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Next Year, A Clydesdale Steps on the Puppy!
Holy crap.
Back in May, Variety was reporting that NBC was asking $4.5 million per 30 second ad in Super Bowl XLIX. Nationwide Insurance came up with an ad that ran :45 so they probably had to pony up just a wee bit more than that.
I’m not sure it’s a sign of success when you feel compelled to release a statement defending your creative efforts before the game is even over. Granted, if their goal was to be noticed and get press, that they have achieved. But at what price? There’s not a lot of good will directed at the company this morning.
The Super Bowl telecast has become the Super Bowl for ad agencies as well. Interest in the commercials was so high that websites dedicated pages to aggregating them in one spot the morning following the game. This year’s crop just may put an end to that.
With players on trial for murder, domestic abuse, and child endangerment, plus the almost routine stories about substance abuse and the debilitating effects of concussions, it seems like the NFL has been stuck in a PR nightmare for the better part of a decade. So the league used up its ad inventory with sanctimonious spots about battered wives and “throwing like a girl.” Which was then followed up by an ad for the movie adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey. Does that mean that the message is “It’s ok to leave marks if you use the handcuffs first?”
Thank God Budweiser can still get an “Awwwww” out of their ongoing “Puppy Meets Clydesdale” spots. That is, unless Nationwide’s creative team gets a hold of them. Then I shudder to think what will happen to that poor dog.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAsjRRMMg_Q
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It could have been worse, they could have blamed guns.
Reflexively muted the ads during the superbowl. Thought “Hmm… should I be doing that? Now, if ever I should be watching them.” Then I decided “naw, I’ll just be smug talking about it ‘I just watch the superbowl for the football.'”
Did notice a second, maybe a second and a half of dead air between two adds. Idly wondered exactly how much that black screen was worth.
I came to Ricochet this morning to see if anybody else was ‘digesting’ the commercial offerings of last evening.
EJ, you’ve saved me the bile. Thank you.
Here’s my reined in take:
This generation of coddled young who make this cr*p, who make these edgy, dark commercials, tv series and half-time shows – do so because their blunted, sated neurotransmitters require it.
I just said to my husband that if they’d ever known a real veteran, listened to their account of landing on bloody Omaha Beach; had they watched a friend or relative struggle with polio . . . .
It may take a serious event such as a big city terrorist attack, a massive CME/ EMP, Ebola around the corner. Maybe then they’ll bring back the sweet-natured Alka Seltzer boy . . . the happy, memorable ditties that accompanied Gillette razors and Brylcreem ads.
Yes, certainly not intellectually challenging, but for cry’n in a bucket – you don’t have to turn away, covering the kids’ eyes, cringing, or dash for the Kleenex box because the last time you were asked to be that distressed was at a funeral.
P.S. Yeah, yeah . . . people are going to say that the Brylcreem add is more terrifying than today’s offerings. Maybe should’ve linked to a Winston add ;)
This is simply what a company has to resort to when it sells carbonated sake masquerading as “beer”.
I heard about the ad on the radio and didn’t see it, but it didn’t sound like the terrible idea everyone’s making it out to be today.
Mike H – It’s not a terrible idea per se, it’s a matter of timing and taste. Run this at 1o pm in a drama show and people look at it as a public service announcement. Mollie Hemingway tweeted this morning that her child was still asking questions about the “dead kid” in the ad.
Super Bowl Sunday is a party day. Nationwide chose to ring the doorbell, waltz into our living rooms and take a bowel movement on Mama’s carpeting.
That dead air was an ad for a truck with wifi; so you could go watch the game in your truck if your TV fritzed out.
Hey as a sake aficionado I take offense to that.
Yeah, horrible ad. Not sure it will help the company sell insurance. Nor do I understand how it was a helpful public service. Like, how do we prevent drownings in bath tubs? Adequate supervision? We already knew that. How am I supposed to keep the flat screen from falling on my kids? Are there tip kits for TVs?
The base of my flat screen TV is screwed into a heavy oak stand. It didn’t come with mounting hardware or even instructions but I figured it out. Had I not it would have ended up on the floor ages ago.
We’re all small government types around here but if there was ever a piece of common sense legislation to get behind it would be to outlaw instruction booklets done entirely in hieroglyphics.
Yeah, my kids aren’t tall enough to reach the TV, and once they are, I hope they have the sense not to cause it to fall on themselves. Plus, the TV itself is pretty stable, as is its base, so it’s not a concern. I also don’t think it would kill, even a small child, if it fell on her, unless the glass broke in a most unfortunate way. Even though I have a 50+ inch TV, it’s not very heavy.
I worry a lot more about furniture tipping over. I haven’t done anything about it though. Maybe I should.
It did really bother me in the guys statment how they said they wanted to raise awareness that accidents have “unfortunately” been the leading cause of death in children for 60 years.
Unfortunately? That’s called winning! Would we rather malaria was the leading cause of death?
I am a sucker for the puppy ads. However, the Bud ad that implied that if you didn’t like the swill that Bud calls beer and actually appreciated good craft beer you were some kind of snob just {CoC’d} me off.
I assume you meant “…just Coors’d me off.”
I understand that the “Director’s Cut” of this Nationwide ad was even more disturbing than the one that aired:
FYI: “Just over a week ago, Budweiser’s parent company bought well-known Seattle craft brewery Elysian . Among the beers that brewery made last year? The Gourdgia on my Mind Pecan Peach Pumpkin Amber.”
Source: http://fortune.com/2015/02/02/did-budweiser-misfire-with-its-anti-craft-beer-super-bowl-ad/
They have been buying up a lot of craft brewers (while also making fun of them). They snapped up 10 Barrell from Bend Oregon too.
More importantly, how is buying insurance supposed to prevent it?
I, on the other hand, thought it was the best of the night. My experience has been that you’re much more likely to see a craft beer drinker turn up his nose and be, quite frankly, insulting to a mainstream beer drinker than the opposite. Which would in fact make them snobs. Now, I’m a Dos Equis drinker, not a Bud fan*, but I also detest elitism in all its forms, so I was quite happy to see them punch back.
*Even if I have to have one of the big four, I prefer Miller.
Oh man EJ….that is just wrong.