Marketing

The Super Bowl advertisements are always hyped incredibly as being at least as good as the game, and maybe better. I am sure that the networks who want to charge $2.7 million for a 30 second spot are mainly responsible for the hype.

I was entirely underwhelmed by the ads.

The talking spot was pretty good, and we all laughed at the Doritos mouse trap.

But a lot of them just didn't make any sense. Using sex to sell stuff has been a standard practice forever, and selling an image or a promise that some product will make you cool is a time-tested marketing ploy as well. Humor is a common tool to make ads memorable, but I didn't think that many of the ads were all that funny. Some I couldn't even figure out what they were advertising. What the heck is Under Armour? I couldn't tell if it was deodorant or adult diapers or what? There was one with two stereotypically asian pandas which was not only offensive, it was also ineffective because I have no idea what they were advertising. The Bud Light ad with Bill Ferrell was picked as the forth best by CNN, but I thought it was horrid. The moment he started talking about putting sweat into beer he lost me. I've never seen one of his movies, and it is pretty safe to say that I won't any time soon. And I don't think I'll ever eat a pistachio again in my life.

So was it just this year, or are the advertisements that bad all the time?