I’m writing this before the Giants and Patriots meet in the 2012 Superbowl championship game. I’ve noticed that while in years past, very few of the scheduled Superbowl ads were leaked prior to the big game, this year, it appears that all, or almost all of them are on YouTube, Hulu or otherwise available for public consumption.
Whether this is an attempt to squeeze every precious drop of promotional blood from them or simply a response to what many people believe will be a record low viewership for the Superbowl is anybody’s guess.
Perhaps not strangely, while in the past I have been invited to numerous lavish Superbowl parties and events, as well as having been featured on a panel here and there to give my critiques of the commercials, this year I have one invite to go to an out of the way sports bar with a friend and watch the game on 1 of 7 – 23 inch t.v.’s strewn around a bar that has been in desperate need of a facelift since 1978. If I accept the invite, I suspect I’ll be spending more time playing Ms. Pac Man and Foosball than actually watching the game.
So, given the fact that I may actually miss the airing of the infamous Superbowl commercials, because I may not actually be watching the Superbowl, it’s nice to be able to see them now.
This morning I got to view one from S.F. agency Venables Bell for their client Audi, which has been dubbed “Twilight”. Clearly this was designed to work on an audience that might view it once or twice. That’s the beauty of a Superbowl ad, you can blow 4 or 5 million on creative and a media buy and not have to design an ad that can be viewed 6,217 times.
I won’t give it away if you haven’t seen it. But I will say that its attention to detail is impeccable and it is extremely well produced. Take a minute out now and watch it.
Now for purposes of full disclosure, I’ve been a big fan of Paul Venables for quite some time and had the pleasure of working on some projects that he was the driving force for when he was at Goodby. I also get to work with some amazing folks at Venables in my current capacity as the spokesperson for Conoco’s Philips 66. Some of the spots are featured here on my voice over page.
http://jsgilbert.com/voiceover/
But getting back to this year’s Audi spot, I think that this has all the freshness, fun and relevance that I felt was missing from a prior Superbowl spot they did for Audi, that was based on the Godfather. I may be shooting myself in the foot, but I, who was and still am a huge fan of the Godfather, just didn’t enjoy that spot.
Then again, we can always say that I’m not the right demographic.
Someone asked me earlier today if I thought this new commerical would sell cars and my response was “No, but it’ll get people thinking about AUDI. AUDI will sell the cars, not the commercial ”.
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Unfortunately, no relation.
Great spot. In my top three of the broadcast.
Who was the actor in the commericial? Looks like a fermor neighbor from many years ago. Not knowing for sure has bugged me since the first time I saw the Audi christmas comm.Thanks
I assume you mean the actor driving the car, since there are quite a few actors in the spot. Unfortunately, I don’t know any of their names and there isn’t any registry like IMDB that contains that information. Generally, unless the actor has a direct reference online to the commercial that would be findable by a search engine, we never know. Even then, we would need to know the exact title of the commercial as the talent would be referenceing it.
Most actors resumes will say “Commercial Credits Available Upon Request”, a holdout to the days when legit actors would work doing commercials until they got a breakthrough or were discovered.
Anyway, it’s a nice spot and whoever it is probably got a fairly decent paycheck for their efforts.