linux Conglomerate consisting of say Redhat, VA Linux and others, maybe even IBM, Dell , And Compaq. Then my friends would finally quit thinking that I'm crazy for foretelling the success of our favorite operating system.
Well, maybe not chump change. But the fact is, years ago, when I heard about these mega-spots for the suprebowl and their associated price tags, 7 figures were simply inconceivable amount of money to spen on anything, let alone a TV ad.. $1 million bucks (back then) for a commercial? Huh?
.com companies taking in venture funding in the range of $50 to $100 million a round, and having all of $2 million worth of real work to do, this kind of pricing must seem like a drop in the bucket. Especially when you consider how superbowl ads accomplish the dual tasks of getting them noticed, and also making internet use a more mainstream acceptable activity.
But today, with
On a different note, My vote for the most useless ad goes to Netpliance, where in the beginning of the ad they talk about how you shouldn't need a computer to send e-mail, etc.. and end the ad with a picture of their "innovation" that makes this possible, which is, um... a computer. Albeit a weak, stripped down one.
I don't know. I liked the FedEx one myself followed by the Leopard Mountain Dew.
1st) By Far is the E*Trade Monkey commerical (irony done well is just to funny).
2nd) I think it would have to be for lifeminders.com, and I like how they have changed there page to reflect it.
3rd) would have to be the mountain dew comercials, the lepoard one, and then the queen one.
But did anyone else notice how there were animals in 99% of the commericals?! Do Animals sell?!
My favorite two: the E-Trade one where they say "Well, we just wasted two million dollars", and the other one (forget what .com it was) where they said something along the same lines. Etrade wiped up though..nothing else really compared, although the Monster.com one was pretty interesting.
Although, two of the movies seem interesting: Titan AE, and Mission to Mars..but still, none of them compare to the Matrix ad last(?) year..that caught everybody offguard..and the budweiser commercials of old--those were good.
Maybe next year all these companies can redeem themselves. -Axiem
For example, what the hell was up with this year's Monster.com commercial? Or that Allegio (or whatever the hell it was called) commercial where they sang "We Are the Champions?" Many of these commercials were funny, but forgot to push whatever they were selling. The one with Christopher Reeves was cool, but the majority of people out there are going to forget what it was for an investment company. Try remembering the name of the company off the top of your head for example.
The thing that disturbed was the computer animation of Christopher Reeves walking. Was this really nessecary?
That and the HotJobs hand thing is a total bust...I knew that one was going to be a flopped when I read about Superbowl advertising in the last issue of Wired.
no sig
Example: The first touchdown that Houston [er, Tennessee] scored in third quarter. ABC momentarily cut to a birds-eye POV shot of the Titan offense lining up. The formation hinted a run left [from the defense's POV], but the running back went right, following the lead of a pulling guard. End result: Six points and a whole new ballgame.
Looking through the battle maps in one of my When Titans Clashed; how the Red Army stopped Hitler by David M. Glantz and Jonathan House [kickass book BTW], I noticed that the Red Army employed similar tactics during the epic Stalingrad campaign. Zhukov lined the 17TC, 6, 24TC, 25TC and 18TC on the extreme left flank [faking a sweep left in football parlance] but sent the bulk of the tanks right [a counter trey], deep, deep, deep into the Op. Gp. Hollidt backfield. End result: Bye bye Sixth Army and a whole new war.
Of course, if you buy that analogy, yesterday's end result was kind of depressing. The Titan ground game proved to be too little too late, and the Wermacht-like Rams held on to the victory.
Waiting for the day when viewers can choose the camera angles [and send in the plays]. ;)
Sam p.s. the E-Trade monkey commercial was best.
Someone has already called this guy and he never heard of /. Find out who keeps posting this guy's info without having a clue of who the Don Knots guy really is.
Curious -- I can't agree. They are both team activities. This puts me in mind, however, of an interesting distinction between regular software development and open source development.
