Super Bowl Ads Canceled Next Year

The Super Bowl is bad for advertising. There, I said it. All the Super Bowl does is turn pretty good TV spots into garbage, crap, stink burgers. We complain every year about how junktastic the commercials were, but think about it for a minute. What are we really asking some poor creative team to do?

Super Bowl Ad Creative Brief:

Objective:
Make one of the funniest ads ever.

Target:
Men ages 8-80, but not excluding women. Household income 14k - 900k. Whites, African Americans, Latinos and other. Basically every person in America.

Considerations:
Most people will be drunk. Half of them will already be angry. Since this ad is appearing during the super bowl, everyone is expecting this ad to be the funniest ad ever, so don't let them down. Lastly, if consumers don't rate your ad in the top 5, you will be fired.

Mandatories:
Economy is not so good, so keep it low budget.

I don't know about you, but that's a brief I think I'll pass on. One of the greatest tools we have as advertising creatives is the element of surprise. The chance to talk to someone in a fresh way, when they are least expecting it. But The Super Bowl is like a bright neon sign around a billboard that flashes, "Best ad in the world, right here." It doesn't matter how great that ad is, I can tell you right now, it's going to seem pretty lame.

So, let's either stop doing Super Bowl ads all together, or stop calling them ads. They're more like highly anticipated 30-second sitcom pilot episodes, with lots of product placement. Actually, that sounds like a really bad sitcom too, doesn't it?