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What makes a great ad? It depends on who you ask, sure, but what makes a really great ad? One the bean counters, the suits, the creatives and oh yeah those other guys…um what were they called again, oh Consumers. Yeah them too, what makes an ad all of them will consider great? Is it just how many widgets it sells? Is it about ROI, CPM, click through rates, call backs, BRCs received? Is it about winning 2 gold lions, a gold pencil, showing up in Creativity, Communication Arts, Art Directors Guild annual and HOW!? What leads to all these things that most people involved in making or buying ads will tell you make it “great”?

Are the ads that do the best, the gems, the great ones, ideas that live on the edges? Ideas that aren’t quite like anything being done at the time they come out? If so, should we be shooting for the edges all the time?

Note: I wrote, rewrote and rewrote this post and I still don’t really know. I wanted it to be more than just the one question though. I also didn’t want this to sound like I was just venting. Lets have a discussion in the comments.

Ok, so you may have noticed that I didn’t do a post yesterday. That’s because I was busy designing a poster. We’ll return to our regularly scheduled programing on Monday, but today I want to share with you what I was up to.

Charity:Water is a great cause and this month the “twitterverse” is getting together to raise money. They’re having over 160 live tweet events, which is fantastic. Sadly the closest one to me is still almost 100 miles away. So instead I designed a poster to raise awareness and money for Charity:Water. You can check out the poster (and buy it): http://www.tscreative.com/cleanWater.html

That’s it from me, see you Monday 

My goal is to try and keep my personal politics out of this blog. I just don’t think it’s a good medium for me to discuss those kinds of issues. However, I think this is more of a current event than a political issue, so I figure I’d throw it out there.

For the last few months we’ve all been inundated with news of the “Economic slowdown” or “The recession” or “The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.” (Really? The last one seems a little bit sensationalized to me). In that time we’ve been told (mostly by press releases and CEOs on TV, and pundits, there are always the pundits) that companies are “trimming the fat.” But in the same reports where we’re hearing about record job losses, we’re listening to people decry “large” advertising budgets, marketing initiatives and other promotional activities as “wasteful”, this is in addition to the fear induced marketing budget cuts tough times already bring on.

Now I’m not suggesting that marketing departments and firms shouldn’t be taking our fair share of the slow down, but when GM closes a plant it isn’t celebrated as a responsible business move by the public at large, it’s a catastrophe. People work in marketing. They work in media sales, and event planning. There are people behind advertising who depend on it to make a living just like those people working at that truck plant. Marketing efforts also drive sales, which is kinda the whole reason why they closed that GM plant, isn’t it? This isn’t to say that advertising and marketing are going to save the economy, but they aren’t really a wasteful, frivolous budget item either.

What do you think? Are we getting a raw deal when it comes to the recession? Lets discuss in the comments.

So it’s that time of year, when the worlds of professional sport and professional…whatever it is we do all day, come crashing together for the superest of super days, Superbowl Sunday. That means like every other advertising blogger on the internet, I’m gonna talk about the hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising we saw last night. I’m going to guess-timate the cost of each spot at the going rate of $3M per 30 second block, (this doesn’t include the production costs of the ads, which I will likely never know) well because I can and no one else is doing it. So here we go.

Best ads:

Career Builder – Tips 60 sec ~ $6 Million – WIEDEN & KENNEDY

We all laughed so hard at this one it has to top my list. Fantastic way of taking the feeling you have in a bad job and then blowing it so far out of proportion that you end up punching a kola bear 3 times in 60 seconds before going to a guy in a speedo. And really, have we ever seen a kola bear wearing glasses getting punched? The repetition is key to making this work, if we had just seen a string of bad things the full, crushing effect of this job that makes you scream, cry, ride dolphins and punch kolas, even while drinking gold bar smoothies wouldn’t even begin to show through. A truly fantastic TV spot, and one of my favorites of the evening, and there were very few.

Pepsi – PepSuber 60 sec ~ $6 Million – Arnell, New York

Ok, so here’s some disclaimers: 1) I never watched Macgyver, ever. 2) I love Pepsi’s new Refresh campaign. 3) MacGruber is my favorite SNL skit in the last 10 years, which is equal parts commentary on the quality of the show and the skit. Ok now that that’s out of the way. If MacGruber had punched a kola even once this spot would have been on the top of the list. This spot had almost everything (sans kola boxing) “There is only one cola he will pour into his mouth-hole. MacGruber. Pepsi is that cola!. MacGruber!” You know you were singing it at work today, don’t lie to me. This spot took some existing funny, and then didn’t ruin it when they turned it into an ad. That’s the really impressive thing. They DIDN’T RUIN the funny to sell Pepsi. That should win them a Gold Lion alone. They just let them do their MacGruber thing. If we could all do this little damage to an existing funny pop culture thing when we bring it into an ad, the world would be a better place. The cameo by Richard Dean Anderson (aka Macgyver) was a nice touch too.

