first off, godaddy.com. i don’t even know where to begin.  your spots are just terrible.  using a nascar driver as your spokesperson?  do you honestly think the average nascar fan even knows what a website is, let alone how to build one?  sidenote, i posted that snide remark on my twitter the other night and immediately some nascar fan group started following me.  the same thing happened when i posted a quote from human giant (“you know, you can’t get pregnant on the moon.”). a bunch of pregnant women started following me, and not for the usual reasons.  but i digress.

second: budweiser.  christ almighty, i know it’s the superbowl and all, but the clidesdales have to go.  it’s pure cheese.  you’re not even an american company anymore.   and bud light: your slogan is “drinkability.”  wow.  that’s like saying, “it’s definitely a beer” or “it’s not completely terrible.”  at least you had conan there to save your ass.

third: bridgestone’s “mr. and mrs. potatohead” spot was not only not-funny, but i imagine a lot of feminists would take issue with it.  i found it offensive purely because it was so bad.

fourth: kudos to denny’s.  good going on dropping the dude from the sopranos and still managing to keep the gangster theme in a way better spot.  “nannerpus” was pretty good too.

as for my favorite spots, i have two.  the runner up is “david abernathy” for cars.com.  this wes anderson-y spot (it was actually directed by lars and the real girl director craig gillespie) hits all the right beats.

my top pick actually goes to high life.  it’s only a second long, and that’s all it needs to be.  high life’s brand promise is value, and illustrating how stupid it is to spend $3 million on 30 seconds of airtime fits right in with that. plus the high-life guy is awesome.

you can watch all the spots on hulu.com, which hilariously makes you watch an ad BEFORE WATCHING AN AD.  priceless.

-srd

political affiliations aside (i’m an obama supporter), this is just a terrible ad for a few reasons.  first, the beginning has absolutely no correlation to the end.  obama is popular.  ok.  gotcha.  also, he doesn’t want to drill for oil in america or offshore.  ok?  

more importantly, the ad really just doesn’t make sense.  conceptually, the idea is sound.  ”obama enjoys a rockstar status and is over-hyped by a lot of standards, but he lacks substance.”  so show a boyband or the beatles or michael jackson, not britney spears or paris hilton.  people hate britney and paris.  they’re only celebrities cause they’re trainwrecks.  people don’t chant “paris! paris!” at her “events.”  it shows a gross disconnect with america sentiment. 

epic fail, mccain.  epic fail.

-srd