I want to first apologize to any regular readers of the Fresh Giants blog. Last week our website was interrupted with some virus issues, those issues have been taken care of and we have been taken care of. So we are sorry that this Super Bowl commercial post may be a bit dated.
OK, so the Super Bowl has passed and it is time to tally up the winners and losers for this year. Last year the internet was buzzing without the controversy of Groupon’s Tibet ad. This year it seems like it is Chrysler’s ‘Its Halftime America’ ad that some has viewed as too political. The message, delivered by actor Clint Eastwood describes America as a crossroads much like Chrysler has found itself. But like Chrysler, America has the ability to pull itself ‘up by the bootstraps’. It was a pro-Detroit and pro-American message. It even had a hint of the old Ronald Reagan ad ‘Morning in America’. Which sounds fine for the Super Bow, but due to the large government bail outs and upcoming elections, some thought the commercial was in fact in favor of the Democrats and in particular President Obama.
Of course a rational person can point to the fact that government bailouts were sent from both former President Bush and current President Obama’s administrations respectably, that doesn’t matter. This is the SuperBowl and we need a bit of controversy to fill up the morning newspapers and talk shows. So this year’s loser has to go to Chrysler who had a great financial year but started this year with some bad press. But hey, you know what they say about any press!
VW’s ‘The Bark Side’ takes a return to last year’s hit ‘The Force’ in which a group of dogs sing the famous theme to Star Wars. It was cute, simple, and memorable. And in today’s world that is really all you need. It has a built in audience of Star Wars super fans, and is cute enough to be something you want to rematch. What was a bit shocking was that a Volkswagen didn’t actually appear in the commercial. This seems like a bit of a failure because last years ‘The Force’ was able to be just as cute and successful, while being able to tie the story in directly with the car. As of today the commercial has 14.5 million views on Youtube and has a like to dislike ratio of 80:1. So I think you can point to Volkswagen as being a big winner again this year.