DSA Online | New Media Updates

It turns out a lot of people didn’t see Miller’s one-second ad during the Superbowl, and it’s not because they blinked and missed it. As has been the case in previous years, Budweiser is the exclusive alcohol advertiser during the Superbowl, and Miller actually had to buy ad space from individual NBC affiliates airing the game.

So really it wasn’t really a Superbowl ad at all, it was just a commercial that ran during the Superbowl. Does that make sense? Don’t worry, it’s not important. What is important is that while the Budweiser ads have already been long forgotten (something about horses or frogs?), Miller’s ad is still being talked about, even by people who didn’t see the ad during the Superbowl. The idea of the one-second ad was more important then the ad itself. It was covered in the news, and then it was blogged about, commented on, dugg, tweeted*, and found just about anywhere you could look. So was it a success? Miller seems to think so. Oh, and so do I.

Since I’m talking about advertising during Superbowl, I’m going to use this as an excuse to bring up a non-online ad campaign that was absolutely brilliant. I’m not a big SNL fan, but even I can’t help but love MacGruber – their parody of the timeless classic MacGyver (well, almost timeless, you have to ignore Richard Dean Anderson’s mullet or assume that he’s some sort of oxymoronical redneck genius). It was the perfect integration of advertising and content. They took a concept where the protagonist is constantly thwarted by distraction, and made the product the distraction. The two fit perfectly together, and they further legitimized the skit by bring attention to the endorcement and even ridiculing themselves for doing it. Several more of these ads were run during SNL during the commercial breaks, though you could have easily mistaken the ads for the show’s content – they were that good.

Finally, you may recall that I recently referred to The Transporter 2 as a 90 minute Audi commercial. You may also recall that Audi ran a commercial during the Superbowl featuring the star of that movie essentially reprising that character and driving a number of Audi cars. I’ll take this as proof that I’m always right.

*Can I say ‘tweeted’? Is there a past-tense version of tweet? – Who comes up with these awful online terms? I’d wager the same people that perpetuate the LOLcat language. “Im in ur cmputerz, ridiculing ur stoopidness.”