Regular software development and sports are both heirarchal and top-down oriented. (Someone decides the game plan and then it is executed.) Open Source is bottom-up oriented (someone decides to write an app.) However, with Linux, you get the best of both worlds -- there is a master plan, but individuals decide what part they will write.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
Three out of the six people I watched the SuperBowl with thought this was also the best, and two of them were out of the bar when it was run. But my question was: What was the commercial for? None of us could remember what they were advertising. Probably a bad commercial in that respect, but worlds above the others in everything else.
In Vino Veritas
Why was this article here?
- mipe -
Now you are just assuming the guy was mentally challenged, myself, I thought they just looked like a couple of rednecks. Ever been down south? Anyhow, this was my favourite commercial, made me laugh the most.
Speaking of commercials, there is a business idea for someone - how about commercials.com where you can go see streaming video of all the commercials that are out. Users can vote for their favourites and you can even give rewards. This ought to even further inspire creativity w/ advertising as the more popular ones will have users willingly lining up to view them. I'm sure there are most of us that may have missed one of the funnier ones or two due to a bathroom break or running to the icebox. Probably won't have any problems getting companies to allow you to show their commercials for free! (They might even pay you to promote them on the site!)
Anything w/ a monkey gets my vote! Out.
The idea here is that unlike cattle, cats are highly individualistic critters who do whatever they feel like at any given time rather than what you want them to do. A popular expression over the years has been "managing programmers is like herding cats".
A related thought - you see people taking dogs for walks - have you ever seen a cat be taken for a walk?
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
I know monkeys, in fact I like 'em. And that, sir, was no monkey. Monkeys have tails for Chrissakes!
Butchers make the bestest meat; sugar sugar sugar beet!
EDS Cat Herders (Score:5, Funny)
7up Exploding Vending Machine (Score:4, Funny)
computer.com helped daddy learn how to download pictures (Score:4, Funny)
e*trade "Guy Jumping out Window" (Score:3, Funny)
e*trade "Money Out the Wazoo" (Score:2, Funny)
The game (Score:1)
MicroStrategy (Score:0, Redundant)
monster.com "The Road Not Taken" (Score:0, Offtopic)
Microsoft E-Business (Score:-1, Troll)
Half-time show (Score:-2, Kill me now)
Apparently New Orleans got a very cool tabasco sauce commercial. I didnt get to see it, but I watched it here at tabasco's website. It's got god putting tabasco on a slice of pizza and the tabasco he spills falls to earth as "comets." Hard to pick between this one and the last tabasco commercial with the mosquito, which you can also see at the site.
Articles like this nearly make me think I miss something in my life.
On the second thougt -- no I don't.
Moderate this down (-1e14, U R Nuts)
--
Industrial space for lease in Flatlandia.
...it's time to start shitting on the Worst.
Which, without a doubt, was Agillion.com's ad showing a bunch of schmucks atonally singing "We are the Champions".
I want to make several points here. First, did Brian May recently lose all his money in a Ponzi scheme, or were all these ads done by companies that hire a guy who likes Queen? Second, those of you who haven't read Salon's article on the Name Game (look it up, I'm not yer librarian) need to do so, and then you can join me in snickering as we all think about how much the boobs at Agillion paid for that name.
Learn to spell: nickel, missile, lose, solely, amendment, speech, kernel, probably, ridiculous, deity, hierarchy, versus
--
The shareholder is always right.
As in, the state of the TV for the past few weeks. Off. I didn't even know the football equivalent of a Holy Orgy was going on until my roommate came up to tell me about one of the commercials around seven.
My question isn't "What was your favorite?", but "What could you have accomplished instead of spending a few hours doping up on Soma?" Advertising is the worst sort of mental static, and a horrible reason to watch an atrociously unfulfilling event.
I liked "Off" the most. Because of Off, I got to work in Photoshop for six hours while my roommates have nothing to show for themselves but a few scraps of conversation for the water cooler tomorrow.
Vidiots are really what's wrong with entertainment these days, why it has ceased to be entertaining.
You are a sick twisted little kid. Grow some pubes and get a life.
