Bowl of Soup(er)

Apparently there was a little sports match in ol’ Yankeeland over the weekend, with the year’s most expensive advertising space being filled up with potential award-winners and product-shifters. As we’re dedicated folk, The Reel have cast an eye over every last one of the blighters in order to present their pick of the bunch.

Chris’ Picks

With the recession growing big bloody sharp teeth, and generally biting all and sundry across the globe at the moment, it’s no surprise that the Superbowl ad breaks were peppered with job site and career focussed ads. Admirably the creative teams behind the ads were also not prepared to let the executions stand in the background, or simply just ‘be there’, the ads for career-centric brands such as job giant Monster.com were this years most interesting and entertaining of the bunch.

Monster

“Double Take” for Monster.com was a cracker and represents the purest form of TV execution genius, as the teams at BBDO and Epoch Films respectively crafted a simple, great idea and squeezed it into 30 seconds. Creative types everywhere, take note; we think this is almost perfect.

The Ladders

Fat-cat jobsite The Ladders.com also tapped the bulging vein of comedy for their 100k-jobs-only Superbowl outing as Fallon Minneapolis and MJZ Los Angeles switched lithe antelope for skidding office chairs and got a bunch of burly Crocodile Dundee types to snare them at high speed. How we guffawed.

Coke

This year also saw some clever re-treading of the boards from drinks giant Coke as the brand chose to riff the 1980's classic Superbowl ad 'Nasty Joe Greene' with Coke Zero’s new spot 'Mean Troy'. A couple of disgruntled marketers hijack this unfolding pastiche just as the cutesy kid is just about to selflessly dish out his tasty sugarless beverage to a knackered football star Troy Pomalu. A greatly crafted tongue in cheek homage from CPB Miami and Company films Los Angeles that unfurls the 80's cheese and adds a bit of needed modern humour.

As the original is just shy of 30 years old some of you fresh-faced young-o’s might not have seen it… so here it is in all its cheddar wrapped glory.

Jamie’s Picks

Hulu

Right, hands up anyone who watches 30 Rock. OK, put your hands down and click on this ad ‘cause you’re gonna love it. Next, hands up who loves the Baldwins. Hmmm, we’d have thought Shark In Venice would have turned you on to this particular acting dynasty, but nevertheless put your hands down and click away to see the avuncular Alec Baldwin proving yet again why he’s the best of the bunch. Anyone left? Shame on you. Your cultural know-how obviously isn’t up to speed – but clicking on the ad should help you on your way to Hulu enlightenment. Combining many a Superbowl staple (celebs, comedy, off-kilter sensibilities), this cracker of a spot from Crispin Porter & Bogusky and Pony Show Entertainment had us from ‘TV Star’ and actually provoked an unprecedented laugh-out-loud moment – impressive considering how mushy our brains are!

Coke

As is their want, Coca-Cola made quite an appearance in Superbowl ’09, having high profile ads scattered throughout the game for their various concoctions. Two of the stand-outs were Nexus’ gamer-tastic ‘Avatar’ and Psyop’s nature filled wonder ‘Heist’.

The plausibility that a relatively hot chick's online avatar is a hulking murderous green Orc straight fresh from butchering people from World of Warcraft is a compu-dork sweaty late night dream. Even more geek-arousing is that the said brutish Orc / hot chick is tamed by an ice cold coke rather than the flaming sword of Zinthar' and looks rather up for a date! A neat mix of quality post work and esoteric games-playing gags which gently nuzzles your happy part of the brain, the spot gently reminds us that things are better shared.

If The Italian Job, Gone In Sixty Seconds and Ocean’s 58 have taught us anything it’s that with a little teamwork you can nick just about anything. Taking their cue from such movies (and a tot of inspiration from the plucky buggers in A Bug’s Life), this conniving group of creepy-crawleys cash in all their freakish favours in order to grab a taste of fizzy pop. Brilliantly animated and with a rousing ‘Peter and the Wolf’ score, this spot was bound to get the snack-filled Superbowl viewers off their sofa in search of a ice-cold beverage.

Audi

Honourable mention - God, we love Jason Statham here at The Reel. He's just great. From being a baldy, Anglo-American head-kicker in The Transporter to being a baldy, cockney head-shooter in Crank to being a baldy, we-don't-know-where-he's-supposed-to-be-from-and-neither-does-he head-runner-over in Death Race he's just the best. So that means we love this Superbowl Audi spot. Cause Jason Statham's all over it. It does a thing like that some other car ads have where decades flash past - but it does it loads better because those ads don't have Jason Statham and this one does. Nice idea, nice direction, nice post work ... blah blah blah .. who cares about all that, it's got Jason Statham in it so it's brilliant. Did we mention we're big fans...