Super Bowl ads 2011: what worked, what didn't

What worked & what didn't with 2011's Super Bowl ads

• What happened to social responsibility? Super Bowl ads were trending this way but we lost it last night. My hopes started rising when Timothy Hutton began talking about Tibet, but the ad speedily deteriorated into a pathetic sales pitch for Groupon. Not aligning purpose-driven brands with authentic social responsibility marketing campaigns is a missed opportunity.
  
• Bloat busts brands - I usually love Coke's Super Bowl ads, but not this year. The medieval-themed animated world was visually mesmerizing but the idea fell apart. The evil dragon can't breathe fire because he guzzled a Coke...the invading army retreats. Too much set-up for a petering payoff. Ditto for Coke's enemies border guard ad - a lengthy build-up to a disappointing ending. Other brands lost their way: Motorola's de-positioning of Apple's iPad tablet was another example.
  
• Jumping the shark - The E*TRADE babies aren't cute anymore - the concept is hackneyed. Cloud computing must be jumping the shark when animated Black Eyed Peas characters are pitching the atmospheric technology concept in salesforce.com ad. Some topics should never go consumer. 

• Simple trumps complicated - the ads that stuck were also short and simple. VW's endearing Darth Vader and Faith Hill's "your rack" ad for Teleflora artfully demonstrated how a tight focus generates the most impact and memorability. 
• Dumbing down can be dumb - we faced an onslaught of sophomoric Doritos and Bud Light spots in the early going. Post-SB measurement is validating how the lowest common denominator doesn't always equal effectiveness.
• Dumbing down cleverly is better - Bud Light's dog-themed "They'll do whatever you want" was clever-dumb, right down to the canine poker game fade-out.
• Long builds can work if the concept is tight - while bloated, convoluted ads (see Coke) can lose the brand, the Detroit-themed "this is what we do" Chrysler commercial featuring Eminem was captivating.

• Connecting TV to the online brand - Go Daddy made the most blatant connection between traditional and new media, driving viewers to its website to see the presumably titillating payoff.  
• Fresh creative will always pop - the CarFax ads were original and felt it. The messaging platform "Service shouldn't be a thing of the past" was brilliantly set up by eager beaver 1950's era service station attendants and home delivery milkmen. Ditto for this brand's "I feel like a..." ad. It was fun to watch because we haven't seen it before. Ditto for GM's Camaro ad featuring voice-overs from TV creatives talking through their ad concept as we saw it unfolding. The schoolteacher ending was cherry-topping.
• Flashback montage winner - who wasn't sucked into the NFL Channel's zippy montage of favorite TV characters brought back to life? 
• Seventies music ruled - from Budweiser's Western gunslinger to BMW's X3, the music often took a retro turn featuring baby boomer classics like Elton's "Tiny Dancer" to Bowie's "Changes." 
  
• Best tease - went to VW's "Beetle" ad. Their only mistake was using Ram Jam's politically incorrect 1977's "Black Betty" as the theme. They could've picked a better-fit song; this will backlash.
  
• Subtlety thy name is not Audi - it's unusual to see a car company select one - and only one - competitor to aggressively and directly de-position. Like its previously themed ads, Audi used nearly all the time from last night's spot emphasizing how Mercedes is no longer relevant. The new Audi 8 makes a quick appearance a few seconds at the end as the shiny relevant machine. Meanwhile, Mercedes relied on Janis Joplin's tune and P. Diddy to assert its hipness - it didn't work.