The Sorry State of Super Bowl Ads

Posted on January 28, 2003

Although millions of people tuned in to Sunday's Super Bowl hoping to see either the somewhat geriatric Raiders or the less than exciting Buccanneers win the Vince Lombardi trophy, there is another demographic which faithfully tunes into the game: the Ad Watchers.

With spots going for $2 million for a 30-second ad, usually the ad firms go all out to make a memorable commercial, like my favorite of years past: the cat herding commercial. But this year's crop was less than stellar. The worst ad, hands down, was Quizno's. The ad showed the founder of the company working to come up with the perfect sandwich. He worked so hard that he forgot to feed his pet bird, which starved to death in its cage. Oh, yeah, I always find the prospect of an animal suffering from thirst and hunger until it eventually dies just hilarious. Apparently, I'm not the only one who had that reaction to that ad -- I've heard quite a bit of complaining about it since Sunday.

The best ad, in my opinion, was the ad for Pepsi Twist, starring the Osbornes and the Osmonds. Now that was funny. Ozzy is in his kitchen trying to get the trash compactor to work when his children Kelly and Jack tell their dad that they're not really the Osbornes, they're the Osmonds. They turn into Donny and Marie, and begin to belt out "I'm a little bit country, I'm a little bit rock and roll..." Ozzy is horrified, like he's having an LSD flashback and yells for Sharon...he awakes from his dream to find...Florence Henderson in his bed. His look of horror at finding Mrs. Brady as his new bunkmate was priceless.

There were a few flashes of wit, but mostly the ads were just boring. Well, there's always next year.