Hulu – An evil plot 60 sec ~ $6 Million – Crispin Porter + Bogusky

This feels like classic Crispin, and when I say that I mean it’s unlike most advertising we’ve ever seen. “Hulu. An evil plot to destroy the world, enjoy.” What a closing line! And Alec Baldwin is the mouthpiece for aliens who want to eat our softened, cottage cheese brains?!? I actually can see that! The spot has some fairly nice little CG stuff in it too, but I only really noticed it after I watched it 4 more times (on Hulu no less). I love it, and I think it has the attitude most internet broadcasters are looking for to pander to all us damn kids today.

“Meh” ads:

Monster.com – Moose 30 sec ~ $3 Million – BBDO, New York

I know I know, I was the only one who wasn’t floored by this ad. I get it, “your office is so bad…” HOW BAD IS IT? “… your office is so bad, your desk is under a moose’s butt…and the moose is going to poop on you.” It didn’t do it for me. (Yes I know you’re scratching your heads after I made such a big deal out of the kola punch, but that caught me so off guard it was hilarious. This was just a poop joke.) I didn’t dislike this ad, but it wasn’t as awesome as the three I listed above. Keep trying BBDO, we still love you.

Denny’s – Thugs 30 Sec ~ $3 Million – Goodby, Silverstein

I didn’t like this one as much as “‘Nannerpus” (which isn’t on Hulu, come on Hulu, really?) but both of them left me kinda “Meh.” This is probably more my feeling about the product being advertised than the ads themselves though. Honestly, how do you sell Denny’s? They weren’t terrible ads, but I’m not rolling out for my free grand slam tomorrow, and isn’t that the point?

Dorritos – Crystal Ball 30 Sec ~ $3 Million – Consumer Generated

I honestly forgot about this add until someone mentioned it on Twitter today. I guess hitting your boss in the junk with a snow globe doesn’t stick around in the ‘ol noggin like a kola getting punched. Can I say “It really shows why we get paid to do what we do.” without sounding pretentious? It wasn’t a bad ad, but it wasn’t fantastic. As I was told earlier today, “This was probably huge in their target market.” And it did win the USA today poll. Still not enough for me.

“Why did you spend so much money on this?”:

Bud Light – all of them 30 Sec each ~ $3 Million each – DDB

I’m so sick of “Drinkability.” Yes we get it, we won’t spit your beer out as soon as it touches our tongues. What a unique selling proposition that is! I’ve hated this campaign since they started it last fall, and it hasn’t grown on me one bit. What a crappy promise to make. “You can drink it.” Yeah, I can drink a lot of things. You know what else has “Drinkability?” Anti-freeze. It tastes like Kool-aid, but I wouldn’t want to have a tall cool glass of it. Please kill this campaign, you’ve spent far too much money on it to date. \rant

Castrol – Edge Monkeys 30 Sec ~ $3 Million – OGILVY

Chimps? Really? Chimps? Ok. Sure. I suppose the “they’re grease monkeys” line is kinda cute. But really, haven’t we done chimp ads in the last 3 consecutive super bowls? The chimps must have an awesome manager.

Go Daddy – BOOBS!! 30 sec on TV ~ $3 Million each – in-House

No, the real titles of the ads are not “BOOBS!!” but they could have been. They’re actually called “Baseball” and “Shower”, and yes I watched both of them “uncensored” on the site. And you know what? Who cares. This is the millionth time you’ve run these ads Go Daddy, we get it. You love boobs AND you have cheap domain registration. Did you really need to spend six million to tell us that yet again? Take a play from PETA’s book and do something so risque (by TV censor standards anyway) and get the ad banned. You’ll get all the publicity and not have to buy the media. (Disclaimer: This site is hosted at godaddy.com, please don’t take it down because your ads are a repeat. Again.)

The 3D ads by Intel, Sobe, NBC, Dreamworks

I was SO let down by these spots. I went out and got 3d glasses for all my party guests. I cut them all out during the first quarter, while watching the game, and excitedly handed them out to everyone. What did I get for all my effort? A PADDLE BALL! I asked all the people sitting in my living room if they saw anything else that was even remotely “3d” and they agreed, the damn paddle ball at the beginning was all we saw. All eight of us. Why am I so upset about this? Because at least all the other ads didn’t make me hunt down a special thing in the store and then do handy crafts to prep for their ads. All I had to do was turn on the TV for everyone else’s spots. I had to invest some time for these spots, and they not only let me down, they stepped on my crotch while I was laying on the ground wondering if my 3d glasses were broken. A lesson to everyone. If you generate this much hype, and make people do something other than watch TV to see your ad; make sure it’s really, really cool, because you’ve set the bar high by making your audience find a display and then use scissors.

There were others, and I’d categorize them all if I had time, but these were the highlights according to me. A note to any of the agencies I listed, if you’d like to hire me out of an “Oh yeah kid, do you think you could do any better?!?” I’d be honored to try, or just to work in the same building with the guys who get to try next year. To everyone else, what were your favorite ads? What do you never want to see again? And do you think we’ll see more kolas getting punched in the future of advertising? Let me (and the rest of us) know if the comments.