I think for possibly the first year ever, we actually did not watch a single moment of this year’s Super Bowl. Now, lest you get the wrong idea, we are most definitely not avid football fans, so this shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. Jen does play in her brother’s fantasy league with several other members of her family, but at most she’ll check her stats a few times over the weekend. And I really couldn’t care less about football. For a few years, I was sort of into watching all the crazy ads, but having to watch all the football in between got tiresome.

Despite this, in years past, we’ve still managed to use the Super Bowl — American institution that it is — as an excuse to have a little party/celebration at home, typically by ourselves. But in testimony to the effort required to manage a 2-year-old and a newborn, this year we barely knew the game was even on.

But thanks to YouTube, I was still able to watch all of the ads! (And I can’t say I really missed the “filler” in between!) So, without further ado, here is my list of the best ads from Super Bowl XLII:

Best Ad — FedEx “Carrier Pigeons”

It’s the only ad that really made me laugh out loud. Starts out predictable but has a humorous twist. I just thought it was very entertaining.

Runner Up — E*Trade “Banking”

Runner Up — E*Trade “Trading”

Talking baby with some edginess thrown in. These ads are so similar, I decided to treat them as on. The end of “Trading” is humorously gross but certainly nothing we don’t see on a daily basis around our house!

Honorable Mention — Tide To Go “Interview”

I liked this ad because of its novelty. They took the idea that the stain on your shirt may say more about you than you can with your own words, and they realized it literally. But then they left you to sort of “reverse engineer” what the point was. (Ok, so it’s not like that was hard to do!) Despite it’s literal approach, there was a subtlety to this ad that I appreciated. Plus, I like the voice of the stain!

Honorable Mention — Sobe Life Water “Thrillicious”

Dancing lizards! And, oh yeah, Naomi Campbell. How ’bout them dancing lizards?

Honorable Mention — Audi “Truth in Engineering”

It seemed like Cadillac was trying to increase the “edginess” factor in their ads, but I thought they were hokey and unconvincing. This Audi ad, on the other hand, definitely catches your attention with its Godfather allusion.

Now, as usual, there were a lot of ads that were mediocre or worse — like all of the Bud Light ads, perhaps? But there were a couple ads that just really didn’t sit well with me.

Wished I’d Not Seen It — Planters “Perfume”

Armed with the slogan “Instinctively Good,” this nauseating and annoying ad hardly left me longing for Planters nuts. It was just plain gross.

Wished I’d Not Seen It — CareerBuilder.com “Queen of Hearts”

This one just seemed horribly conceived. Yes, it has shock value, but it was bizarre and misplaced. For an ad that is supposed to make you want to quit your job and find a new one, it just seemed overly dark and morbid. Ad team brainstorming gone awry?

I’m always interested to hear Kim’s take on the various ads. Maybe she’ll ring in with her opinions on these (or other) Super Bowl ads — if she wasn’t too busy celebrating her “knittiversary” during the game, that is!

Links:

• YouTube Super Bowl Ads
• MySpace.com Super Bowl Ads
• Time’s Best and Worst Super Bowl Ads
• USA Today AdMeter

This entry was posted by Steve on Monday, February 4th, 2008 at 4:27 pm and is filed under Entertainment, Internet/Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.