Nick's Lists: Top 10 Super Bowl Ads of All Time (10-6)

You guys are in luck.  Because we have had SO much fun doing our Super Bowl Preview Week, we have decided that we could not end it today (Friday) with still 48 hours until kickoff.  Therefore, our final feature will be another 2-day top 10 list (yay!) that begins today and ends tomorrow.  What do I have up my sleeve this time?

Over the years the Super Bowl has become synonymous with advertising.  The Super Bowl is the most watched television program for the year, so it does not seem unreasonable that FOX commanded $3 million for a 30 second TV spot during the game.  There is a large segment of the population that watches the game not for the game itself, but for the commercials!  How many other days out of the year can you get people to say that?  We here at Caputo's Corner have not ignored the tidal wave of commercials that the Super Bowl has produced over the years.  In fact, we have a list...a list of 10: 10 of the most notable Super Bowl ads of all time. 

Criteria for making this list was fairly simple.  Was this an ad that you are going to remember?  This does not mean that you are necessarily going to purchase the product in question.  Except for some Coke, Doritos, and Bud, I don't think I've patronized any of these companies.  I don't even think that's really the point anymore.  Do you remember the ad?  It did not necessarily need to be funny, serious, moving, emotional, or any other adjective to qualify.  I think my 10 are ads that all of you will remember to some extent.  The higher up the list we go, the more the ad goes from just memorable to having an actual cultural impact.  Yes, folks, even ads can have impacts on people's lives.  You can watch all of the ads from 2010 on Hulu.  I have linked to the YouTube video of each ad. 

This is the closest this blog will ever come to delving in the pop culture realm, so enjoy it while it lasts. 

Out top 5 will have to wait until tomorrow (I got to string you along just a little bit!).  We also have a few honorable mentions...yes, actually honorable this time.

And now I present to you #'s 10-6 of Nick's Lists: the Top 10 Super Bowl Ads of all time!

10) Bud Light-X Ray Vision (2008)
You could have taken your pick just about any of the Bud Light ads from 2008 (Super Bowl XLII).  We look at another one in the honorable mentions tomorrow.  The ad was somewhat crude, but I just remember laughing...hard.  Did it make me want to buy any more Bud Light than I already had?  Absolutely not, but here's the thing with Bud (and Anheuser Busch in general).  They don't necessarily NEED to advertise.  $3 million is a drop in the bucket for a multinational corporation that is really in it just for the laughs...and for a somewhat selfish desire to win "Ad of the Night" from any one of the various focus groups that pay people for their gut reactions to ads.  Bud and Bud Light are just about as ubiquitous in Americana now as baseball football, hot dogs, apple pie, Chevrolet...and Bud Light?  Anheuser-Busch InBev posted $1.43 billion in earnings in the 3rd quarter of 2010...and that was down from the year prior.  These guys can make Bud Light ads in their sleep.  Look for more of the same on Sunday. 

9) Focus on the Family-Tim Tebow and his mom (2010)
This ad makes the list for the weeks of hype leading up to the game.  It is somewhat well-known nowadays that the former Florida Gator (now Denver Bronco) spends his spare time as a religious missionary and is a supporter of conservative causes...who doubles as a Heisman Trophy winning 2-time BCS National Champion.  The hype made you want to believe that the ad was going to be a scathing anti-abortion hit piece and the Tebows' faces would be plastered all over it.  How dare CBS allow that sadistically evil non-profit group Focus on the Family spend $3 million to ruin 30 seconds of our lives with this conservative filth.  Listening to the hype from the libs (whom CBS didn't exactly discourage from spending $3 million to buy a counter ad) made you want to believe that you were going to need therapy after watching the ad...and it wouldn't help.  What was the end result?  It was a plain white background featuring a woman telling the story of her son...who promptly races in and tackles his mother.  Then the ad tells you to go to the Focus on the Family website to "learn more" about the Tebow story.  That was it?  Seriously?  We were all gearing up for fire and brimstone and the most devastating element was a man play-tackling his mother (who was not hurt I'm happy to say)?  If you bought into the hype (and trust me, I was NOT in that crowd), the ad was a major letdown, but that's not why it makes the list.  Remember my criteria.  Did you remember the ad?  I'm sure all of us remember the ad...but not for the ad itself, but for the unfortunate smear campaign before anybody even got a chance to see it.

