Times may change, but Super Bowl ads don’t

Allison Linn Senior writer • Profile • E-mail

With the economy in the doldrums and the nation’s future uncertain, it’s nice to know that some things never change.

Among them: Super Bowl advertisers continue to rely on hot women, violent gags and sophomoric humor to sell their wares.

While this year’s batch of Super Bowl ads offered a lot of the predictable fodder, there were some bright spots. Here’s a look at Ads of the Weird’s take on the best and the worst of this year’s Super Bowl spots.

What we liked

Cars.com
David Abernathy starts life by congratulating the doctor on a perfect delivery, and thus begins a journey of overachievement and general excellence. And yet, even a man who can perform open heart surgery in an opera house with a ballpoint pen loses his confidence when he is faced with that scariest of prospects: the car salesman.

But alas, thanks to cars.com, he’s able to regain his sense of self-worth, and walk away with the vehicle he wants.

The commercial for cars.com was engrossing and witty enough to keep people’s attention, and also used a theme that would actually resonate with car buyers — the fact that, no matter what you’ve done in life, it is still intimidating to try to deal with a car dealer.

Audi
In Audi’s Super Bowl spot, action star Jason Statham travels through time as he tries to make a getaway, first in a 1970s-era Mercedes, next in a 1980s-era BMW and, finally, in a sleek and modern Audi.

The action-packed, entertaining ad shows a pitch-perfect attention to detail, from the washed out look of the 1970s sequence to the box-like cell phone in the 1980s bit to the star’s sigh when faced with a Lexus in the 1990s.

Perhaps most of us aren’t thinking of an Audi purchase in this economy, but we still liked the escapism.

Pepsi
Pepsi also chose to travel through time and space for an uplifting ad juxtaposing a previous generation with the current one, to the tune of Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young” (reinterpreted in part by will.i.am).

The other clever juxtapositions in the ad including a soldier’s homecoming in times gone by versus today, Jack Black versus John Belushi and even Gumby versus Shrek.

Sure, it was a bit hokey, but we still think the message — “Every generation refreshes the world” — is something people could stand to hear about now.

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