This is interesting! So Jessica Simpson is the cover story in the latest issue of Elle magazine. During the story interview, she talks about some of her health problems and confesses to Elle that she is allergic to a number of things:
"Health problems? There was that internal bleeding discovered last year around the time she was filming Employee of the Month;
doctors found the presence of the little bugger thought to cause
ulcers. Recently, Simpson tells me, after she was still feeling not
quite right, an allergist delivered news that would chill the heart of
anyone reared on Texan cuisine: She's allergic to cheese. And wheat.
Oh, and tomatoes, hot peppers, coffee, corn, and chocolate."
So, Jessica Simpson, being the Pizza Hut spokesperson, can't even eat pizza. She gets sick; and the ingredients in pizza will cause her internally bleed. We are all aware of the transparencies in celebrity endorsements these days. But, this is pretty bad! I don't know what Pizza Hut was thinking? There isn't exactly a shortage of celebrities who can eat pizza!
Well, this year's Super Bowl Sunday has finally come to a close. After all that went on, I'm still lamenting over who I feel more sorry for: The Bears (specifically Rex Grossman cause he sucked), The Advertisers (because they each spent at least $2.6 million and combined $100's of millions of dollars on another unmemorable year of Super Bowl commercials), or is it The Viewers (who had to not only watch a pretty boring game but ended up sitting through all of these unimpressive ad's). Now, this is not to say that there weren't some memorable ad's but for the most part I was unimpressed. The Super Bowl is the one event of the year in which we as viewers and consumers actually view the advertisements as positive content supplements to the actual event itself. Seth Godin talks about Permission Marketing and that's precisely what Super Bowl ad's are about; they're the pinnacle of mass marketing. Nonetheless, we can learn a few things from this year's line up.
Also, with 2006 being the year of CGC with the YouTube's and other social media alike, we saw the 3 winning CGC entries including: Car Wash by Chevrolet. Now to be generous, it was almost funny. But, it was poorly executed, involving a bunch of guys taking off their t-shirts crowding around a car and going crazy. There's a lack of clarity, what are they going crazy for the car or the girls in it? My understanding was that this contest only involved the conception and not shooting or editing the actual ad itself. This is a pretty weak attempt in terms of extension and vertical integration. How much interaction with the brand could have been going on if the contest only involved conceptualizing the idea? Also, this is a new car, the HHR I believe it's called, so what the hell was Chevy thinking by picking an idea that doesn't allow for showcasing the car. Decide for yourself:
The NFL's Hard To Say Goodbye was probably the best entry of the three. It really captured the moment of the end to the football season. One discrepancy though, at the end it shows Brett Favre as if he is retiring but he did announce that he is coming back next season. Even though this commercial was most likely shot before the announcement it was still confusing none the less.
And then there was the Dorito's CGC spots. First off all, there were 5 ad's that were finalist for the contest out of over 1000 entries and I think the chosen winner and runner up were in my opinion the weakest spots of the group. The winning ad could be described as nothing more then a recycled idea that we've seen many times before. "Guy gets caught staring at girl and crashes his car." This was nothing new. Was this really the best they could come up with out of 1000 ad's? Why did people vote for these?
The other Dorito's ad Check Out Girl that was also shown:
My favorite of the finalist which wasn't shown had to be Mouse Trap. Check it out:
At the end of the day I think that this year's CGC entries into the Super Bowl were for the most part boring and they did raise some questions as to what their place should be on advertising's main stage. I just felt it was disappointing when you think about all of the brainpower and effort that went into making the spots that were submitted. Were those really the best one's? Also, besides the quick and subtle references to the creator of these ad's in the commercials, no one can tell that these ad's are CGC. Not one of the 15 people I was watching the game with knew about any of it. These ad's look exactly the same as the in house or agency created ones. So everyone is ranting and raving that CGC is better for the extension and vertical integration purposes, and while this is clearly the case, especially in light of all the time spent by the CGC creators with brand's like Doritos, I think CGC is presently overinflated because the extension is just not taking place on such a large scale. Bottom line: CGC's place in mass marketing doesn't seem to be a very effective one.
Finally, my picks for this year's best and worst Super Bowl spots. We'll start with the best.
My vote for the best commercial of this Super Bowl has to go to the controversial but flat out hilarious Nationwide spot featuring the Britney Spears ex Kevin Federline as a part of the "Life Comes At You Fast Campaign". I thought this commercial was great and it really seems to connect with the younger generations who conclusively hate K Fed. This commercial will most definitely have post life and let me just say prop's to K Fed for working with Nationwide to film this. Thanks for making yourself vulnerable and the butt of jokes for millions of viewers.
My pick for the worst commercial of the night has to be a tie between the salesgenie.com ad and the robot ad by GM. First, the sales genie ad sucked. I mean it really did. What the hell were they thinking. Who created it and who signed off on this stupid thing. Do they really think consumers are that gullible? What a horrible first impression, trying to use the GoDaddy formula, it surely didn't work. It was only a waste of everyone's time and a waste of $2.6 million. Enough said. Second, the GM ad I must say was thoughtfully put together from a production stand point, but at the end of the it's all about the context of your message. So here's the premise: this robot drops a bolt and is fired at the end of the day for being clumsy. But what was this ad really saying? Well, it says a couple of things to me. First, the message of "GM is obsessed with quality" is instead interpreted as "GM sucks at making cars so bad that even their robots screw up." And, this idea that "General Motors is the place where everyone including our robots gets fired". In addition, the robot commits suicide and even though this might be an extreme point, what is this saying to all of the GM employee's who have been laid off as of late. WTF?
Honorable mentions have to go the careerbuilder.com and Coca-Cola for their contributions of great ad's. In the case of Coke, it's just a shame that they are plagued by a poor product line because their marketing department is producing excellent content and doing some innovative work with social media. Furthermore, the most memorable punch line of the night might be "everyone wants to work in marketing" by GoDaddy.com's spot. However, this is actually saying very little because this ad features the same played out claim to fame of using sex to sell domain name's. One more thing, CBS, no one cares about your stupid self promotion of your network. Surely a waste of everyone's time. Although, the short Letterman/Oprah spot was hilarious. Your 1 for 50. All in all, it was mixed reviews from the center stage of mass marketing as we witnessed yet another year of advertisers making their individual contributions to the overall level of wastage that is the Super Bowl.
This is interesting! So Jessica Simpson is the cover story in the latest issue of Elle magazine. During the story interview, she talks about some of her health problems and confesses to Elle that she is allergic to a number of things:
