Best Super Bowl ad ever

Well, it’s halftime. And watching this Super Bowl game is about as exciting as watching paint dry. I’m going to switch to the Chess Channel. Baseball really is the American pastime.

I’d like to see the Giants win. But realistically, it’s almost 8 p.m. And the game isn’t going to start again for another 28 minutes. So the odds of me being awake to see the end of this game are slim.

So here’s my view of the best Super Bowl ad ever. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen this year’s Victoria’s Secret ad yet. But it probably won’t change my mind in any event. Here it is. From Monster.com.

Think about that when you go to work Monday.

And Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers aren’t bad. Still, deep in your heart, don’t you miss the days of the marching bands?

A day for football and advertising

I had a super run this morning. Temperature in the upper 20s. No wind to speak of. No cars. So now I’m ready for Super Bowl Sunday, a day of debauchery for fans of football and advertising.

I’m not sure I’m much of a fan of either, particularly since my Terrible Towel, the original from the early ‘70s, remains folded today in the closet. I’ll root for the advertisers.

When I was at BFGoodrich, we had a rather modest corporate advertising budget of about $4 million a year. And during the annual budget reviews, I always had such an enjoyable time trying to demonstrate the effectiveness of that advertising. Those were the days when BFGoodrich, the company, was trying to convince investors and analysts that it was no longer a tire manufacturer. At the same time another company, Michelin, was spending about $25 million a year promoting BFGoodrich brand tires. It’s a long story. Trust me.

So every year I went to the budget reviews wearing my protective cup and hoping for the best.

I thought about that this morning when I read in the Akron Beacon Journal that Kent State and the University of Akron are going to advertise regionally before, during and after the game. Both according to the article are going to “pitch academic excellence.”

That to me makes sense. If you are trying to reach a mass audience then you might as well take advantage of this national holiday and go for it.

But I’ll admit that I did chuckle a little while reading the article written by Carol Biliczky. Carol, by the way, used to work with me at BFGoodrich. Here is what she wrote that grabbed my attention. I inserted the info in brackets.

There is no way to gauge their [the ads] effectiveness, he [UA spokesman Ken Torisky] said, but one measure is the feedback that Proenza [UA President Luis Proenza] has received in previous years from people who tell him they saw the commercial.

Proenza has appeared in most of them, Torisky said.

“People make it a point to tell him they saw it,” Torisky said.

Please. I beg you. On behalf of anyone who has ever had to try to demonstrate the effectiveness of a costly ad buy, next time you see Dr. Proenza tell him you saw the ads. Even if you really were in the bathroom or getting another can of Iron City. (Please don’t tell the students in my ethics class I just said that.)

And I know that this will get me into trouble. But I’m looking forward to the Victoria’s Secret ad featuring model Adriana Lama.

Now that should be excellent.