It is another thing I had heard about but never quite managed to grasp the scale of before we moved to America: the fact that there was something super-special about the adverts that appeared during the commercial breaks in the Superbowl: I just didn’t know quite what that meant … or how to cope when they turned out to be painfully bad.

Fair enough: not ALL of them were painful, but many of them were bad … or rather, they were just adverts. Just normal, boring adverts. And that wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t built up to be something bigger, better, greater than any other advertising that had ever existed in the history of adverts.

Undeniably, they fit that description – if only financially. Yes, because it’s probably the single biggest sporting event easily available on network television, it attracts a lot of eyes and, therefore, a lot of money. Around $2.5m per 30 seconds of advert, or thereabouts. But that doesn’t seem to ensure they’ll actually be well-thought-out or stunningly good adverts – or rather, they certainly weren’t this year. Or last year, now I think about it. They were just adverts. They were trying to sell you stuff.

And yet, they’re this thing completely held apart from all other advertising. All week there have been glowing retrospectives of the ‘greatest Superbowl ads of all time’, with reruns of some of the most loved, and previews of some of the most anticipated running on yourtube and hulahulahulu and a billion of those “blog” things. I don’t know, maybe in years gone by people actually put a lot of work into these, and they really were special, and they were to American televisionaries and happy superbowlic nostalgia what the fuzzy bit of velcro is to the scratchy bit of velcro (or the other metaphorical way around). But I seem to have missed that bit.

Quite often it felt like someone had put up the money for their minute, and then, with three days to go before the actual game, suddenly realised they were going to have to have some film to stick in that minute, panicked, stuck three of their employees in front of a camera to chant their company name over and over again before ending the minute with the winning pitch: “It’s really good” and a Lynndie England wink while pointing at the product and grinning at the camera.
And then panicked some more at that being a shit idea, spooged some more money up the wall by hiring an a-list celebrity to do the product-point and Lynndie-wink, then sat back to watch the share price rocket and sales roll in.

Or worse:

Basically, they now seem to fit into a few small groups.

1. You’re a man, you like beer. And AS a man, you’re willing to do whatever it takes to mean that beer is readily available to you. When it IS, you will celebrate. With women in bikinis.

2. You’re a man, you need snackfood. Did we say need? We mean ‘DESERVE’. Who the HELL is trying to tell you you don’t deserve as many deep fried treats and transfatturated heavenchunks as you damn well want? Your arteries? They’re not the boss of YOU, are they?! No!

3. You’re a man, you big like car vroom vroom nyeeeeooow! That’s it, really (though see below for the worst of these)

4. You know what’s manly? Wait, here, have another advert for weak-as-widdle kiddybeer: How is that? Make you feel more patriotic and community-spirited and manly? No, sure, I can wait till you go for ANOTHER piss, tell me when you get back.

5. Another thing that’s really manly is snowboarding. And paragliding, and skiing, and supercool-powder-gymnastics, bra’? Joining the army, that’s what! And here’s an advert about that.

6. You’re a man, you watch television: And you know what’s great for watching television? A really big television. Full of lovely television. Or maybe a phone. You know what you can do with phones now? Yes. You can watch television.

7. We’re a big technology company and it impresses our stockholders if we spooge money up the wall on buying this advertising spot: even though 70% of the audience watching this will not have a clue what service we may actually provide. We don’t care about that so much.

8) You’re a man. Here is Megan Fox in a bathtub. Just look up what it might have been advertising tomorrow, yeah?

9. Just in case you’re female, here’s an advert suggesting your husband is stupid so you need to buy these things for him: or just let him buy them, because it’s the on;y respite he has from his abject stupidity. Oh, and are you a man? Well look at this advert: your wife thinks you’re stupid. What are you going to do about it? You should totally go out and buy this thing. That’ll show the bi…

By the way, that reminds me of the two ads that probably were the most obviously female attracting of the evening: a) the pro-life one that arguably didn’t fit in this context and actually didn’t end up being controversial or any kind of ‘versial’ at all, seeing as it didn’t say anything, and b) That google advert that everyone’s talking about today, that was probably one of only about 20% that wanted to speak to both sexes, and one of only about 3% that might be more attractive to the sex with ladybits (a.k.a “ladies”).

Still, what I’d want to leave you with, because I don’t want to have suffered alone, is this unbelievably depressing car advert, that managed to serve as aspirational only if you would agree that your life is terrible, your work is a joyless drudge, your relationship is based on resentment and obligation, and you frankly wouldn’t put up with a single second of the whole meaningless charade if it didn’t somehow mean that you felt justified in driving an ugly muscle car.
Because that’s your half of the deal in this life.
And somehow the target market of this ad are meant to come away from it feeling like WINNERS?

Yeah, look at you, let’s celebrate your complete lack of free will by buying gasoline every twelve miles!
THAT’S how in control of your incredible life you are, right?!
Go testicles!
Literally!

[And that was it.
Apart from that, the Superbowl was ace. This year, I understood about 7% of the game. This is a good percentage up from last year. But I did also have a burger and some pretty weak beer, so it is more like 86%.]