Super Bowl Fallout

Ad Age has a couple of reactions to the Super Bowl ads and the half-time show. This one is not surprising:

PR FIRMS PRAISE JANET JACKSON BREAST STUNT
'It Raises the Bar for All of Us,' Says Executive

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- For those in the business of masterminding public-relations stunts for marketers, Janet Jackson's big expose during CBS's airing of the Super Bowl has raised a serious issue: how to top it.

I also like this reaction to the ads by Ad Age's editor:

AN ADVERTISING SUPER BOWL OF NON-IDEAS

Sophomoric Humor Fails as Compelling Entertainment

A flatulent horse. Tens of millions of Americans open their doors, and this is what marketers drag into their living rooms. A farting horse.

Yeah, thanks for coming. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Entertainment bowl

The Super Bowl, more entertainment spectacle than sporting event (despite this year's nail-biting finish), is a perfect platform for marketers to demonstrate how their messages can break through in a cluttered, fragmented and viewer-controlled media universe. As advertising moves from unwelcome intruder to invited guest, it is more likely to be cloaked as entertainment, as something viewers choose to spend time with because of a perceived intrinsic value.

The expectation is there with the Super Bowl that the ads will enhance the experience -- viewers have been conditioned by breathless segments of morning shows, newspaper stories and cable news reports to tune in as much for the ads as for the game. But there's a sense of artificial, forced frivolity that surrounds the event, and the mediocrity of the creative reminds that the ad business won't be saved merely by turning up the volume on 30-second commercials.