Lou D'Ermilio of Fox told Bloomberg they've sold out their Super Bowl spots earlier than in any of the five years Fox has hosted the game.
He won't say who scored the last :30 buy or for how much (it was probably just GoDaddy angling for more airtime), but the spots started at $2.6 million and later sold for up to $3 million. 90 percent of them were sold before the writers strike started in early November.
In 2006 TNS Media reported a record average asking price for Super Bowl ads at $2.5 million. At this point, $2.5 mill for a :30 spot must look to advertisers like $2.50 for the price of gasoline does to a northern Californian.
MediaPost says Dell will be joining the Super Bowl ad foray. It's paid for two spots. An old one, called "Out with the Old" by Mother, will appear before the game starts.
Then there's a new one that will appear during the game. No word on what it'll be like but we can probably safely assume it'll push Dell's "Now available in beautiful" message -- possibly tailored to its new project (red) line.
Slapping down the UK's Advertising Standards Authority which didn't like a recent ad Ryanair ran in three newspaper which featured an image of a model in a school girl outfit with the copy, "Hottest. back to School Fares," Ryanair head of communications Peter Sherrard said, "This isn't advertising regulation, it is simply censorship. This bunch of unelected self-appointed dimwits are clearly incapable of fairly and impartially ruling on advertising."
Sherrard went on to site the common practice of British newspapers which feature topless women within their pages on a regular basis and stated the airline would not withdraw the ad as requested by the ASA which received 13 complaints.
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This is just too weird to pass over. Apparently, there's an organization called Fuck Death whose mission is "the elimination of death through the generation and distribution of funds to strategically selected causes and initiatives worldwide." Basically, it combats "oldness." OK, then.
There's a website, a mission statement, a weblog, a store and a very strange video.
There's just one problem with Fuck Death's mission. If no one ever died, it wouldn't be too long before every last square inch of the planet earth were covered with human feet. That wouldn't be a pretty sight. We all want to live forever but death does have a purpose. It lets others live.
We have to agree with George Parker. This Draft/FCB-created Super Bowl commercial for Taco Bell introducing its new Fiesta Platters dish is, well, shall we say, not so good. It's cheesy and not in that good cheesy food way but in that over reaching, we will make this funny no matter what sort of way. Nada. It ain't happening.
Fleshing out its copy point "every sip gets you closer," this BBDO NY-created Super Bowl commercial hurls Justin Timberlake through the air in response to three girls sipping their Pepsi's by the poolside. It's a simple message for Pepsi Stuff. The more you drink the more you win: Justin Timberlake MP3s, HDTVs, and millions of songs from Amazon.
OK, what, what, what is it about Hadaway's head-bobbing, dance-inducing What is Love? song from the movie Night at the Roxbury that is so insanely catchy? We can't get it out of our head! It's been there since the friggin' movie came out! Ten years! Make it stop!! Please. And damn, if Pepsi had to go ahead and use it for one of their Super Bowl spots featuring Busta Rhymes, LL Cool J, Macy Gray, Missy Elliott, Troy Aikman, Joe Buck and a host of others for its Diet Pepsi Max. In fact, our head's bobbing right now as we write this. It's all we'll hear during the entire game Sunday! Eesh!
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Including the actual game, the four hour pre-game show and a House lead out (cheating a bit), FOX is expected to take in $225 million in ad revenue this Sunday. Boosting that figure to $260 million will be a $35 million take across FOX-owned affiliates.
Counting just the 63 ad units within the game itself, the tally comes to $170 million. MediaWeek's John Consoli reports advertisers who booked last minute are paying close to $3 million per spot.
In a Korean print campaign created by Ogilvy & Mather, the visual of a tornado depicts the power of OralB tooth brushes by scooping up fish, cattle and veggies. Except for the fact a toothbrush that powerful would also rip your teeth out, we kinda like this campaign. The three ads are here, here and here.
In a simple ad which reads, "This is a message from TCM to all the Hollywood screenwriters on strike: Keep it up, guys. After all, the greatest movies have already been written," TCN pretty much craps all over the writers and their ongoing strike.
Though the source won't confirm which advertiser this teaser is for except to say it's not for Geico which, of course, pretty much leaves Budweiser Sobe Life Water, we're just going to come right out and say it's for Budweiser Sobe Life Water. In the video, a bathing lizard, Lee, takes a call from his parents and shares the news he'll have the lead role in a Super Bowl commercial. Jokes about having to appear naked in the commercial ensue along with the fact he'll be accompanied by a supermodel.
We love how the Super Bowl itself isn't the stand alone advertising venue it once was. Sure there's always been hype pre and post game but we love when marketers craft teaser goodies such as this one to generate interest.
We didn't expect much from these Ground Zero-created videos for ESPN Shorts which, in partnership with Domino's, highlight the art of the sports party and provide party tips for the sports lover but when a George Washington type hauled out a t-shirt cannon, we thought, "Damn! We gotta quit spending the entire Super Bowl writing about stupid commercials, pick up a six pack and actually watch the game...with friends...at a party...with other members of the human species."
We like good, stupid fun every once in a while to spice up our life. See the video here and here.
