Superbowl Ads


I didn’t see the Superbowl, but I did see the Superbowl ads (Google video has a [[http://video.google.com/superbowl.html|dedicated page]] for them). I figured that if people were spending [[http://money.cnn.com/2005/01/20/news/fortune500/superbowl_ads/|2.5 million dollars]] on a single ad, they must be really good right? WRONG.

With the exception of a few, I thought all the ads were lame and some were downright pathetic. The majority were definitely not worth a quarter million dollars IMHO. Some really good ones were Degree Stunt City, Budweiser Wave and Nationwide Gondola. Some not so good ones were MLB, Shaggy Dog, Poseidon, Full Throttle Energy. And I really, //really// despised **all** of GoDaddy’s ads. I mean, give me a break!

In general, I feel that the quality of ads in the US, both on TV and on the radio is quite shallow compared to ads in India. Of course I might be biased, and this is a subjective judgement anyways, but I know a lot of people who echo similar sentiments. In particular, whenever I think of ads in India, I always gravitate to the [[http://www.amul.com/hits.html|Amul ads]]. When I was reading the 30th anniversary issue of India Today, it struck me how over the years the Amul ads had managed to capture India in their own satirical-humorous way.

3 comments

  1. Shashikant

    Amul and Fevicol ads are exceptions, not rule. Though I watch TV (and the ads) rarely, I feel, in India, there is a growing feeling in the ad world that ad is going to be a big failure if it doesn’t feature a seductively (un)dressed woman, cricketer or Amitabh Bachchan.

  2. Priyendra Deshwal

    I was also disappointed by the Superbowl ads especially because I was looking forward to seeing some good ones. However, I really believe that America has enough talented people (with plenty of good comic sense) that they could have come up with good funny adverts if they wanted to. Maybe its all due to some ad industry rule-of-thumb that funny ads are good for some products, slick ads are good for others, shocking, sensational ads are good for others.

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