Super Bowl Awesomeness

One of my all time favorite all time Super Bowl ads, which I’m sure many in the industry would agree, is Apple’s “1984” aired once only in 1984. It was brilliant and revolutionary much like the brand itself, however not one of the ones that relates to me on a personal level. When comparing a great ad from the past and one from this year’s Super Bowl, I choose 2011’s Volkswagon commercial entitled “The Force” and 2014’s Radio Shack’s commercial, “The Phone Call”.

According to the company Ace Metrix, a company that analyzes the success of commercials, in 2011’s Super Bowl mix, “The Force” received 603 points out of a possible 950 points. The ratings are based on likeability, recall, relevance, persuasiveness and more. “The Force” scored the highest in it’s automotive category and 10% higher on average to all Super Bowl ads shown in that particular season.

Wow, I didn’t know that

I believe the insight behind this ad was one about the brand. Volkswagen is a family car. I think in working with that aspect they were looking to discover a very human moment, or even a family moment. What is the coolest thing a parent can for their kids? Not buy themselves a reliable safe car, but rather to keep hope and magic alive in their kids. Give them that awesome kid moment where you made the impossible possible.

To narrow this very fertile realm of creative space, it’s possible the planners or the creatives decided to take a transference technique by piggybacking off the success of Star Wars. The dads watching this ad, former or current fans of the trilogy, could probably see themselves as that boy pretending to battle with lasers, or trying to create “the force”. The greater audience with children or not, could also relate to the desire to try to do things that you want as a child. Executionally, it was brilliant as well as humorous, which we all like to see in a Super Bowl ad.

Nailed it, you have

As a side note, the agency, Deutsch Los Angeles, “seeded” teaser ads and the “Star Wars” concept to targeted websites such as car sites, Star Wars fan sites and YouTube. Right up until the commercial aired, the YouTube video already had 18 million views. Great strategy for the brand, and memorable in my heart. I do want to give my kids that moment someday.

I had a Super Bowl ad-watching party this year with a few other ad students from school. “The Phone Call” was the only commercial in which everyone universally liked, and remained quiet for throughout the whole commercial. It was brilliant, funny, and gave a great sense of nostalgia to those born in the 80’s and earlier.

The Super Bowl party.

Radio Shack brilliantly chose to make fun of their own stores and reputation, which hit a very real truth in consumer’s minds. We do not go to Radio Shack to buy a smart phone or the latest TV; we go there to buy a cord to our outdated home phone, a home phone in general or a replacement cord for that appliance we have that still works, but is just not worth buying a new one. If I needed a cord to connect my VCR to my TV to watch an old VHS I owned, I’d go there.

Essentially, Radio Shack’s problem wasn’t that they didn’t carry the latest Beat’s headphones, it was that no one knew they had even updated their stores. To get that message out, they used an 80’s joke “Hey ______, the _________ called, they want their ________ back”; a timeless classic. In addition, they cleverly used every loveable 80’s character that you had forgotten about, for example Alf. This created a sense of nostalgia that I believe makes this ad excel in memorability. The reveal of the look of the new store in the end of the commercial makes me want to go, if anything, to see what the stores look like now and what they sell. Maybe I won’t have to suffer the lines of their competitors anymore.

According to Ace Metrix, it was rated number 4 in the commercials of this year. Microsoft’s “Empowering” received the number one spot with a score of 710, and Radio Shack with a score of 677 (44 points higher than “The Force” commercial).

As an aspiring Art Director, both these ads rank in the top 10 of Super Bowl commercials I wish I had done, and work I would love to do. Every creative is different, and these ads are my style and the kind of ads I would like to see more of.