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OK, so I suppose they mean ``find a product'' when the ambiguously use ``do'', and I run LinuxPPC, not UNIX, but it's at least nice to be recognized and treated with respect as opposed to having that ``You are not running Windows or MacOS! Conform!'' message thrown in our faces.
-AC
What?? Nobody liked the commercial with the dog and the owner playing, with the voice-over ending up being the dog saying "So that's why I give him Budweiser." That and the impossibility of herding cats. And, "I mean, hey, he's got money coming out the wazoo."
"We apologize for the inconvenience."
...when you could be out helping your community? actually, why do you even read slashdot at all? doesn't you community need you?
Is this another one of these "all american pie" things?
Can someone please explain slow and easy what this fuzz is all about to a european?
It seems that the recent trend in commercials is to have over exaggerated movement sound effects (skiing, running, breathing) followed by complete silence. Take a look at that BMW commercial, it was a perfect example.
Have a nice day!
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
the commercial w/the monkey and the mentally challanged person was atrocious. I think that they should give 100x the amount they spent on that commercial to organizations that support the mentally retarded. That was an outrade. I am VERY disappointed.
I cannpt give any figures or make any assertions, but anyone who knows anything about urban planning (even if you have played SimCity!) knows that the entertainment needs of the people must be met. Sure, it may seem unfair that the government gives money to football instead of whatever your favorite recreation is, but that's democracy. Most sports team owners don't own teams to make money, they do it because they probably have always wanted to, and now they can. Many lose money, some make money.
This is just alot of naive anti-corporate BS. If you want to see problems with this evil corporate regime, ask why many ball players make more than the CEO of General Motors or Ford? These are 20-something year old punks while the others are intelligent businessmen responsible for thousands of livelihoods? Tell Michael Moore to put that in his pipe and smoke it!
This is not the greatest sig in the world, this is just a tribute.
You're just now getting sick of corporate internet? wow, you got staying power! hehe. I've been sick of it for ages. Maybe thats because I fear/hate what will become of the internet in order for commerce and electronic signatures to be valid. or I miss being on of the few who knows what eMail is.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
They could have posted a linux flame, and there hits would of gone through the roof. for, nearly, free. Once /. got a hold of iy anyways!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Anybody else find it ironic that .coms spend millions for ads, so someone will go to there site and view ads?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You can view all the commercials seen during the Super Bowl at Yahoo's site.
The cat herding rocked! But the connection to EDS was reeeeeally cheesy (we herd information or something dumb like that). They shoulda just displayed their name and let the cats run over it with no explanation. Meowwww...
Although, the overall quality of the commercials was not up to Super Bowl par I thought--I was disappointed.
And the E*Trade monkey? Now that's an novel idea. A novelly stupid one.
.. with your soda companies calling their product, "pop" in some circumstances. We don't call it "pop" back east because we don't want to sound like hillbillies.
At first I was surprised you would give such prominent coverage to the Australian Open (tennis) final. Then I realised people were talking of "downs" etc, so because I've spent a lot of time in the States I understood it must be American football. The national final game then?
It might be the Big American Game, but outside N America few are aware of it.
the cat roundup commercial was the best. it nailed my job to a t
s/games/ways/?
Yep. In a hurry and forgot to preview.
But, actually, this is just the problem: the cash that St. Louis just basically gave to the Rams most certainly was economically quantifiable, and the other very pressing needs of St. Louis are also economically quantifiable, so the idea of spending that much cash on something just to "make it exciting to live in" goes way past stupid and borders on the immoral.
There are a whole whole lot of pressing needs in St. Louis, no doubt about it. While most of them can't be solved by throwing money at them, some of them could certainly use more funding, and thus I have to say that you raise a valid point.
However, "making a city exciting to live in," while not easy to quantify economically, does have many potential positive economic benefits. For one thing, the TWA dome is not just a football stadium (and a concert venue), but also a very large--and at the time it was built, very necessary--convention center. Yes, it cost more money to build it as a football stadium than it would have otherwise, but the fact remains that St. Louis will more than get their investment out of the TWA dome/Convention Center on the basis of the huge tax revenues brought in by large conventions. Furthermore, the Rams pay taxes as well; thus, it's pretty doubtful that St. Louis will lose too much money in the long run on bringing the team here.
