Craig's Blog of Destiny

   Ok, so I’m a pretty big fan of Super Bowl commercials.  The Saturday before the Super Bowl, I watched the CBS special “Super Bowls Greatest Commercials” and was very pleased that the Mean Joe Green commercial was once again voted the best of all time.  I think that’s eight straight years it’s been voted the best, and now they say they’re going to retire it.  Too bad, as the other choices they had were really weak.
   So how do we feel about the 2009 class of commercials?  Overall, I thought they were lacking.  A few chuckles, some interesting premises, but no out right belly laughs, nothing that I’m feeling compelled to share with others.  USATODAY has the official site for ranking the ads with their “Ad Meter.”  I was quite disappointed in their top ten, particularly that two of the top five were Budweiser Clydesdale ads.  The Clydesdales jumped the shark sometime ago when they stopped playing football.  Pepsi and Coca-Cola each made the top ten here as well, though I didn’t think either were very strong.  I liked the Coke bugs better than Pepsi trying to channel Bob Dylan, though.  If you’re an SNL fan you have to have liked the Pepsi-PepSuber ad.
   Youtube also has a top five list, and you can see all the ads there as well.  The Careerbuilder ad made the top five on Youtube, which surprises me.  It was weird and twice as long as it should have been.  It got real annoying after thirty seconds. The E*Trade babies made number two on that list, but I’m afraid they too have jumped the shark.  The best E*Trade baby ad was when he underestimated the creepy factor of the clown.  Lately I think they’ve underestimated the creepy factor of the talking babies.
   Speaking of creepy, did you see the Cash for Gold ad with Ed McMahon?  That was scary.  MC Hammer wasn’t so bad, but opening with Ed McMahon was in real bad taste.  Unfortunately I missed Miller High Life’s one second ad.  Fortunately, it’s on Youtube.  I did like the Bridgestone ad with Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head.
   This brings us to the unanimous number one ad this year: the Doritos “Free Doritos” ad.  I agree that is was probably the best of the bunch, but what makes it stand out is that it was made by a couple of brothers from Indiana and submitted to Doritos as part of an online contest.  Their ad was selected by Doritos from over 1900 other amateur videos.  It cost them about $2000 to make, and for taking the top spot on the USATODAY Ad Meter, they’ll get a million dollar bonus.  It’s always good to see the little guy do well.