Monday, February 7, 2011

The best and worst of the Super Bowl ads (UPDATED)

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(please scroll down to bottom for update)



Alternate blog post title:
Taxpayers' money saved a car company from bankruptcy and all they got was this lousy Super Bowl commercial



First, to the good:

Let's put it this way - this is the one we liked and which sprang to mind first when thinking of the best commercials from this past Super Bowl.



Always cool seeing famous people not take themselves too seriously. Then again, you could roast us from here until Easter for the jack that Kenny G. took home for the 5 seconds he was on the screen.




And now, the worst:



2 minutes. $9 million. A schlocky, near-preachy commercial for $9 million of your tax dollars.



And in totally related news, guess who's whining about the terms of the tax payer-funded bailout of his company?

You may have noticed that Chrysler released the longest ad in Super Bowl history on Sunday night, featuring the new Chrysler 200 driven by Detroit native rap star Eminem, an ad that CEO Sergio Marchionne says cost less than $9 million. But given that the company's CEO also announced this past week that is seeking a "better deal" on government loans, it is likely that this ad had more to do with getting political support than selling cars. Besides, is spending millions on a Super Bowl ad appropriate for a company that received a taxpayer bailout to recover from a bankruptcy?

We wouldn't be nearly as cheezed if the commercial didn't stink.

You came for the commericials but stay for Marchionne insulting the U.S. tax-payers while angling for an additional $3 billion retooling loan at the link at the top of the post.

Far from demostrating how "tough" Motown is, the commercal combined with the words of its CEO merely demonstrated the perils of crony capitalism and that of picking winners and losers in our new economy.


H/T: Hot Air



(UPDATE #1): Guess who else wasn't pleased with the Blackeyed Peas as the Super Bowl half-time performers?

(NSFWoH language warning)


4 comments:

B-Daddy said...

A guy I know with insider cred on the car industry said that Chrysler is "a dead man walking." All the best engineers left when they were part of Daimler, we're just waiting for it to be official.

Road Dawg said...

The young Darth Vader was very cute, but I know they will play it until we all want to rip off his helmet and tell him there is no Easter Bunny.

Anonymous said...

loved the careerbuilder.com commercial. because of the monkeys.

95% of the commercials were uninspired gibberish. pepsi, doritos, bud light, and chevy had nothing this year.

Mutnodjmet said...

My favorites were the Darth Vader VW, the VW Beetle Beetle, and the Coke Dragon-fight commercial.

The most appalling was the Pepsi-Max commercial that was a heady combination of tasteless, racist and misogynist.