Formerly SpringBlog

Monday, February 7, 2011

Super Bowl Commercials


As one of the estimated 110 million viewers of Super Bowl XLV last night, I laughed and scoffed at the advertisements. As expected, advertisers spent loads of money on starpower and over-the-top visuals for their respective products. But a lot of them had me wondering, What was that advertising? Take this one for example:

<a href="http://msn.foxsports.com/video?vid=716dc1fe-c8ff-485e-88f0-001b39cd4b3d" target="_new" title="">Best Buy: Ozzy vs. Bieber</a>

Granted, in this medium it is a lot clearer to understand what the product is for. But the ad ran once, sandwiched between other advertisements, and it had myself and my fellow audience members saying, 'What? I don't get it!' It was entirely too hurried for an ad that revealed an extremely new service offered by Best Buy. The appearances of Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne and Justin Bieber should have fueled the ad, but instead they distracted the audience from realizing the entire point of it. Finally, what's with the futuristic setting? I found it extremely hard to relate to, and it fogged the ad in general. Best Buy may have lost some customers due to this poorly constructed ad.

Now, here's my favorite commercial, and also a well-constructed one:


<a href="http://msn.foxsports.com/video?vid=716dc1fe-c8ff-485e-88f0-001b39cd4b3d" target="_new" title="">Best Buy: Ozzy vs. Bieber</a>

This ad is well-done for a few reasons. The first is that it shows you right off the bat what it is for. The 'normal' guy is eating a bag of Doritos in the office. The viewer is not distracted from the ad itself guessing at what it is for until the very end, unlike the Best Buy commercial.
Another reason the ad works is that it is relatable! Most people have eaten Doritos and experienced the common problem of what to do with that cheese-dust they leave on your fingers.

Thinking about the quality of these advertisements reminds me about the upside-down triangle model of journalism.


Watching an ad is similar to reading a newspaper in that the viewer can stop at any time. So should television advertisements follow this model to be more successful, as the Doritos ad did? I think so.

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