Global may have boasted an average audience of four million (source: BBM) for Sunday’s Super Bowl, but the only thing heard from our armchair ad critics was a collective yawn. Their take? If you’re looking for a mass audience, this is it. So go big or go home. Canuck advertisers played it safe here, and for the creative and marketing types polled, that just meant a good game of football and a chance to run to the fridge.
‘From the Canadian perspective, I found it kind of boring,’ admits James Powell, senior manager, brand and communications at Toronto-based Virgin Mobile. ‘I think if you’re going to create a Super Bowl ad, then create a Super Bowl ad and give us the same level of spectacle as the Super Bowl itself.’
Powell admits that he did sit up and take notice of the Fido ads aired during the game. ‘It was the one with the giant dog footprints. And it had a big, slick, ‘holy cow, what kind of budget did they have?’ look to it. Plus, it looks like there’s a plan to it, with a viral component plus print and online,’ he says.
Powell also had kudos for the American Bud Light ‘magic fridge’ ads but was unimpressed by the Diet Pepsi ads featuring the stunt can – Jackie Chan and P. Diddy notwithstanding.
When asked about the impact the Global rebrand launch had, he says: ‘I think outside of the marketing world, many people probably didn’t notice it. If you’re going to do Super Bowl, it should be an absolute spectacle – like the Brooke Burke Burger King ads [seen online] – or cheap and smutty.’
Case in point: godaddy.com. The domain name registrar godaddy.com took the lion’s share of the pre-Bowl ad hoopla with 13 network-rejected ads. Talk about impression.
‘I know nothing about that company, but their marketing people are really smart,’ says Powell. ‘When else are they going to get this much press?’
Fred Forster of PHD Canada agrees. ‘I’d bet that the traffic on their site was through the roof. Now that’s an example of a small player who got to cut through the Super Bowl clutter.’
Steelers fan and Dentsu Canada CD Andrew Shortt says: ‘Bell came out with a new campaign using the beavers [Frank and Gordon], and it’s the biggest campaign launch for Bell with the Super Bowl.’ Though he admits that the writing is good, Shortt says the overall campaign may be too similar to an American Miller Lite campaign from last year using animals such as a beaver, a turtle, a penguin all auditioning to be Miller Lite spokesanimals.
‘Telus owns animals [in Canada]. That’s the first clue not to do it.’
Overall, Shortt says collectively of the Canadian ads, ‘it’s indicative of the ad year in Canada. It was a pretty conservative, dull year. Maybe in Canada, the Stanley Cup finals are more important. I hope it would be. So as a Steelers fan, the game was the best part of the broadcast.’
