jtherkal: Them cars is talking! This was average at best. Again, lost in a sea of car commercials. C+.
sjbooher: Caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrsssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss! Talking cars! Sexist cars! Did the Pepsi Max people write this? F.
jtherkal: This one got off to a bad start, because I don’t like the first two gags. So I only like one third of the jokes. And again, I’ll bring back the carfax, carmax, cars.com problem, this could have been for any of them, as far as I’m concerned. And I’m not that concerned. D.
sjbooher: Yeah, this is very ordinary. You can’t be ordinary on Super Bowl Sunday especially when Avogadro couldn’t even count the number of car ads this year. CARS! D-
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-.
jtherkal: Royal Tenenbaums/Rushmore wannabe. Wonder if Wes Anderson directed this one. Probably not, don’t think it’s quite good enough. I guess if I can get past the fact that this seems like a total ripoff (and doesn’t everything nowadays?), I sort of like this. It clearly delivers the message, even if you’re good at stuff, buying a car can be intimidating. And the fact that the pie chart said “roughhousing” counts for something in my book. Originality, F. Overall, B-.
sjbooher: Not my type of comedy, and too long for the pay off. C-.
The Mouth:
There’s something about this Plan B campaign I like. The branding comes across pretty clear; I walk away knowing that cars.com prepares you for car shopping, so you don’t have to use plan b. In the death-match one, I like when he advises the salesman to step outside the circle. And in the shrunken head ad, I laughed at: “Hey Jay, can I take off? I got a tiny head.” B+ for both spots.
The Hawk:
I’m in between on these. The first half of both gets the point across and is good for Cars.com. But then the plan b’s are out of nowhere craziness. In the Glondoor spot, the guy just says “plan b”, not “plan b to make sure you give me what I wanted”, like the shrunken head spot — then it would’ve made more sense. Also, is it a good or bad thing to use B-level actors in your ads? The customer in Shrunken Head is an actor on the FOX tv series Bones. I never understand why that level of actor would stoop to this level. C-.