More importantly, though, having a successful sports team like the Rams brings a lot of people downtown, which helps revitalize the downtown area. Yeah, this sounds like a weak excuse, but in a city like St. Louis, many people from the suburbs haven't been downtown in *years* (except perhaps to attend Cardinals games); having good sports teams thus has a noticable economic effect on the downtown area.
And, it has a noticable economic effect on the metropolitan area as well. Sports teams, especially exciting ones, encourage people to move to St. Louis, and encourage people already here to stay.
But you seem to have read more literature on the subject than I have, because you assert that it's been shown that there is no discernable net economic benefit from publicly funded stadiums. Fine. I'll give you that.
But the question is, is there a net deficit? It doesn't seem that the studies have shown that, either--or else you would have brought it up, since you're so familiar with these studies. So, I ask you: all things being economically equal (and from your comment, it appears that they are), would you rather live in a city with a Super Bowl champion football team, or one with no sports teams at all?
While you may answer that you don't care--and I believe you--the simple fact is that most people do. Hence, it's the duty of any city government to try to get sports teams for their city. It may not citizens any richer, but it definitely improves their quality of life.
This is just another example of the evolving mentality of our society. The game hasn't been over more than a half hour or so and already we want archives!! Ok, I admit it, I hit /. just to see what everyone else thought of the commercials. During the game, I'm also ashamed to admit, I hit a couple of the advertised sites AND hit a web-dictionary site to find an exact definition of "titan".
It is? Tell me: do you have any numbers to back this up? I ask, because people who have looked at the econmic impact of publicly funded stadiums in particular, or the presence of sports teams in general, have found essentially no evidence of any net benefit. To be sure, there are people who make more money due to the presence of a heavily-subsidized sports franchise, but there are others who do worse, and there are also huge opportunity costs as well.
s/games/ways/?
But, actually, this is just the problem: the cash that St. Louis just basically gave to the Rams most certainly was economically quantifiable, and the other very pressing needs of St. Louis are also economically quantifiable, so the idea of spending that much cash on something just to "make it exciting to live in" goes way past stupid and borders on the immoral.
Babar
That's not my Internet, and I doubt it's yours, either. After a while I had to walk away from the television.
Let's all pitch in five bucks so next year Stallman can be on thirty seconds during the Super Bowl, talking about free (as in speech) software.
In the meantime, f*ck those "dot-coms" and their banal advertising.
P.S. As a BMX racer and mountain biker, I was bemused by the Mountain Dew ad...
Carefree highway, let me slip away on you.
Since you seem intent on living as a geek stereotype, be sure to tape tinfoil over your windows to keep out the sun and avoid women at all costs (they're so confusing!)
Open on a bunch of "beautiful people," all in black Gap-esque wardrobe, each taking a line from "Cars" by Gary Numan. Couple quick cuts with wardrobe changes, then everybody runs like hell off one side of the screen as, from the other side, a 2001 Aurora fishtails to a stop in the middle of the set. Catchphrase: "Not what everyone else is doing." (Or something like that. That was the least memorable part of the ad.)
Sorta hypocritical, coming from General Monolith, but still a cool shot at the Gap.
Keith Russell
OS != Religion
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I emailed E*Trade, and asked them to donate to saving the chimps (which are apes, not monkeys, by the way). There was just an article today about how Jane Goodall's Gombe research facility is down to a 10 mile by 3 mile long strip of forest. Goodall speaks out against the use of chimps in commercials and movies, and I figure that the least E*Trade can do is to donate some. (They spent $2 Million on the ad, maybe they could drop a few hundred thousand on making the world a better place.) Especially considering that some people seem to think it was a great ad, and E*Trade will probably make a great deal of money off of it. I'd appreciate it if you gave them the same feedback. I know this is a tree-hugging kind of point to be making about a Super Bowl ad, but the chimps are screwed, unless they get some help. Also, isn't environmental preservation a nerd issue, too? It's nice to hack all day in front of a glowing screen, but it's also nice to know there's a world to go outside to, full of interesting animals, if you ever get the urge. *grin*
Education is the silver bullet.
