Mental Graffiti

Turns out the Super Bowl wasn’t just good for the Saints and the Who Dat Nation. Some advertisers scored really big, and some should have saved their money to buy the coats they’ll need now that Hell has frozen over.

A few highlights from Super Bowl XLIV:

1. You can still reach clients for less than 3 cents. Thirty seconds of Super Bowl commercial space came with a $3 million price tag. Lot of money? Yep. Worth it? Oh, yeah. (Sorry, Pepsi, wrong year to skip the ad buy.) With more than 106 million viewers, Super Bowl XLIV was the most watched television show in U.S. history. That’s a bargain at $.028 per viewer. Grade: A
2. Kids are super cute. Take a kid, give him an attitude, a single mom and a bowl of Doritos on date night, and you have a new catch-phrase: “Keep Your Hands Off My Mama, Keep Your Hands Off My Doritos.” TiVo Inc. said the ad was stopped and played back in 15 percent of homes with the digital video recorder. I know it was replayed twice in my house alone. Doritos kept their chips firmly in the storyline, and now we all know not to mess with little boys and their snack foods. Grade: A
3. Old ladies are cute, too. Betty White is a spunky old broad. This commercial would have been insulting to seniors if we weren’t all giving at least 3:5 odds that Betty White could take one of those guys down even without a Snickers. Grade: A
4. Was somebody’s mommy mean to them? That’s the only reason I can think of for the persistent woman-bashing that carried throughout the night. Listen up, advertisers: Women make up 40 to 45 percent of Super Bowl viewers. The days of the Super Bowl Man Cave are gone. Deal with it.  Why spend $3 million if you’re going to offend just under half the viewers (many of whom control the family purse-strings) right out of the gate? Grade: D
5. Breasts alone don’t tell me anything about your company, GoDaddy.com, and I don’t think I’d ever trust you with my business domain lest I visit my site one day and find “Heather” waiting to show me a good time for only $4.99 a minute. Publicity that shocks without conveying your message properly is a waste of $3 million. Grade: D
6. Over my dead body. Those were the first words out of my mouth after watching the Dodge Charger commercial. Yeah, yeah, I got the message – women are terrible scourges who make you shave, put the toilet seat down and escort your dirty boxers to the hamper at least once a week. For that you should get a muscle car? Fat chance. Grade: C
7. It took $3 million, a dozen mojitos and one brilliant Hyundai commercial, but for about 30 seconds on Sunday I actually liked Brett Favre. Bravo to him for being willing to participate in the NFL’s longest running joke - himself. I did have to go online to see who Favre was shilling for because I was so distracted by a likable Favre that I didn’t pay attention to anything that came after. But I did look it up. Perfect way to play to the Super Bowl audience. Grade: A
8. How Not to Play to the Super Bowl Audience, Part 1: Picturing Joe Montana prancing around in cute little plaid Sketchers that tone his legs while he walks made me throw up a little bit in my mouth. Enough said. Grade: D
9. How Not to Play to the Super Bowl Audience, Part 2: There’s a Just for Men commercial out there somewhere waiting for Jim McMahon and the other aging Chicago Bears who reminded us that we’ve gotten old since “The Super Bowl Shuffle” and it isn’t pretty. What were they selling – despair? Most of their 18 to 24 demographic weren’t even alive when McMahon and his crew were still cool. Grade: F
10. Anticipation of controversy is sometimes better than actual controversy. Aside from the disturbing image of Tim Tebow tackling his mom, the Focus on the Family commercial was about as vanilla as they come. But the advance publicity for this one will pay off. Everybody watched it to see what the fuss was about, and I doubt anyone was actually stirred to dislike by the bland message. Grade: C for the commercial, but A for advance publicity
11. Even though FloTV had an anti-woman commercial, too, by half-time my husband was searching the Internet looking for subscription rates. (Which, of course, I have no intention of letting him buy.) Grade: B
12. Subway: Way to stick by your already established marketing campaign and annoying jingle. I have to admit, though, I’ll be popping into Subway at least once this week because the message, although cloaked in horrifying belly-dancing gyrations, did come across. Grade: B
13. Google revealed a perfect low-budget way to tell a story. They skipped the overpaid, irrelevant superstar spokesperson (you know who you are, Taco Bell and Census 2010) and instead gave us a depiction of life told through one man’s Google searches. Brilliant. Grade: A
14. Am I the only one who got the bejesus scared out of me when watching the Audi commercial? Last thing I want is the green world depicted in this ad. Probably not the result Audi was looking for. Grade: D
15. Anheiser-Busch did the same thing they always do, and they did it well. A house made of beer cans? Pretty funny. Townspeople rallying to form a human bridge that gets the beer delivery truck into town – set to an epic Western soundtrack? A cause I think even the Duke could get behind. Anheiser-Busch knows their audience and will reap the reward. Grade: B

Which commercials made your best and worst lists? Leave a comment.