2012 Super Bowl Commercials – Who had the Best Commercial and who's Ad was just bad?

I am a football fan, even though I do not necessarily root for a specific team. I kind of just cheer for the league as a whole. I enjoy precise, surgical offenses so I enjoyed watch the St. Louis Rams’ Greatest Show on Turf or an offense led by Peyton Manning and Drew Brees. Don’t get me wrong, I like to see great plays on the defensive side of the ball too. A clean solid hit is always exciting, just as a defensive end nimbly moving around an offensive lineman on his way to a bone jarring hit on the unsuspecting quarterback.

Now that Super Bowl Forty-Six is in the books and Giants fans are cheering their second championship in four years I had some observations regarding the whole Super Bowl festivities.

The Super Bowl is a tremendous event watched by millions every year, regardless of the two teams participating in the game. Hosting the event can bring cities huge economic windfalls with all of the fans, media, etc. flocking to their town to cover the game. I have never been to a Super Bowl but I have a couple of friends who were there this year in Indianapolis and they loved the entire experience.

As I mentioned I do not follow a team so I really didn’t have a vested interest in who won the game this year between New York and New England. Living in Northern California I got to hear from a bunch of 49ers fans that didn’t even play on watching the game, even though I’m sure they saw some of it.

I don’t know about everyone else but I enjoy the game and commercials kind of as one big package deal. Everyone knows that advertisers pay top dollar for there precious thirty second spots during the big game. What I am struggling with are the less than stellar commercials that I saw during the game.

Having one or two bad commercials is not uncommon but they are usually dwarfed by the few really good ones that everyone remembers, and talks about, while standing around the water cooler at work on Monday. Unfortunately, for me and my family, most of the commercials this year were a big bust.

The commercials are the only reason my wife and daughter kind of watch the game. Neither of them are football fans but even they long to see what cool commercials the advertisers have come up with. Logic would tell us that they should be decent since they are paying over three million dollars for their spots.

We did enjoy a couple of commercials. The VW spot with the overweight dog getting into shape to chase the new vehicle was cute, ditto with the Sketchers’ Mr. Quiggly racing ad. Doritos did another dog commercial this year where the dog bribes a human with a bag to keep the buried missing kitty a secret. Bud Light commercials have become a Super Bowl staple but even they disappointed me this year. Sure their ‘here Weego’ commercial was funny but after that, nothing.

Take the dogs out of the commercial equation and I can only give thumbs up to TaxAct and their little boy who desperately needed an open restroom before relieving himself in the pool.

E*TRADE has given us the adorable baby who is a modern day stockbroker in diapers. I usually enjoy their offerings as well but not this year; maybe they should have dropped it in the diaper pail and started over?

I could go into all of the really bad ones but why re-live those painful thirty seconds of everyone’s lives? I will say that Dannon’s ad was weird; I never aspired to see THAT much of David Beckham, and I don’t know what upset Ford so much about the Chevrolet commercial.

Maybe the economic downturn is affecting the available finances for these commercial creating geniuses? Perhaps the bar was just set way too high and things had to balance themselves out? I am certainly not an expert but I noticed the commercials during the 2011 Super Bowl weren’t great either.

Here’s hoping that the 2013 Super Bowl brings all fans a well played game, and commercials that we can all enjoy talking about, positively.