Yesterday, the losers. Now for the Super Bowl commercials that actually hit the mark. In no particular order:
If Pepsuber is on the silly side of the silly/cool line, the Doritos Snow Globe spot is surely on the cool side. Perhaps it’s the setting – an office – which in an age of sitcoms like ‘The Office’ seems ripe for the type of ‘this is not my life’ humor to which a Millennial workforce an so easily relate. The crystal ball wielding character is exaggerated, of course, but if you’ve ever worked in an office, you’ve known ‘that’ guy. Much like the Walker Texas Ranger humor discussed in yesterday’s post, this succeeds because crazy as ‘that’ guy actually is, he appears sincere in his own mind. Add a dash of slapstick humor (the coworker throwing the snow globe at his boss below the belt) and you’ve got a relevant and humorous, if unrefined, spot. The icing on the cake is that this ad was crated by a group of Millennials who entered a contest and won $1 million when the spot was named most popular by USA Today’s AdMeter.
Doritos wasn’t the only one to tap into the well of office-inspired humor. I love this spot for three reasons. First, it’s completely relevant. Office humor would be a winner in any economic climate, but this ad goes beyond slapstick to actually strike a chord of empathy with a workforce that feels particularly overworked and underappreciated. And it manages to do so without coming across as patronizing or insincere. Second, the metaphor of the Moose is golden. In an age where stories of corporate excess in the form of posh spa retreats and global hunting trips abound, what could be a better symbol than a ridiculous stuffed moose? The fact that the cubicle worker is literally left to deal with the unpleasant backside of the situation further underscores the unspoken reality that many workers face daily. Finally, it does this without a spoken word! Timing here is everything; at the very moment the viewer realizes where this commercial is headed and why it’s funny, it’s over. This apt delivery of a visual punch line leaves the viewer chuckling well into the next spot.
3. Denny’s: ‘Diner’
Although I think this ad (or a similar one) aired in the days before the Super Bowl, I enjoyed it just as much on the fifth and six viewings as the first. It’s brilliant because like with Monster’s Moose, neither the punch line nor the sponsor is apparent until just before the spot has ended. Even if you’ve seen it before, you’re likely to be caught off-guard by the apparently serious topic being portrayed. “Did I accidentally switch the channel to The Sopranos”, you wonder? This ‘gotcha’ way of engaging the viewer, combined with the entirely unexpected entrance of the whipped cream dispenser makes this spot a winner, especially for guys.
This one made my top five list because it’s one of the more risky attempts I saw on Sunday, and it actually succeeds. I say it’s risky because at first blush, it seems strange for a snack food company to be purposefully relating its product (humorously or otherwise) to bird food. Yet, I think it not only works, but in fact completely fits the personality of a brand like Cheetos, whose animated Cheetah spokesman is known to be as irreverent as the scenario this commercial portrays. Again the humor emerges from a (not-so) exaggerated character that we have all encountered at least in our mind’s eye. The Paris Hilton-esque diva featured in this spot serves essentially the same purpose as Monster’s garish CEO: They’re both painfully out of touch with the average Cheeto-eating American…the kind of person who would dream of, but likely never enact the kind of revenge playing out on the screen. If only for a moment, that revenge becomes a reality, with Cheetos as the vehicle of choice.
Kudos to Hulu (I still don’t know exactly what they do, but I’m going to go to their site after finishing this entry) for using celebrity talent in a way that actually works. Far too often you see a random celebrity haphazardly inserted into an ad as if they constitute meaningful messages in themselves (see yesterday’s critique of Overstock’s Carlos Boozer ad). Here Hulu has managed to take Alec Baldwin, no stranger to the screen, and actually use his unique brand of wry humor to generate serious buzz about a new product. If not Baldwin, who else could deliver a message PROMOTING a product like Hulu via a mad genius diatribe on how the product is ‘evil’? It’s a pleasure to watch Baldwin work he antics on screen, all the while knowing he’s being so genuinely insincere. It’s this clever, almost profound approach to advertising that makes Hulu.com the next destination of my Web browser.
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