I RATE ADS

jtherkal: Well, no one thought this was very funny. And my criticism is almost the same as it was for HomeAway. This is such a great, simple product, and somehow they managed to make it way more difficult to understand than it should have been. Of course, now the ads have been pulled due to people being offended, so I can’t watch them again to make sure I’m right about this. I wasn’t offended at all, and in fact I don’t mind the gag, but it isn’t a clear illustration of the power of groupon or how it works. Now we won’t even get to see the Elizabeth Hurley rain-forest/Brazilian wax joke, which may have been better for a Super Bowl audience anyways. D+.

sjbooher: Nothing says Super Bowl star power like Timothy Hutton! I was going to give an F, but they somehow managed to create a controversy which is the only way I would have remembered this service. C. No doubt the Hurley jammy would have been better for this event. Here it is for good measure:

Or even the Cuba Gooding, Jr. jammy:

sjbooher: Huh? Huh-what-say-what? F.

jtherkal: I could not agree more. What an absolute clusterfuck disaster of a spot, for what is essentially an awesome and easy to understand service. This makes me embarrassed to work in the profession. Shameful. On behalf of all of advertising, I’m sorry HomeAway, that you blew your money on such a piece of dogshit. And then put that piece of dogshit on television for half a billion viewers to step in. Next year, I will write you 25 Super Bowl spots for free if you contact me. All better than this. You read that right. 25. F-.

jtherkal: I’m curious to hear your take on these baby spots now that you have your own baby. Me? I love them. Always have, always will. The writing is good (”That’s actually a perfect Enzo.”), they’re easy to remember since we’ve been seeing them for years, and they have babies in them. In this one, the finger on the mouth with a shush kills me. You’re welcome. B+.

sjbooher: I give up. I don’t like it, but who am I to deny the people? B-

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-

sjbooher: Fine. I admit it. I like this one. B-.

jtherkal: Welcome back. I think being a father has made you soft. A.

sjbooher: B for booooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring. So really a D. The only thing saving them from an F is that really, they are the only domain hosting site that the computer illiterate really know about, and that is solely because of their continued Super Bowl presence.

jtherkal: First, Danika Patrick is not causing ANY fuss. None. And what do you want me to see more of? A girl in an unrevealing tank top? Give me a break. The SI Swimsuit Issue just came out. Maybe there’ll be some actual melons in there. F.

sjbooher: I thought this one was good. Seems like the tech-savvy portion of the world probably already knew about Hulu, but it probably had not gone completely mainstream yet, so why not announce yourself — basically an online tv network of sorts — during one of the biggest TV events of the year? Perfect platform and well-executed ad. A+.

jtherkal: What he said. Plus, I love 30 Rock. I love Alex Baldwin. I love Hulu. It just pains me to know that now I can’t use Alec in anything I do. Hulu done it first. A.

sjbooher: This one aired at halftime, and do to the fact it was not transmitted in widescreen, but in box form, like the rest of the local ads, I didn’t even think it was national run. On top of that, it’s a train wreck. They got arguably the least known member of this year’s gold medal winning USA basketball team, they use a bling-bling joke that might have been funny 10 years ago, and they try to force some sort of weird bargain prices and dedication combo on us. Disaster. F.

jtherkal: Boozer came at a discount, I guess. 40% off Team USA players with unibrows. And 40% off their grade. F.

Hip hop duo Atmosphere recently launched a website promoting their new album, When Life Gives You Lemons. The site, paintthatshitgold.com uses a simple, but very well executed idea to get at their target audience. The site lets you “tag” any website. You simply enter the address and paintthatshitgold.com goes and gets a screen grab of the page.

Then, using their simple tools, you can paint over the page. Choose spraypaint, markers, stencils, colors, thickness, etc. It’s easy to use and fun.

When you’re finished, you can upload your image into their gallery, which has some pretty impressive work in it.

jtherkal: Bullseye. This site is fun to use and I think people generally spend some time playing around with it, all the while listening to Atmosphere’s sample tracks, which aren’t bad. I’d never head of them before, but now I bet I’ve spent almost an hour listening to their music while I paint over other sites. The kids they’re trying to reach look at graffiti as a form of art and I’d wager it’s pretty damned popular. It’s a form of rebellion, a way to make a statement and just plain fun to do. Paintthatshitgold.com does exactly what it’s designed to: Gets you to listen to Atmosphere. The fact that you can paint a mustache on an image of Hillary Clinton from a CNN page, or paint crybaby tears streaming from Kobe Bryant’s eyes is just an added bonus. Tremendous effort. A+.

sjbooher: I love Atmosphere. So rather than ranting on-and-on with a biased opinion, I’ll just hand out an A+ and keep it moving. P.S — I also love painting crybaby tears on Kobe Cryant.