sjbooher: D. For dumb. And for Doritos.
jtherkal: Let me see if I have the formula right. Begin with stupid, somewhat predictable joke situation. Follow with some sort of slapstick comedy. Make $500,000. Can I get a film crew, a donkey, a blindfold, a wiffle-ball bat, and a bag of Doritos. And go ahead and put in a bid for that 1BR in the East Village. I’m about to have some dough. C-, for Dorito suit craftsmanship.
jtherkal: It’s not a bad ad. It’s not a good ad. It’s just bad during the Super Bowl. C-.
sjbooher: Done and Done. Word to Bill Simmons. C-.
sjbooher: So wait a minute… Google is a website where you can type things into a box, and it points you to other pages? Revolutionary. Apparently this has been available online for months, and people love it… so who am I to judge? C-
jtherkal: Yeah, these have been around for awhile. They’re nice little videos, and I think in the Super Bowl clutter, this stood out. However, your sarcasm is well placed. Google doesn’t really need to advertise their search service. I think they have so much money they just can’t figure out what to do with it all. Spend on. B+.
jtherkal: Few problems with this one. First, get a professional to make this song sound not like shit! And second, you can’t follow up a song about being a stereotypical man by trying to sell DOVE soap. Anyone who buys into that anthem knows Dove is for girls with soft skin. Maybe if you renamed it HAWK! And do you need to show a hunk lathering up in the shower for us to understand it’s soap? Any stereotypical man (apparently the audience here) knows that you should get homophobic feelings when you watch another man shower. C-.
sjbooher: That song is terrible. Also, at first he has three boys… and then some of his kids are little girls? Unless he’s holding Michael Jackson-style sleepovers? F.
jtherkal: I don’t understand. Were those men not really men, because they weren’t wearing their pants? I like the campaign thought for Dockers, men starting to wear the pants in the family again. But this ad missed the mark. And could it have come in a worse spot? Right after the Careerbuilder underwear spot! Take that, Dockers. D.
sjbooher: Let the manvertising begin. This ad set off a sickening trend in this year’s Super Bowl ads that left me near nausea. Over the past year or so, I have learned and thought a lot about what I will somewhat ignorantly label as “sexism”… probably “gender something or other” is a closer term, but whatever. This was sparked by conversations with my dear friend Colleen and my (at the time) impending fatherhood. Writers such as Ta-Nehisi Coates and Peter Alilunas, who runs manvertised.com have provided written catalysts for this education, especially the latter when it comes to advertising. He can speak on these issues at much higher level than I, so I’ll leave the meaty critique to him. All I know is, I have no problem letting my wife make a decision, I like the color pink, I LOVE the Rachel Zoe Project and I will freely admit Mark Sanchez looked good in that CBS Cares Ad. And I am VERY MUCH still a man. And if I decide not to wear pants? I am still a man. So don’t put me in your crude, neanderthal box, Dockers.
If you weren’t sure, that’s an F.
jtherkal: This year was the year of the underpants joke. Of the bunch, this was probably the best. Anyone have an opinion on why you’d pick one of Careerbuilder or Monster over the other? No? Because their ads don’t really tell you either. B-.
sjbooher: Apparently you pick Monster if you are a non-human (AKA a Boogie Man or a beaver). If you are a sophomoric idiot, you pick CareerBuilder. C-.
jtherkal: I didn’t mind the original version, because I’m a sucker for that kind of Wes Anderson junk. I even liked it. This time around, the writing wasn’t as good. There was nothing that really topped the first one of these they made (except maybe that baby tiger). I won’t remember who this was for in five…four…three…two…one…C-.
sjbooher: It’s pretty horrible to have a series of adds appear of multiple Super Bowls, and no one knows where you are advertising. You probably should have branded yourself by now. You haven’t. This ad makes me want to stick needles in my eyes and think about Tim Tebow doing circumcisions. D-.
sjbooher: Jay-Z deaded autotune for those in the know, but it’s still valid for the hopelessly culturally behind. This probably could have been funny… but it wasn’t. Only T-Pain saves this from a D. C-.
jtherkal: I heard that Jay-Z song. It didn’t say anything about the death of jokes about autotune, did it? It should have. Autotune jokes have been done, but I guess we shouldn’t expect Bud Light to do anything not already established as a proven gag. Here’s the best autotune skit I’ve seen:
Collegehumor, A. Bud Light, D.
sjbooher: (Queue Jim Mora’s Playoffs rant)… PAAAINNT? Don’t TALK ABOUT.. PAINT? You kidding me? PAINT? D-
jtherkal: I don’t remember seeing this during the Super Bowl. I barely remember seeing it now. When will companies learn that if you’re going to drop $3 million on a Super Bowl spot, it has to stand out. F. For entirely forgettable.
sjbooher: Ha, they got the original MacGyver. I really only two things about MacGruber — the opening song and the explosion shot at the end. The dialogue portion was not particularly funny and the jerky camera made me dizzy. I am also not sure what this does for Pepsi, or what it is suppose to emote. For this one to really work, I think it had to be one of those where the next day people were like, “Ha, and did you see that Pepsuber one?” Not sure if this pulled that off. A few other things I don’t know: a) How many people watch SNL and were already familiar with MacGruber? b) How many people that do not watch SNL, remember, or ever knew about, MacGyver? Finally, Kristen Wiig for mayor. C-.
jtherkal: I wasn’t familiar with MacGruber. I know about MacGyver. But if their target audience was 13-21 year old kids, I bet the answer is “some” to a, and “not many” to b. Now that I’ve answered your questions, I will say that people at my party definitely stopped to pay attention to this one. That being said, I sort of hate it. I guess maybe Pepsi thought they were refreshing MacGuyver? Or refreshing transparency in advertising? Who knows. Since I think the overall buzz was good, I’m going to set my dislike aside and give this one a B+.
They have some other cuts which didn’t air during the Super Bowl, so they don’t count. I like this one the best, but only the intro. The rest is lame: