Age of the Geek

Commercial-grade commercials
     It was the Super Bowl this weekend and you know what that means! Super Bowl Commercials!
     It was the Super Bowl this weekend and you know what that means! Super Bowl commercials!
     Yes, the one time of year where we gather around and gleefully watch things designed specifically to make us buy other things. There’s probably some sort of commentary to be made about consumerism here. Getting excited about commercials just feels like it should be wrong, but I can’t articulate why. I see no downsides to deriving entertainment from advertisements. They pay for the things that entertain us. They may as well be entertaining, too.
     So, in case you missed them, here’s my mini-review of some of the more noteworthy ads to fill space between football plays.
     Disclaimer: I didn’t actually watch the Super Bowl, but the Internet has assured me that these are the ads that ran during the game.
     First up, Amazon concluded a series of commercials featuring Alec Baldwin and Dan Marino preparing for a Super Bowl party. I’m not sure what it says about me as a person that I appreciate serial storytelling in my commercials, but I do know that I want an Amazon Echo almost as much as I want Alec Baldwin’s Snack Stadium.
     Budweiser paid Helen Mirren to verbally lash any idiot that considers drinking and driving, but apparently couldn’t pay her enough to actually drink the beer in her hand at the end of the ad.
     Michelob Ultra, on the other hand, used their 30 seconds of ad time to pretend that their beer is remotely related to exercise.
     Butterfingers had a good one featuring a bull rider jumping out of an airplane. I’m a fan of silly commercials that raise the bar on absurdity, but Butterfingers has a long way to go before they top the Old Spice guy.
     But then there’s trying too hard, and I’m pretty sure that Mountain Dew’s Puppy-Monkey-Baby crossed that line.
     On the morality side, Colgate reminds us to conserve water by turning off the faucet when we brush our teeth. It’s a good practice I suppose, but it goes too far by implying that wasting water here somehow deprives water for children in third world countries. That’s not really how it works.
     Speaking of kids, in what might be the most uncomfortable football commercial ever, the NFL dedicated 60 seconds to a musical showcase of children conceived during past Super Bowls. I guess nothing says “let’s make a baby” like hot wings and watching dudes run into each other for a couple hours.
     The Doritos commercial had a much funnier take on child birth. Easily the funniest commercial of the day. I suggest you watch it, now.
     Of course if anything is going to stop this year’s batch of Super Bowl babies, it’ll be because the Hyundai commercial presented women with the thought of a world inhabited by nothing but Ryan Reynolds, making all men look inferior by comparison.
     Kia, on the other hand, made an ad about Christopher Walken wearing socks on his hands while Honda’s commercial featured a herd of sheep singing Queen’s “Somebody To Love.” Car commercials are weird.
     In a rare twist, my favorite car commercial actually focused on the car they were selling. Who would have thought that the premise of a high speed chase with a Toyota Prius would become comedy gold, but here we are.
     Schick continues to know how to sell me things. I’m not in the market for a new razor right now, but if I was, their commercial featuring razors that transform into fighting robots would weigh heavily on my decision.
     Meanwhile, LG probably would have generated more interest by just telling me about their new TV rather than coming up with a Tron-inspired adventure narrated by Liam Neeson.
     T-Mobile had an odd commercial based on the premise that other wireless networks ruin everything with their deceptive advertisements while they, as the “un-carrier” would never resort to such practices. The commercial would be a lot more convincing if T-Mobile weren’t currently in the midst of a controversy for overselling their Binge On service.
     However, even that commercial had more self-awareness that the Quicken Loans ad that literally advocated for creating another housing bubble with easy mortgages. You know, the same kind of bubble that caused the financial crisis of 2007 when it finally burst.
     Speaking of financial irresponsibility, United Health Care may be projecting $720 million in losses from Affordable Care Act plans, but that didn’t stop them from buying 30 seconds of ad time to show a guy breaking his hand punching meat in a “Rocky” joke.
     Wix.com went full meta for their ad. The commercial for their web design service is secretly a commercial for “Kung-Fu Panda 3” in which the characters talk about making commercials. These cross-promotional deals always leave me wondering who pays who. Does Wix pay Dreamworks to use their cartoon characters for the commercial, or does Dreamworks pay Wix to piggyback onto their ad time? Or do they just call it even?
     And finally, in what may be their first Super Bowl commercial, Nintendo really didn’t advertise anything. Instead, they used their airtime to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Pokemon franchise. And I feel old now.
     All in all, not a great crop of commercials this year. Nothing that will stick around in our culture like the Budwiser frogs did so long ago.
     And it still seems wrong somehow that I’m sitting here rating commercials. Why?
     I’ll need to think on that a bit. Perhaps for another column.
     Until then, just remember: Advertising works. Particularly newspaper ads. Hint hint.
 
     Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and is a shameless sellout.