Since this year’s Superbowl ‘Best of’ lists were already assembled and ready to be blasted the moment the final whistle blew, I debated whether to do a Superbowl roundup. Plus, every blogger from mommies to WOWers have been offering up their opinions. So I decided to make this year’s Super Bowl list the ‘The Adiocracy WTF?! List’ because you already know what you like and what everyone else likes.
This year ‘s Super Bowl crop provided no truly brilliant ads — nothing close to VW’s Darth Vader spot last year or Google’s Parisian love story in 2010. There were some nice ones like Coke’s security camera moments produced by Y&R Argentina and the NFL Combine spot with Deion Sanders as ‘Leon Sandcastle from Grey, NY, but nothing with Old Spice virality.
However, there were some truly brilliant WTF?!:
#1 WTF?! Award for ‘The Biggest Waste of A Client’s Money’ goes to the ‘Where do Babies Come From’ spot for Kia Sorrento’s Uvo voice activated system by David and Goliath for its ridiculously over-the-top-to-no-apparent-end visual story about how we make babies. I liked D&G’s their Kia ‘Hotbots’ technology spot, but how they managed to convince Kia to not only blow this kinda dough on a tired idea (with a not particularly inventive story) and then convince Kia that it’d be even better by not simply making a :30, but by blowing a minute’s worth of air time, was truly a fantastic agency coup!
#2 WTF?! Award for ‘Who The F*ck Cares’ + ‘Gratuitous Use of Sports Celebs’ goes to Subway for its ‘Congratulations to Jared for keeping off the weight.’ Good for Jared for not becoming a fat hog again. Does he deserve a prize for being healthy? Is it about how he’s used his serendipitous celebrity for the greater good — say fighting child obesity? Who knows? Maybe he does, but that’s not what they chose to celebrate. This spot also collected a win in the ‘Best Use of Gratuitous Sports Celebs Who Either Had to Appear Because of Their Contracts or (worse) Because They Received Even More Endorsement Money for Low-Value Cameo Appearances’.
#3 WTF Award for’Best Gruesome Moment You Couldn’t Turn Away From’ goes to GoDaddy’s gorgeous ‘Bar Refaeli kissing nerd Jessie Heiman’ spot. What made it so squirmingly perfect was Walter’s red-hived cheeks that they must have slapped silly before each take, and the brilliantly repulsive accompanying sticky, suckling, dry saliva kissing sounds for the kisses that went on far far far too long — a deft comedic trick taught to us all by Seth McFarlane.
#4 WTF Award for ‘Best Use of Tired Cocoon References’ goes to Taco Bell for its ‘Viva Young’ spot by Deutsch LA featuring elders showing sass during a rebellious night on the town. The ad packed just about every senior rebel cliche ever invented into a minute,including the classic old girl kissing the young guy (interesting that you really don’t see it the other way around anymore). Again, why a minute? Just too many adorable cliches to give one up? (I did like the Rosenblatt tattoo, however).
#5 WTF Award goes to Budweiser’s Baby Clydesdale spot by Anomaly for ‘Manipulate Us To Tears Pablum’. I’ll admit I almost did… until I realized what was happening. If they did the War Horse thing, that would have been be dramatic. But this, was worse than a Disney daytime movie. Besides, if the guy loves his horse so much, why does he give it away? To drive a wagon around?
And then the horse comes to town and, like the trusted Collie, it races him down. Why? It wants to come home! It’s saying get me outa here! And what happens after the final scene? The freaked out handlers track down the horse and punish it with for being disobedient (probably again) and they shove it into a tiny crate with only a feeding slot for 2 months. The twitter ‘name the next Clydesdale campaign’ worked well, however, so good for them — even Jimmy Fallon offer up a few. They named two new foals Hope and Stan. I offered up Shameless.
Text would go here relating to the offer