Catch-22 on three, hut hut hut
Like rising and falling hemlines, Super Bowl ads are a cultural barometer: Their creators aim to measure the national mood and align their appeals with it. A decade or so ago, that mood was "wow, all we have to do is say the words ‘dot com' and money falls out of the sky." For Super Bowl XXXVI, played only months after 9/11, we saw patriotic Clydesdales , Rudy Giuliani's thank you to America (courtesy of Monster.com), and the ONDCP linking drug use to terrorist financing.
This year, the zeitgeist is all about austerity in a lousy economy. So here's the catch: How can your Super Bowl ad capture a spirit of belt-tightening when, at up to $3 million for 30 seconds, the ad's very existence is evidence of lavish spending? And everybody knows it?
Will the tone of this Sunday's ads pick up on Travelocity's newest spot ? It's honest, but a little on the nose, and four hours of that would leave me seriously depressed. Will some advertisers go the other way with a lavish, distracting, fiddle-while-Rome-burns approach?
I'll be watching to see who comes up with a third way that makes innovative reference to the current climate without either insulting my intelligence or making my cry in my beer. If your client had one of those spots to fill, how would you go about it?
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