Super Bowl Ads – The good, the bad and the green.

Another year, another round of super bowl commercial hits and misses. I was excited to see that a few more creative concepts broke through this year. Of course there were still an overwhelming amount of bad ideas propped up by expensive production (hello, Bud Light) but the balance between substance and style seemed pretty good. I was a little surprised at the small amount of any online pushes from the spots aside from the obligatory website on the end frame. There were a few that drove us to their site to “see what happens next” but not many social community building efforts.

The one spot that did jump out to me was Audi’s “Green Police” It was really the only commercial that had an environmental focus (which I found interesting as well).

Audi is basically telling us that this car makes green feel good even though being green takes away pleasure in our lives and is generally awful overall. But isn’t the target for this car a little more green-leaning? (Our research would say yes.)  This idea, then, says to a potential customer, “You have green leanings and being green sucks. Our car makes it suck less.” They seem to have gotten carried away with a cool creative idea that was super entertaining but insults the target audience. If you’re positioning a product as green, why degrade the general idea of green? That’s like walking up to someone and saying “Hi. I think your clothes are hideous, your lifestyle disgusts me and you’re pretty much a moron. Wanna go out?”

This spot has gotten mixed reviews online. I’d love to hear your comments on it.