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Super Bowl ads: Winners and losers
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Jan. 31, 2000 | NEW YORK --
For the last few years, Westbrook, who is worldwide president at the New York agency Fallon McElligott, has generously opened his plush SoHo apartment on Super Bowl Sunday to fellow agency types who share his preference for tag lines over linebackers. In this brand-building Bizarro world, guests all but tune out the game -- even this year's spellbinder -- perking up only when the announcers cut away to the commercials. The air hums with shop talk. "What do you think of the letterbox?" the guests ask each other as they feast on a folksy repast of chili and barbecue. "Doesn't it arrest your attention?" A whimsical TBWA-Chiat Day spot for Pets.Com provokes widespread guffaws. "All those titles in the left-hand corner!" marvels a Fallon design director. "What a fuck-up!" It soon becomes clear that this is a tough crowd. Westbrook's party, not surprisingly, tends to be a Fallon-centric affair. And, within the industry, Fallon is considered forbiddingly chic -- Helmut Lang to Ogilvy's J.C Penney. "It seems casual, but it's pretty political," whispers a copywriter. "You have to know when to laugh, and what to slag." As they recline on leather couches, feasting their eyes on Westbrook's 58-inch TV, the brand mavens resemble jaded fashionistas at a disastrous runway show, all crossed arms and indulgent smiles. "Light on concept, big on execution," scoffs one guest of Autotrader.com's 30-second spot. "How did they sell that to the client?" giggles his friend. "'OK, so then all these cars are going to come into the frame!'" "Maybe they made a diorama," someone else says. A Budweiser ad provokes more slagging. "The old talking-dog gag." "Everyone loves a talking dog!" "And it even looks real!" Many companies, particularly the ubiquitous dot-com rookies, seem a mite ambitious in their estimation of what the average Super Bowl watcher could grasp. Microstrategy's 30-second spot features the following plot line: 1) A harried business traveler gets a message on his cell phone, informing him that his flight has been canceled. 2) He reschedules, and runs to a new gate. 3) In the chaos, someone steals his credit card. 4) The credit card is triumphantly recovered when the thief tries to use it to buy a plane ticket. The convoluted spot provokes widespread groans. "That's more than happened on tonight's episode of 'The Sopranos,'" chuckles Michael Fanuele, director of account planning at Bozell Worldwide. "It's got to be incredibly simple," agrees Judith Grey, an art director at Fallon. "The creative director should have said, 'Out, out, out. I need a three-line super that explains the whole thing.' As much as we want to perceive ourselves as artists, you've got to keep in mind that these ads are being seen by drunk people in noisy bars. They have to work like billboards." A parody of a Gap ad, in which gyrating dancers are mowed down by a gleaming Oldsmobile, is pronounced a waste of a good idea. "The payoff at the end should have been better," carps Neil Powell, creative director and managing partner at Fallon. "They should have somehow kept it straight. It would have been more effective if it had kept you wondering: Was it a Gap ad? Or was it a car ad? I hate to see such an obvious cut to a hard product payoff."
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