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Building The Perfect Super Bowl Ad

It would seem, based off the 2012 Super Bowl, that the people responsible for the Super Bowl ads, which are famously known to cost over a million dollars in air time in addition to some of their ridiculous production costs, aren’t quite getting it.

I don’t want to buy Coke more because of cute Polar Bears. I don’t want to buy a Hyundai just because of a funny ad with a cheetah. Even with the inspirational message delivered by the gritty voice of the legendary Clint Eastwood, I’m not more inclined towards stopping by my nearest Chrysler dealer when I’m looking to buy. I have a Mazda and it won’t die, so Chrysler could have had in that commercial James Earl Joyce, Morgan Freeman, along with Eastwood and layer in a Sarah McLachlan song and I still wouldn’t buy a car that wasn’t a Mazda.

If you were going to spend over a million dollars for a minute of airtime, why wouldn’t you try to do something to change my mind as a consumer? If you were going to make the perfect Super Bowl ad, that should be your goal. Yes, entertainment value and the short-lived bragging rights of making the most memorable or hilarious ad are important as well, but it’s a wasted investment if those are the only two things accomplished by the ad.

Thus, here are some ideas/suggestions/guidelines/techniques of subliminal messaging that would make up the perfect Super Bowl ad:

1. Have an ad that flashed the product being advertised, then a title card that read “BUY THIS NOW” repeatedly at the rate of a strobe light.

2. Have a movie trailer that has voiceover literally say, “You will be cool and have so many more friends if you watch this movie,” several times throughout.

3. Have a beer ad that shows a really trendy party in a mansion with several attractive people all dancing while simultaneously, somehow, enjoying their name brand beer without spilling it, then pull back to a living room with three friends sitting on a couch (race and gender at your discretion) drinking a different beer. One of them says to the rest, “Pssh. No party like that has beer,” then guzzles down the different beer, and adds, “Now this is a real beer.” All three friends then stand and repeat “This is the real beer because it’s the reasonable beer and IT’S THE ONLY BEER YOU WILL BUY!”

4. Have an ad with supermodel Adriana Lima in lingerie standing there holding whatever product is being advertised, then saying, “I’m supermodel Adriana Lima and you will buy [insert whatever product is being advertised] because though your significant other is not as hot as me, this [insert whatever product is being advertised] is good enough to make me dress like a harlot, making it DEFINITELY good enough for your girlfriend to bang you. BUY IT!”

5. Have an ad with grimy, blue collar workers hard at work in some factory telling about how they put care into their work, which makes the product patriotic, then cut to a close-up of an official label that says, “Made with the Patriotic Hands of an American Worker in the Good Ol’ US of A.” One of the workers then says, “Not for pinko commies, which is none of you, RIGHT?”

6. Have an ad with real live animals caught in a struggle. Get a predator chasing down its prey across something like the Serengeti, then pouncing on it for the kill. Then have a voiceover of Clint Eastwood say, “This is what real animals do. They don’t drink cola. Certainly, they don’t drink cola after they kill their dinner. They’d drink a beer. They would drink a beer like this one because it’s a REAL beer and they’re real animals. You’re real, right? Don’t focus on the repetition, just the beer, because it’s real.”

7. Parody a classic movie with tons of product placement and then have the celebrity that you bothered to do this ad say, “If you buy enough of this product, we’ll consider making a sequel that you will all watch despite lackluster reviews because you can’t fight nostalgia no matter how stupid or lame it is.”

8. Have a famous comedian stand in front of a white background debating how to make the ad clever during the actual ad. Every five seconds flash a frame of the product in ideally lit situations with cats running in circles around it. Then, bring in another famous comedian that says that “If you want the ad to be clever, just add cats running in circles around the product,” to which the first comedian responds, “Oh, you mean like the thing that we’ve been flashing subliminally throughout this commercial?” Then, flash a title card that says, “Do not resist the cuteness of cats.”

9. Have a montage of supermodels with a voiceover that says, “This is an advertisement for a website that has hot girls on it in addition to other services. That’s why we’re showing you hot girls. Go to this site and you will see more of this along with other services that you may or may not care about.”

10. Have a montage of significant periods in history where people are celebrating then cut to a CEO of a major corporation that says, “Though it may not seem like it, we ABSOLUTELY have everything to do with making all of those people over the years happy. That’s why you should support everything we do. Listen to us. LISTEN or else…”

If any or all of these tips are followed by anyone for the Super Bowl ads in 2013, we’re sure to have commercials worth actually staying in for on a Sunday without any question of our curiosity being peaked to buy one or several of the products advertised. Also, we can stop hearing certain beers blatantly lie that they’re good beer.

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Comments

  1. Eric says:

    Dude – #3 is so perfect!! Seriously, did I buy a 12pack of Bud Light Platinum because of the cool party scene? NO, i bought it because it was the same price of Bud Light and it is 6% alcohol…6%!! That is 2% more for the same price!

    “This is the real beer because itโ€™s the reasonable beer and ITโ€™S THE ONLY BEER YOU WILL BUY!โ€

  2. Jake Kroeger says:

    Whether it be James Earl Jones or James Earl Joyce or Jim Earl Jones, I still wouldn’t be convinced to buy anything but a Mazda.

  3. Um…it’s “Jones,” dude. James Earl Jones. He didn’t go down in a B-2 bomber over central Russia to be called “James Earl Joyce.” (Yeah, I went with “Strangelove” over “Star Wars” โ€” so what? ๐Ÿ˜‰