The Vomitous Super Bowl

The most depressing day of the year for me is the day after the Super Bowl. Let’s take a moment to consider why.

We, the people, perceive the Super Bowl to be a concentrated dose of the best advertising this culture is capable of creating. I think I’m going to vomit.

The fifty-two spots that ran last year represent the efforts of but a few advertisers, and even fewer ad agencies. While it’s true that for this relative handful of big spenders, the Super Bowl is their opportunity to trot out what they view to be their best stuff, that doesn’t mean it actually is. And even if it is their best stuff, that doesn’t necessarily make it the best stuff.
Quite the contrary, many of the best ads—those created by smaller business and smaller agencies, without Super Bowl-sized budgets—are precluded from ever running during the Super Bowl. Nevertheless, the world, or at least America, sees the set of Super Bowl ads as the best we can do. Given how far from true that is, it’s embarrassing to be judged by the public and media pundits according to this erratic assemblage of commercials, many of which are more excessive than impressive.

I watch these commercials. I enjoy them or not. I think they are effective or not. I form an opinion about each spot. Most of them are unremarkable, I think.

Then, the next day, every newspaper and news program offers its assessment. Last year, during the coveted 7:30 am interview slot, one network news show had the editor of Advertising Age on, while, simultaneously, a second network news show had the venerable Bob Garfield, also of Ad Age, on, and the other network news show had the guy from USA Today who runs the poll of which Super Bowl ads were most popular, on. I can only conclude I’m not from around here. I think I’m going to vomit.

My opinions, for the most part, bear no relation to those being expressed by these “experts.” And even less relation to the opinions expressed by the popularity polls. Bud Lite spots continue to dominate the polls. Partly because of their shotgun approach, running many spots in the hope that two or three will stick, which they invariably do. (The Valentine’s Day card spot was actually very good.) Horrifyingly, it seems as if the Bud Lite and M&Ms people, and a few others, do actually have their fingers on the pulse. Their stuff really does strike a chord with a lot of people. Is that a scathing indictment of our culture? Or am I just an arrogant elitist who’s out of touch? Most people apparently find the M&M characters charming and witty and endearing, rather than obvious and tired and insipid, like this one . . . er . . . friend of mine does.

This year, as always, I’ll be watching, as much for the commercials as the game. I’ll be rolling my eyes at all the lame stabs at humor—humorroids, let’s call them. I’ll begrudgingly enjoy a handful of spots. I’ll rail against all the corporate stupidity condensed into :30 clumps of insipidity. And the morning after, I’ll feel like vomiting again at all the glory being heaped on undeserving advertising. I will be stunned once more at the ever-widening chasm between my sensibilities and everybody else’s. My sense of disenfranchisement and distance from the mind of middle America will again be refreshed and retrenched.

Stupid Super Bowl. Stupid USA Today. Stupid pundits. Stupid civilized world. Ad nauseum.