8) Go Daddy.com-Broadcast Hearing (2005)
This is the ad that started the *shocking* revolution...with something as simple as a broken spaghetti strap.  At that time, did anybody know exactly what you did when you visited GoDaddy.com?  This actually is one example of a case where the ad at the Super Bowl really did "enhance" (no pun intended...ok, it was intended) the company's bottom line.  Nowadays, everybody knows that GoDaddy is one of the top domain name registrars on the World Wide Web.  They have geared up for the Super Bowl every year since with ads telling you that you can't see the "uncensored" part (i.e. the supposedly really good part they can't show on TV that turns into a major letdown because you actually thought there would really be a "good" part) unless you go to the website.  Meanwhile, they rake in the hits of all of the post-pubescent males actually expecting Danica Patrick to "expose" herself...and for what, so you can spend $1.99 on a .com domain name?  I might not have my very own .com domain, but my website is free.  I'd rather spend that $1.99 on a bag of pizzeria pretzel Combos and call it a day, but that's just me. 

7) Snickers-Betty White (2010)
I guess this is the ad you can say revitalized the acting career of the former Golden Girl.  How's this for a career roller coaster? Small scale actress in LA, to frequent game show celebrity guest in the 60s, to the Mary Tyler Moore Show, to the Golden Girls, to part time soap opera guest star, to getting tackled in a mud football game pitching Snickers, to hosting Saturday Night Live for the first time at 88 (thanks to a viral Facebook group).  Not bad, especially considering that White's SNL episode in May 2010 was of the highest rated SNLs in years and she won an Emmy for it.  OK, I admit, I got most of that off of Wikipedia...but hey, you got to do what you got to do, right?  You have to admit that you probably laughed when you heard her say the signature line in the ad "That's not what your girlfriend said."  I know I did.  Snickers satisfied...to the tune of her ad winning the USA Today Ad Meter top spot for the night (also something I took from Wikipedia...for those of you who care about that). 

6) Budweiser-Frogs and Chameleons (1998)
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The original frogs ads came well before the Super Bowl, but in the late 90s, people started associating the frogs more with the King of Beers than their world-famous Clydesdales (until a few years later...).  The frog ads became so popular, they had to do a spin-off Super Bowl series.  Enter Frankie and Louie, couple chameleons who "auditioned" for the frogs' parts.  Frankie was the pragmatist who was at ease with getting beat out for the job by the frogs.  Louie on the other hand...was just a tad jealous, even going so far as to hire a ferret to off the frogs in a series of ads that followed their own little story line during Super Bowl XXXII.  This was a very interesting marking ploy, making the ads the story themselves that extended across halftime so that even if the game itself was a dud, people would continue to watch to see what Louie and the ferret were going to try to do to the frogs.  They were going to purchase several ad slots during the game anyway, might as well make them into their own little side story.  Turns out this Super Bowl was an outstanding game (Broncos won 31-24), so the ploy didn't really matter.  Today, plenty of companies run their own little story arcs with their Super Bowl commercials.  The reason this "series" of ads did not finish higher up was because the frogs themselves did not enter the zoo of beer advertising during the Super Bowl.  They had been around for a while.  We did meet the chameleons (and the ferret), but who do we most remember?  That would be the frogs, who were already famous long before the Super Bowl.  Otherwise, why would the lizards have been jealous?
UPDATE: We have confirmed that the first frog sighting was in fact during Super Bowl XXIX.  I somehow overlooked the fact that the frogs might just have had their OWN Wikipedia page.  I had originally wiki'ed "Super Bowl Advertising" to see of the frogs made it.  You truly can find anything on Wikipedia.

OK folks, that's enough ad-sense for one night.  I hope you enjoyed the first half of our list of the top 10 Super Bowl ads of all time.  Tomorrow we take a look at the top 5, which in my opinion are signature pieces of advertising in the modern era.  Until then...