If you play it backwards it tells you to drink Coke

Diet Pepsi’s “Brown and Bubbly” campaign debuted on Super Bowl Sunday this year, and while it didn’t stand out as hilariously bad, the campaign has so many awful qualities I feel I would be neglectful to let it just slide by. This is one of the two spots Diet Pepsi crapped out and onto our TV screen this year. The other spot features a cameo by Jackie Chan in which they fail to portray him actually fighting on screen.

There is no redeeming quality in this spot, from the under-utilized cameos to the doomed-upon-conception catch phrase “Brown and Bubbly”. There was an opportunity to save this spot and make it slightly novel, maybe in the style of the “Buddy” Levi’s commercials where they could have humanized the inanimate Diet Pepsi can a little more. Instead it’s a parade of generic thoughtlessness and godless can-worship.

I am quite depressed by this spot. I don’t think I can go on typing.

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Bud Light came away with a few gems this Super Bowl. The “magic fridge” spot is at least entertaining the first go-round, and present a little more sophistication in the humor than a bowling ball falling on a guy’s head. In real life this would be an electrical nightmare to rig up, and your neighbors would have to be pretty stupid to not notice you sawing through the wall to build your rotating fridge. This and many more complaints have been drafted into a letter to the Budweiser Corporation.

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This spot next gets an F. It’s for some kind of energy drink I think. I’m not even going to watch it again to remind myself the name of the product. If you’re going to have no other redeeming quality, at least don’t let us forget the name of your product. This spot is a predictable exploit of a large budget, I think they tried to hit such a wide target they missed everyone all together.

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Here’s yet another Bud Light spot that won’t go down in history as one of the greatest commercials ever but delivers its punch line and product visuals well. Contrasted with the other violently themed Super Bowl 2006 spots, the violence happens off screen, meaning the writers had to actually come up with a reason for the spot to be funny other than a piano falling on the guy and bear and killing them both. The spot, and every man woman and child on earth, are all richer for it.

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Ameriquest’s “Don’t Judge Too Quickly” campaign came out as one of the more critically acclaimed stars of the Super Bowl 2006 commercials. This is one of their best, though somewhat morbid thirty-second spots. I hate to even say out loud the failing of these spots since it’s such a wide failing of “super funny” spots it’s a little cliché to even say: “what was that commercial for?” Yeah so you totally forgot the name of the product.

The disconnect between product/service and the message is a little deeper than just forgetting the name of the company for Ameriquest though; the stretch between the catch phrase (”Don’t Judge Too Quickly”) and the services the company is offering is a little too much. Ameriquest won’t judge me too quickly? What does that mean? And the commercial is over. It seems like they filtered down their funny ideas to the best three, executed them very well, then after-the-fact tried to somehow make it sells Ameriquest. It could have just as easily been for FedEx, Outback Steakhouse, or the Dildo Outlet. Unfortunately even if something does an excellent job of being funny that doesn’t automatically make it a good advertisement.

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For the second installment of Super Bowl 2006 ads I’ve lumped together spots which are continuations of campaigns or basically sequels of early commercials. Burger King tops the list of notable awful commercials, but still maintains the humor of their current campaign. This minute-long spot is no Hootie jam, but does the job.

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Sierra Mist continued their campaign featuring some of the hottest comedians of modern times, and also Kathy Griffin. This spot is a little funnier than some of their earlier spots. While it doesn’t really knock your socks off, it does a good job of being entertaining for thirty seconds, and Kathy Griffin doesn’t talk the whole time so that’s a plus.

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This spot is a continuation of an early Budweiser Super Bowl ad. The earlier ad featured just the horses kicking an extra point over two telephone posts. It’s funny, and there is a good reversal of expectations moment when the audience realizes it’s not just a rerun of the older spot.

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Carrerbuilders dot com doesn’t cover any new ground with their new chimp commercial, but at least does a good job of equaling the quality of the spots last year. Once again a man is working with primates and is demeaned. In real life, chimps are wild dangerous creatures, and you should never attempt to turn a chart the right way in front of an elder chimpanzee or the other family members would rip you limb from limb.

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For actually fitting in with a current campaign but being of Super Bowl quality, I think this McDonald’s ad does the best job, though it is probably the tamest of the five in this post. It keeps the no-budget feel of the current “I’m Lovin’ it” campaign but has some good polish on it. A lot of people I speak to have a virulent dislike of the McDonald’s campaign, and while I don’t personally adore it I identify it as an effective use of advertising, and probably has helped McDonald’s reach it’s current five year high in stock prices.

A notable unmentionable was the godaddy.com “sequel”. It was so much of a non-event I don’t even feel like posting it. I will say that it seemed like it relied so much on referencing it’s own ad last year (which in turn relied so much on referencing the previous Super Bowl) that I tuned it out all together. Here’s the original if you just feel like watching it, you filthy person you.

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I’ve sectioned off these five Super Bowl ads that feature graphic and life-like violence. It seemed to be the theme this year to have misfiring comedic timing leading up to a severe head or spine injury. This first ad for Bud Light is one of the funnier violent ads, but the tackle at the end seems a little too much like the Michelob ad later in this post. By then end of the Super Bowl everyone had seen about ten different commercials featuring someone getting realistically hit or tackled and it got kind of old.

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This ad for FedEx features cavemen having a discussion cavemen shouldn’t normally have..Way to go guys, haven’t seen that one lately. This spot was laborious, and the only funny part was the dejected caveman kicking a small dinosaur. The funny moment was quickly ended when he was stepped on. Then it got sad. I am still sad.

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Moving on, in this ad we see a horrible head injury occur. And it’s hilarious! Well it might be if we hadn’t seen something fall out of nowhere and kill someone in another ad just a few seconds ago. Frankly I was expecting something to fall and completely kill everyone in every commercial by the end of the night.

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Here’s a man horribly tackling an innocent woman. Classic. I wasn’t really laughing by this point, you can only see someone body slammed “unexpectedly” so many times before you kind of expect it, or at least are not amused by it. I’m supposing the revenge hit at the end is to make amends for depicting a man violently smashing a woman into the ground.

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Here’s a guy hitting another guy in the face with his phone. Sprint used to do this to me when I was an unhappy customer. It pretty much accurately describes how their whole customer service thing works. If you’re not expecting this it’s funny once, but it uses sudden unexpected violence as a substitute for being clever (and for being original). More ads playing on different themes from this years Super Bowl XL will be up later in the week.

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