Companies pay big bucks ($2Million / 30 sec ad) for SuperBowl ad time. Is it worth it? Do their catchy ads work?
Jay Leno asked this question last night on his show. He went out and surveyed several people on the street and asked them about one particular ad. If you saw the bit, don’t ruin this, please.
There was an ad with a cheetah, and a guy chased it down. Who remembers what the ad was for, and details about the ad?
We see a cheetah racing across the savannah, trailing a cloud of dust. Then another cloud of dust catches up to him and we see it’s a guy on a bicycle. He gets alongside the cheetah and then jumps onto the cat like a rodeo cowboy jumping onto a calf. They wrestle and finally the guy gets the cheetah to open its mouth. He sticks his arm down the cheetah’s mouth all the way to his armpit and then pulls out a can of Mountain Dew. He says, “Bad cheetah! Bad cheetah!”
Cut to three other guys watching this action and drinking Dew and one of them says, “That’s why I’m not a cat person.”
The guy rejoins his three buddies and they ride off. The last shot is of the cheetah, whose spots have been digitally rearranged to read, “Do the Dew.”
I may be wrong, but that’s what I remember.
>< DARWIN >
__L___L
I didn’t see the bit on Leno, but I thought that was one of the more memorable commercials, since they show the product. I mean, you watch the guy tackle the poor cheetah and stick his arm down his throat (ick!), but I was curious to see what he was going to pull out (Mt. Dew).
IMO, I think the product ads may have been more effective than all of the .com ads, since there was an actual product to show. So, in answer to your OP, some were worth it, some not so much.
“Neil, Neil, orange peel!”
Well gee, you folks are no fun, getting it on the first try like that. Jay had about nine people asked about the commercials, and let the cheetah commercial come up. Some of them even specifically mentioned that ad themselves. None of those people said Mountain Dew. A couple said Pepsi, one said Sprite. One guy said “Diapers”. Then he clarified, “Depends.” He actually said the guy reaches down the throat of the cheetah to pull out diapers.
I noticed there’s already a thread on the Superbowl ads, and how they sucked. Oh well.