On Superbowl Sunday there will be a huge audience watching the games — and the ads. This has led to highly anticipated and creative “super ads” that DO have an impact:
Reuters notes that this year’s advertisers are going for the FUNNYBONE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2cV4xVYNGc
Some of this year’s ads are already being “advanced” on the Internet via You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S382RoO6s8A&feature=relatedHere’s the upcoming Gatorade ad:
And Dr. Pepper’s (Dr. Pepper has set this one up on You Tube so it cannot be embedded so you have go to to the link)
The best 2009 Superbowl commercial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S382RoO6s8A
Here’s a collection of the top 11 funniest ads from the 2009 Superbowl:
The Top 10 ads from the 2008 Superbowl:
The Top 10 ads from the 2007 Superbowl:
UPDATE: One notable advertiser this year is…the federal government:
Faced with record levels of red ink into the foreseeable future, Washington is spending $2.5 million to create buzz for the census – by advertising during the Super Bowl.
The Census Bureau is hoping to exploit the strong ratings from this annual attraction, aiming to get more participation from people who now seem disinclined to mail back a government questionnaire or even answer the door.
Census officials call it a good investment, saying the front-end costs of purchasing the ads can be quickly recouped if they succeed in encouraging people to mail back their census forms. A recent poll found nearly 1 in 5 residents said they may not fill them out, mostly because they were unfamiliar with the census or weren’t interested.
The government relies on the census not only to learn about Americans and their lives but also to parcel out federal dollars and, as required by the Constitution, to determine the number of U.S. House seats representing each state. The census officially began last month in rural Alaska, and most of the U.S. will receive forms by mail the week of March 15.
Not everyone is happy about spending taxpayer money to tout the census during the Super Bowl.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., tweeted this week that the government “shouldn’t be wasting $2.5 million taxpayer dollars to compete with ads for Doritos!” Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., called on the Census Bureau to justify every dollar of its $133 million ad campaign, citing the tight economic times.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.