This Post Might Be A Tide Ad

After the Superbowl is over, you can tell how good a game it was by how much talk is about the game and how much is about the commercials.  This year it was a great game, so there's relatively little talk about the ads, but here's a few thoughts.

First, can we declare a moratorium on meta ads? They can be funny, But enough already. Let's admit that Tide made the ultimate meta ads this year with their ads disguised as other ads, and leave it at that. I hope all the other advertisers appreciated what that did for them, forcing viewers to pay attention to each new commercial for a surprise switch.

But I was also surprised by the Very Serious commercials. For instance Budweiser highlighted their supplying of water to disaster-afflicted areas. They demonstrated this by showing some engineer flip a switch causing the machinery to go from producing cans of Bud to cans of water. I had trouble hearing the rest of the commercial over the sound of everyone in Canada making "what's the difference" jokes, but I saw them list the various places they've provided water. I was pleased to see they included Puerto Rico, despite it being an embarrassing point for the current administration. Now if they'd also included Flint, I'd have gone right out and bought a case just for that.

The biggest fumble had to go to Dodge Trucks - oh, I'm sorry, "Ram" - who set their ad to a recording of a Martin Luther King speech on the importance of service. How could they possibly think that was going to work out for them? Did they somehow find that the demographics of their market happen to line up with the people who look up to King, but wouldn't find it tacky for a corportion to co-opt his image?

There was a similar problem with an ad for Hyundai, bragging about donating a portion of sales to cancer charities. It was a hold-nothing-back heartstring-tugger, but it really felt awkward. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad they are donating money to a good cause, though I am troubled by the fact that they just paid $5 million to tell us that they give to charity. But besides that, it seemed almost as tone-deaf as the Ram ad. In both cases, they didn't understand that as a corporation, there's going to be a certain cynicism inherent in the audience, and they have to respect that. It's okay to show your company doing good things, and even congratulate yourself a little for it. But when you go into full tearjerker mode, no one's buying the idea that you're that idealistic.