Did anyone notice that, during an ad for this online job index, they made some semi-clever references to two of their competitors, monster.com and hotjobs.com?
sup
am i the only one who misses "bud bowl" ??
I used to think the people who warned of the Y2K apocalypse were nut cases, but now when I see Canadians complaining they can't get American commercials I know that they were right.
A friend sent this to me. The Authentic Pets.com Sock Puppet Used in Super Bowl Ad is up for grabs. As of the time of this writing is is going for $14,600.00. Now that is a start to re-coop the costs of the commercial.
Ad effectiveness article, and a quick ad summary:r ads000131.html
http://ww w.abcnews.go.com/sections/business/DailyNews/supe
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
I am upset. This crmdotaco guy [owner of this site] STOLE my idea...that's right...he STOLE it. I put in a request to add this story WAY before he did.....and I typed it almost exactly as he did. Instead of 'multi million' like I suggested...he put 2Million [top $ was 1.6 I think]. Either way....he stole my suggestion. I will not submit any more stories to this theive :) Sorry....If I cannot get credit for what I type...grrr. hate mail can be sent to pcstud@hotmail.com
true
:-)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Every time I see the commercial for that flick, I can't help but think:
"Turn on the lamp and then find the torch!"
*sigh*
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
What kind of hacker reads C++ For Dummies, anyway?
. . the E*Trade dancing monkey.
Funny stuff
_________________________
Fallon McElligot, a Minneapolis-based ad firm, created 4 SB ads, according to today's Pioneer Press. They also did two BMW ads.
My wife was pretty upset about the way she was treated during the game - by those animals the Rams, stopping the Titans on the 1/2 yard line on the last play of the game. Actually, it's probably just as well it didn't go into overtime, since she couldn't decide who to root for.
"Bugger this, I want a better world." - Jenny Sparks
It is a assumption to make that Geeks have to dislike physical sports. Football is my favorite sport because of the physical and mental nature. You must have never had played sports if you do not see the huge mental aspect of the game. If it was not for this darn computer Addiction of mine I may have been on the TV instead of watching it. I play all sorts of sports. I am even married and have a awesome daughter.
Why do I say this? I say it because you sterotyped yourself as a loser. Basically, Sports is about winning and losing. Sports is about being able to conquer the competition.
Business is just a mental sport. Computers are mental sports arenas. Microsoft Vs The World is like Dallas Cowboys vs Redskins. A great battle and lots of twists and turns.
Sit back and enjoy the game. Don't be a sterotype and push Geeks/Nerds into your own little world.
Btw, The WWF rules, Stone Cold Kicks ASS. I want my Wrasslin Character to be "The Computer Geek" and go in and use a keyboard and bust it over peoples heads.
No? It is a lot of fun to watch New Jack bust a keyboard over a Baldies head. Lotsa fun to see the keys pop everywhere.
Sports, Wrasslin, and Computers. KickAss!!
I can program myself out of a Hello World Contest!!
It was actually a cheetah, but it was dang cool when they stuck their hand down its throat to pull out a can... and al the 7-Up ads were good too. I also liked the e*trade 'money out the wazoo' ad, but the best was still the cat herding.
"Bugger this, I want a better world." - Jenny Sparks
those beach boys biopic commercials! ABC actually expects viewers to watch that crap?
He should have rode in on a Clydesdale.
Did y'all know that you can download, review, and rate these commercials at http://www.adcritic.com? They've got the major commercials from the Super Bowl available in QuickTime format.
Nobody's said much about the half-time show. I think it was retarded. I mean, what was the point? Just a bunch of idiots on stage thinking they are big stuff...
Thew funniest one, by far, was the cat herders.
I laughed so hard my ribs ached for an hour.