Just more contextual ad placement awkwardness, except this one gives us an unpleasant P.C.-triggered "ick" feeling.
The Adrants reader, who found the image on the Spanking Art Wikia, observed the Verizon pink RAZR ad was "Probably triggered by the 'pink' cheeks of the physically abused cartoon child."
Advertising Age's Laura Martinez comically comments on the launch of a line of jeans from Fiorana which are cut to accommodate the stereotypically Latina butt such as the ones attached to Jennifer Lopez, America Ferrara or Vida Guerra (OK, she's Cuban but still).
Fiorana President Mike Braden tells us, "The Latina body is different in waist and hip structure. When wearing Anglo cut jeans, there is always a fit problem around the waist area." Martinez ponders the point by wondering why she, who is of Latina descent, does not possess the bootylicious qualities Braden seems to believe all Latina women possess.
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For Valentine's Day, grocery chain Piggly Wiggly is offering a $5,000 diamond necklace to its Angus beef buyers. The winner will be selected on February 11.
We're weirded out by the contest creative, which feature a woman wearing meat where a diamond should be. Clearly the difference between uncut rock and uncut bloody raw rack is narrower than we thought. Check out the Say it with Beef variant.
If nothing else, we're gonna assume this means we can take Steak and Blowjob Day off the calendar.
With the help of DDB Canada, Inside Live! and Fuse OMD, the Canadian Tourism Commission erected a big dome thingy at the Canary Wharf in London. (Very Epcot.) Egged on by building projections (here and here), online ads and street activities, curious Londoners can step inside the dome and explore Canada.
The campaign lasts four weeks and is an attempt to drive more of the Queen's men and women to Canada on holiday. The dome supposedly showcases four vacation possibilities. Skiing? White water rafting? Olympic swimming? We're not sure. The possibilities hidden in that mysterious rotunda are boundless
Playboy has collected a treasure trove of sexy commercial and ranked the top 21 in it's February 2008 issue. The 21 finalists are ranked in the printed magazine but online they are still open for voting. Believe it or not, we don't read Playboy but AdFreak's Tim Nudd does and he shares some of the rankings.
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"Duardo's Brand," which has a UGC feel to it (don't tell Subway!) is Raging Artists' attempt to (possibly) accomplish two things for its client:
1. Associate Arturo Fuente Cigars with the elite Cuban crowd through its choice of talent, Duardo Cantana
2. Put cigars back in the domestic space -- into the mouths of men sitting around playing guitars, and men whose wives batter them senseless for smoking indoors
Or it might be an exercise in irony. Because it's kind of "ha-ha, laugh with this artist who's just like me and you" funny and sort of "ha-ha, laugh at this thrown together wannabe UGC crap" funny.
We don't really know.
Damn. Everyone's getting in on this presidential election thing. Now we have Svedka Vodka's Svedka_grl (yea, we noticed that screename-style thingy you did) launching a campaign to put a Fembot in the White House. That's all we need. A bunch of hot looking, drunken robots running our country. On second thought, that might not be so bad.
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Get ready for an explosion of cute. Yes, GAP has announced the winners of its casting call contest which selected four kids from a pool of 20 finalists which were selected from a pool of 800,000. The winners, which were determined from 500,000 votes cast by the public, were announced on the Rachael Ray show.
In partnership with Kodak, the GAP launched it casting call back in October 2007. One assumes we'll be seeing a lot of these cuties in the year to come.
If you're into Barak Obama, you owe it to yourself to head over to YouBama and create a video in support of the candidate. On the site, there's hundreds of supportive videos from regular citizen, celebrities like George Clooney and from Obama himself.
Oddly missing are all those supportive Obama Girl videos.
Removing every last bit of fun and entertainment of Red Wig dude (love him or hate him) come two new spots (one, two) from Kirshenbaum Bond, its new work on the account. In these commercials, it's all about the product. Yea, we get a bit of the cute Wendy but for the most part, its food porn.
Who knows. Maybe these spot will get Wendy's back on track. At the least, people will know Wendy's sells food.
If you've ever watched The Sopranos, you'll love this new Denny's commercial featuring the Paulie Walnuts character Tony Sirico. In the ad, Sirico is presented with a fast food breakfast which doesn't meet with his approval. In response, he does his usual thing and refuses to pay for what he says is "not a real breakfast."
There's a second spot in the campaign which isn't near as good as the first one. Here's a bit of Tony Sirico trivia for you. Though he played a mobster on The Sopranos, Sirico was reportedly a real mobster back in the sixties and seventies attached to the Columbo family serving under Carmine Persico.
Online ad network AdBrite would like the Super Bowl-obsessed advertising industry to know an advertiser, using the company's full page ad unit, could buy 100 million impression for just 20 percent of the cost of a Super Bowl Spot. While AdBrite is clearly aware a buy such as this can't rival all the fanfare and added publicity that goes along with appearing in the Super Bowl but it is indicative of online media's ability to deliver mass messaging along with highly targeted messaging.
As cost efficiently as the math works out on an AdBrite buy, much of what is gleaned (or lost) from a Super Bowl buy is the accompanying press play that is closely wrapped with the package. ALL one has to do is take a look at what GoDaddy does every year in this area.
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