Super Bowl ads make success out of excess

The Super Bowl was a commercial success before Sunday's game even began.

That's because it took as much as $2.6 million to spend 30 seconds in front of the 90 million people expected to be watching the Super Bowl telecast on CBS.

Films have Sundance, commercials have the Super Bowl. Fans may groan about the million-dollar salaries of athletes, but they simply gawk after companies spend seven figures for their commercials to air during a Super Bowl broadcast.

The Super Bowl is more than just a success. It's a testament to excess. The buildup requires two weeks, the pregame show lasts longer than the game, and while commercials may usually be the cue to hit the fridge, during the Super Bowl they are part of the show.

This year there was a ro-sham-bo contest taken to literal extremes in a Bud Light ad. One guy won by firing a rock off his friend's head. Another ad featured Robert Goulet pulling pranks and then clinging to the ceiling as if he were Spider-Man. That was nutty. Really. It was an ad for Emerald Nuts.

Then there was the Budweiser ad that featured talking apes planning a Budweiser heist, and another showed Jay-Z beating Don Shula in some futuristic football video game. Really, just showing a backstage conversation between the two of them might have been more interesting.

Other companies' servings turned out tasteless. Carlos Mencia corrected an accented pronunciation of Bud Light during one first-half spot. Then there was the Snickers ad with a pair of men working on a car engine, and they accidentally touch lips after eating from opposite ends of the candy bar. One is immediately afflicted by a case of homophobia and insists they "do something manly." Each pulls out a patch of chest hair in just one more case of stupidity being passed off as masculinity.

Then again, Super Bowl ads probably aren't the place to go searching for enlightenment. A few years back, one spot featured explosive horse flatulence. No horses this time. Just the Colts and their star Peyton Manning, who played quarterback and not pitchman. The most marketed NFL player was on the sideline for most of the advertising extravaganza.

Kevin Federline starred in the most talked- about ad, which aired during the third quarter. Too bad it wasn't for FedEx, which would have been so literal. That was his nickname on a gossip show or two, but Britney Spears' former beau pitched Nationwide Insurance instead. He rapped about being a former VIP and then watching his own video while employed as a fast-food worker. The spot proved Federline could laugh at himself. Either that or it established the price of his dignity, one of the two.

Careerbuilder.com couldn't match the comedy of last year's ad that featured monkeys listening to heavy metal in the boardroom, though one of its ads this year did show a manager administering a wedgie, so it wasn't a total loss.

A Sprint ad for wireless broadband spoke of connectile dysfunction. It was a spot-on parody. The question is whether the subject was a laughing matter for the audience.

Sierra Mist aired two ads in the first quarter, one with a man wearing a comb-over beard, skin-tight jean shorts and roller skates. Neither featured anyone pasting a Sierra Mist label over a can of Sprite or 7-Up. Now that would have been funny.

CBS bills itself as the most-watched network in America. That was especially true during a Super Bowl broadcast because it's a game when even the commercials are worth watching.

Danny O'Neil: 206-464-2364 or doneil@seattletimes.com