Super Bowl Spot wrap up including the best and the worst from 2014

Well, the game was a blow out for Seattle. I’d predicted a win but not a humiliation. Payton Manning will need to do some soul searching after an epic blown opportunity and so will a lot of the advertisers.

It’s easy to be dismissive or even mean about some of the spots last night. But to be fair, most advertising is uninspiring. Great advertising is rare and hard to produce.

People who haven’t sat in endless meetings while “suits” nibble away at your great idea will never understand how difficult it is. It’s brutally hard to produce great. And I guarantee, the creatives were swinging for the fences when they produced this years load of mediocrity. And I can almost guarantee that the original concepts were likely 10x better than what ended up on the screen.

The Winner:
Was definitely the Bud puppy spot. This is an animal spot retread but the people love it like their Hangover 3s and their Fast and Furious 6s.

Surprises:
Mazeratti: Beautiful film making by Director, David Gordon Green. The spot feels reminiscent of Terrence Malik’s work and his film George Washington. Beautiful pictures but not sure if it will sell any Maseratis. Also feels a lot like the Levi’s work W+K did awhile back.

Microsoft: Nice creative strategy behind the Steve Gleason ad. Too bad for them and Payton the Saints didn’t make it to the big game.

Wiffs:
Chrysler spot with Dylan. It felt like they were trying to copy last years Halftime in America but badly.

Kia: The Matrix spot is what we call borrowed interest and poorly executed.

Coke: I’m sure someone somewhere thought they were making a great “total market” ad. Instead they produced another Pajama Boy. Keep the politics out of advertising folks. W+K strives to strike passion in viewers but this is likely to bring out the wrong kind in half of their audience – especially with immigration reform being pushed in Washington.

The rest aren’t really worth mentioning.