2012 Super Bow Ad Review - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Maybe I'm getting old, but yesterday's Super Bowl commercials felt a lot more tame than I remember them being.  I seem to recall there being a lot more clunkers in the offering in previous years as well, whereas this year's installment is just kind of blah. 

However, that being said, there's still plenty to review, so onto the recap (BTW, my HTML is kind of funky, and the titles of each commercial below are links the the actual ad):

The Good

5) TeleFlora - Give and You Shall Receive: Simple message, right in time for Valentine's Day, and leveraging that advertising tried and true method of using sex to sell.  Good work, and money well spent.

4) Fiat - Italian Girl: Like the TeleFlora ad above, this ad also executes extremely well

3) Geico - Middle School Girls: This one was during the pre-game, and was not a dedicated Super Bowl ad, but it is incredibly well done.  "Ew.  Seriously?  So gross..."

2) Dannon Oikos - Stamos Head Butt: Aligned extremely well to their target audience, the message and methods used were extremely good.  Another case of money very well spent.

1) Doritos - Dog Bribe: Hilarious.  Funniest commercial of the night

Honorable mentions include the Kia Motley Crue ad and Audi Vampires

The Bad

4) Go Daddy - .co Girl Paint: This whole faux-lesbian porn thing is so old.  It must work for them, as they do it every year.  Poor nerds...  I purposefully did not link to this crap

3) H&M - Beckham Underwear: They easily dropped $3MM on that ad.  Assuming they get a 50% gross margin on their underwear, they need to sell $6MM in underwear just to break even on the commercial.  Good luck with all of that.  It is well known that in a recession folks might still buy clothes (what other folks can see), but the last thing they'll buy is underwear (what other folks can't see).  These underwear might be cool, but Mr. and Mrs. America are going to continue to buy their tighty-whities from Wal-Mart until things get a lot better.

2) Corporado Clothes - Old Navy: Parody ad that was neither cute nor funny.  The only redeeming pact for Old Navy was the use of the logo in the last :03.  Kiss $3MM goodbye, folks.  Their agency should be fired immediately.

1) Tax Act - Pool Pee: Just disgusting.  Tax software and a kid peeing in the pool.  To borrow a quote, "Ew.  Seriously?  So gross..."

The Ugly

4) Samsung - Urlacher Parade: What the hell was that?

3) Hyundai - Rocky Song: And the message here was...?

2) Cars.com - Guy with Two Heads: Creepy and weird.

1) Chrysler - Halftime in America: I do not need a presidential campaign ad in my Super Bowl.  This is the most overt shot of what I predict will be a long salvo of "things are great!" messages that will be concocted over the next 9 months to buoy the Obama administration.  It began with his State of the Union speech two weeks ago, continued with the release of the jobs report last week (fun with numbers), seeped into at least one GE ad last night (gee, I wonder why?), and was overt in this Clint Eastwood ad.  Get used to this folks.  This is what politics looks like in 2012.