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But What About the Commercials?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the so-who-wins dept.

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.

8 of 573 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Commercials are great by ToastyKen · · Score: 5

    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!

  2. Commercials online by El+Kevbo · · Score: 4
    Yahoo has the commercials available online in Windows Media player format (?) and RealVideo.

    http://promotions.yahoo.com/promotions/superspots/

  3. The E*trade Monkey by James+T+Ensor · · Score: 5

    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."
  4. Commercials are great by Imperator · · Score: 5

    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.
  5. relive the magic by SparkyB · · Score: 5

    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.

  6. adcritic.com by Smack · · Score: 5

    they have quicktimes of all the commercials up.

  7. The Ads are worth the investment! by Skim123 · · Score: 4
    Yes, SuperBowl ads are rediculously expensive, but they are worth the price.

    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 second
    (see http://www.newsalert.com/bin/story?StoryId=Cojpfub Kby teWmJu&Topic=Internet-News&Nav=na-search-&StoryTit le=Internet-News)

    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:

    HotJobs.com CEO Richard Johnson said the name brand recognition earned from the Super Bowl commercial last year made it easier to raise funds from venture capitalists. The company's revenues for the first nine months of 1999 jumped from $2.2 million to $12.1 million for the same period in 1998

    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:

    • .com/Technology
    • Beer/Soda
    • Cars

    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.

  8. Re:e*jobs by vanguard · · Score: 4

    I look forward to the time day that the Internet is no longer an off-beat thing. I heard a quote, "In a few years e-commerce will just be commerce and the letter E will resume it's role as the fifth letter of the alphabet."

    I can't wait.

    --
    That which does not kill me only makes me whinier