Last night I went to see Zero Dark Thirty during the Super Bowl. It turned out to be a great decision because hardly anyone was at the theater, and thanks to the good folks at the Internet I got to watch the two best things about the big game – the commercials and Beyonce’s performance – at my leisure.
The Super Bowl is no doubt a field day for the advertisers that plunge into the land of Super Bowl campaigns – especially now that their content has legs after (and before) it airs on television for $133,333 a second. Clearly it’s worth it, though, considering the 2012 Super Bowl reached nearly twice as many viewers as the second most-watched sporting event of last year – the NFC Championship.
All of the most popular commercials were at least beautifully made and at most works of brilliance. I was personally drawn to the more absurd ones – namely Doritos’ “Goat 4 Sale” and Oreo’s “Whisper Fight.” And though I’ve historically found Budweiser Clydesdale commercials to fall flat, I think their “Brotherhood” ad was the best dramatic spot of the broadcast:
Perhaps more fascinating was the level of interactive opportunities that brands nimbly snatched. Moments after the Superdome went (partially) dark during halftime, for instance, some advertisers paid to promote their tweets on search results pages related to the power outage. Tide and Oreo even managed to capitalize on some free advertising, posting clever photos about the outage mere minutes afterward on Twitter.
There was still, of course, bountiful traditional advertising (i.e. The Lone Ranger‘s pre-game show, Pepsi’s halftime show and Toyota’s post-game show). Incidentally, Beyonce’s halftime performance was great – particularly the use of multimedia screens during her show – excuse me, Pepsi’s show.
The advertising industry – on its quest to become truly omnipresent – continues to blur the line between art and commerce. We’ve all heard somebody say, “The commercials are the best part of the game,” but never have the two been so hard to differentiate.