This is the first year I’ve ever watched the Super Bowl. And by “watched,” I mean that I waited for those big guys to stop throwing the leather thing around so I could see some commercials.
In the interest of being – sort of – topical, I’ve decided to take a break from TV on DVD and talk about the important things that are currently driving internet discussion: Super Bowl ads.
In all fairness, I did only see the first half of the game, but as far as I can tell from my Internet research, that’s where all the best commercials took place anyway.
I think everyone can agree that any commercial that features Betty White is at least 10 percent better than every other commercial playing on TV. Therefore, Snickers clearly had the best ad, because it featured Betty White playing football.
Another great ad spot was David Letterman, Oprah Winfrey and Jay Leno sitting awkwardly on a couch watching the Super Bowl together. It involved David Letterman making fun of Jay Leno, and that’s all I really need to sway me in the direction of watching Letterman. It even made me like Oprah a little bit.
Budweiser, apparently, has an inexhaustible budget and played about a million commercials during the first half alone. Not all of these were successes; however I did enjoy the astronomers being threatened by the complete annihilation of Earth, and chose to spend their last moments drinking a cold Bud Lite.
There was also the “LOST” parody – the castaways chose to drink Bud Lite instead of escaping from the island. I don’t actually watch “LOST”, so I don’t know if it was a good parody, but at least it was relevant.
In a very “meta” Bud Lite commercial, a man built a house out of cans of Bud Lite, including the refrigerator, which contained bottles of Bud Lite. Note to self: Never build a house out of something consumable.
The Google love story ad is also worth mentioning – taking the viewer through an entire love story, from studying abroad in France, to meeting the girl of his dreams, to having a baby, all through Google searches.
My other favorite commercial had nothing to do with the quality of the ad, or the thought behind it. Monster.com merely put a beaver playing a fiddle on the television screen and that was really all I needed to be convinced that Monster.com is the best website in the universe. Apparently Monster.com can even help a fiddling beaver achieve his or her dreams. I was inspired.
The Super Bowl also got me excited for the Harry Potter resort opening in Orlando this spring and showed me that apparently CSI: Miami is going to outer space, a nice bottle of Coca-Cola is all it takes for the town of Springfield to be nice to Mr. Burns, and auto-tuning has really taken over the world.
TV is the answer
