The Super Bowl has officially gone to the dogs. And baboons. And a rogue squirrel.
With hype for the commercials now exceeding hype for the game, advertisers who shell out up to $2.2 million for 30 seconds of air time covet buzz both before and after the fact. A clever concept helps, but so does a familiar face.
Thus, Pepsi packed Ozzy, Kelly and Jack Osbourne, Donny and Marie Osmond and “Brady Bunch” mom Florence Henderson into a sales pitch for Pepsi Twist. (The wacky twist this time: The Osbourne kids turn out to be the Osmond siblings, and when Ozzy yells for wife Sharon, he gets Carol Brady instead.)
Tax preparers H&R Block called on the familiar face of Willie Nelson (and covered it with foam) in a spot playing on his past tax problems. Asked to sell shaving cream, Nelson declines before learning he owes the IRS billions. Then, he lathers up.
But celebrity spots can go wrong as easily as they go right. The mega-bucks that Gatorade spent on an existential ad featuring Michael Jordan (circa 2003) shooting hoops with his younger self was money well spent only if audiences are able to put one and one together quickly enough to recognize both Jordans (plus a third, who appears at the end).
Likewise, Visa Check Card may have erred in assuming most viewers could easily identify NBA star Yao Ming in a spot that played on confusion between his name (pronounced Yow) and a clerk’s “Yo!”
But everybody can identify a zebra, and that’s what Anheuser-Busch counted on in rolling out the most clever commercials of Super Bowl XXXVII.
A-B scored big in opening the night with a spot featuring dueling Clydesdales. Here, while the big horses stand impatiently, viewers see a zebra with his head in a box. Finally, the camera pulls back
to show that the fellow in stripes is painstakingly viewing an instant replay.
A later, laugh-out-loud spot had a man dying to go into a bar for a Bud Light but hampered by his dog and a “no pets” policy. His solution? Put the black, curly dog on his head and use a Jamaican accent, mon.
Pepsi also put out a casting call in the animal kingdom, and found the Jack Nicholson of baboons for a Sierra Mist spot in which the clever ape builds a catapult to bounce him into the polar bear pool on a steamy day.
Another funny Sierra Mist spot featured a dog that lifts its leg to open a fire hydrant and give himself and his master a cooling shower.
The squirrel came from Trident, explaining its old sales pitch asserting that “four out of five dentists recommend sugarless gum for their patients who chew gum.” Why not the fifth dentist? The spot suggests that a squirrel ran up his pants leg at an inopportune moment, causing him to shriek, “Oh, no!”
Bison aren’t cute; maybe that’s why Levi’s flopped with a stylish but vague pitch for Type 1 jeans featuring a bison stampede toward a city and past young people clad in historic (yet contemporary) denim.
And not all spots featuring humans were disappointing. Quizno’s scored in introducing its leader, “Chef Jimmy” (real-life founder Jimmy Lambatos), who is so obsessed with perfecting toasted sandwiches that he sometimes forgets other things. Such as his pants.
FedEx had a funny (if somewhat dated) takeoff on the movie “Castaway” in which a Tom Hanks-type delivers a package after years stranded on an island. Turns out the box holds a mobile phone, GPS locator and other useful tools.
And speaking of islands, how about Gilligan and his pals turning up for AT&T Wireless? The spot, using computers to merge scenes from the TV series with new footage, envisions what would have happened if Gilligan had come equipped with an “m-life.” (In short, “Gilligan’s Island” would have begun and ended on the same day.)
After last year’s post-Sept. 11 shift to a patriotic, touching tone for Super Bowl commercials, humor was back in a big way this year. Anheuser-Busch was particularly big on laughs, as in a spot in which an upside-down clown drinks a beer through what seems to be the wrong orifice. (The punch line: He tries to order a hot dog.)
Ads from the Office of National Drug Control Policy were among the few to shift the mood. In one, a man on a subway is confronted by people who accuse him of murdering them with the money he spent for drugs; in another, a young teen is pregnant, victim of impaired judgment caused by marijuana.