Adland_ Searching for the Meaning of Life on a Branded Planet - James P. Othmer [87]
Some marketers seem to create risqué ads knowing full well that they will be rejected by the powers that be and thereby eligible to be stamped with the golden “Banned Super Bowl Ad” label that will make them viral cult classics. Is there such a thing as a premeditated banned spot? Consider the 2005 “Sauna” spot for the immune-system-bolstering product Airborne. The network rejected it because at one point the star of the spot, Mickey Rooney, drops his towel. Granted, Mickey Rooney is adorable, but did Airborne really think any censor in her right mind was going to subject ninety-three million people to seeing his bare, octogenarian ass?
Online, any commercial tagged “Banned or Uncensored Super Bowl Commercial” will do exponentially better than those that actually made it on the air. The most glaring exception to this rule is Britney Spears’s 2002 Super Bowl extravaganza for Pepsi. In the last year more than three million people have viewed it on YouTube. One would think that three million views for a seven-year-old spot is a good thing for a brand. But someone at Pepsi has got to be wondering if, based on Britney’s continuing exploits (propensity for shaving her head, fleeing rehab, and making regular appearances on PerezHilton.com), it should be the first company to ban its own ad from the Internet. What does the online proliferation of enormously popular banned Super Bowl Almosts say about us? That we want to see that which has been kept from us, for starters. And that, in their current state, TV commercials, even the highly anticipated Super Bowl extravaganzas, do not go far enough. We want more. Especially the rejects from the medium we’re rejecting.
Finally, do the sixty-plus ads we watch every Super Bowl Sunday in any way reflect the zeitgeist or the economy—or merely the superegos of a cabal of mostly white young male admen working for a handful of huge corporations with multimillion-dollar production budgets? Do overproduced, overpriced messages featuring furry animals, scruffy-faced men who say “dude” a lot, an abundance of scatological humor, and cloying nods to the green movement truly represent the hearts and minds of America? How about the fact that it’s okay for a pharmaceutical company to use a product to sell gratuitous sex but using gratuitous sex to sell a product is a Super Bowl no-no? What does that say about us?
How 238 People with Nothing Better to Do on Super Sunday Control the Future of Advertising
On any given Super Bowl Sunday, approximately 238 people in auditoriums in McLean, Virginia, and cities such as Houston and Chicago, being paid all of $50 apiece, will be the most influential people in all of advertising. In theory, all that they’ll be doing is gorging on salty snacks, watching football, and rating commercials for USA Today’s Ad Meter poll. But in practice, the opinions of the otherwise-normal 238 have incredible, often disastrous influence, impacting the fate of careers, brands, and agencies.
Just ask the principals at Chicago’s Cramer-Krasselt agency, which in 2007 created several spots for its $60-million-a-year client, CareerBuilder.com. After none of CareerBuilder’s three spots managed to crack USA Today’s Ad Meter top ten, despite having one spot rank as high as sixteenth, the agency was told that after