The Super Bowl ads are continuing to generate all kinds of buzz and continued chatter. In the spirit of "everything's been said, but not by everyone," here are a few additional broadband-related thoughts.

Doritos user-generated contest is a big winner - Doritos snagged 2 of the top 5 placements in the USA Today Ad Meter popularity rankings, displacing Anheuser-Busch for the first time. The fact that the Herbert brothers of Indiana could have created an ad more popular than all of those by the pros is impressive enough. More interesting though to me is Doritos is steadily morphing its brand into one which its customers control. This was the 3rd time Doritos handed over its Super Bowl advertising to fans to both submit ads and also vote on them. I've written about other brands' UGV contests, but Doritos is clearly the furthest along in embracing this concept. It's a great differentiator for the brand and will only build further momentum in the future.

The ad development process usually starts with identifying key brand attributes (e.g. "convenient," "affordable," "wide variety," "hip," etc.). Did the Hulu marketing team start with attributes like "deceitful" or "creepy" or "offbeat?" Seemingly so. Although the spot was fun, it didn't do anything to articulate Hulu's great value proposition. Further, is Hulu now going to pursue this creepy positioning further? If they do, does that make sense for the brand? But if they don't, wasn't the ad a waste of effort, with little continued momentum? I'm not an ad expert, but I'm not clear on what Hulu was trying to do here, other than get some great yucks.

How about some more "behind-the-scenes" and "making-of" video - Ad executives don't seem to understand what filmmakers discovered with DVDs years ago - that the backstory around the final cut is often even more interesting to fans. Since DVDs offer the capacity to provide director's notes, explanations of special effects, outtakes, actor interviews, etc they often do. This stuff is fascinating. Same with broadband; it offers brands the ability to provide a lot more video than just the ads themselves on their web sites, which some did indeed do.

But many others who could have done so, did not. Two that come right to mind: Coke, whose fascinating ad with insects stealing a sleeping man's bottle had some of the best special effects ever. How about some interviews with the computer animation team that did them? That would be fascinating. The other: E-Trade's talking babies. How'd they do that? Would love to know.

Should ads be rated or filtered? Ok, here's something controversial to think about - should Super Bowl ads be rated or filtered somehow? This is supposed to be family entertainment after all, isn't it? Does the woman getting stripped in the Doritos "Bus" ad or the suggestive GoDaddy girls belong in prime-time? I wonder. Or maybe the online galleries should rate the ads somehow? Maybe the racier ones deserve a parental warning? Just a thought.

Ok, that's it for the '09 Super Bowl, on to other topics...

What do you think? Post a comment now.