Last night, I - and millions upon millions of others - settled down to watch the commercials; I mean, the Superbowl. Well, let's be honest, we all watched both.
Unless you were a die-hard Raiders or Bucs fan, you probably parked on the couch with some pizza and a couple cold ones with the expectation of watching the commercials with as much excitement as the game.
And as you sat in a flurry of car ads and movie trailers, you may have thought to yourself, when did these things get to be so bad?
Don't get me wrong, some of them are fun. Some of them are inventive. Some of them did amazing things with computers. But all of them were after one thing: your money.
I watched an interview and sneak peak on http://www.newstream.com last week for the Levi's Type 1 jeans' "Stampede" commercial that aired during the Superbowl. In it, two attractive kids are walking along, and they are charged by a group of buffaloes.
Yes, buffaloes, the only thing sure to make me want to purchase denim.
Anyway, maybe you saw it; maybe you missed it. It doesn't matter to me; it probably doesn't matter to you. I think it was not the commercial that really got to me, it was the interviews I watched with the corporate demons afterward. I have never heard such a load of bull in my life.
"It is visually really intoxicating to see those jeans," said Thomas Hayo, creative director of the marketing firm Bartle Bogle and Hegarty, in the interview.
Intoxicating? They're jeans, not a fifth of Jim Beam.
"It is a very, very different way of communicating, and just a spirit and a proudness that is behind a (Superbowl) spot, and the magnitude of it kind of shows that Levi's as a company is proud of what they've done, you know, where they came from," Hayo said in the interview.
Read: Levi's paid more money than most of us will make in a lifetime for 30 seconds in which they tried to sell you overpriced jeans.
Levi's has been working with BBH, a company that describes itself as "a factory for fame." Maybe BBH's fame factory is employing small Uruguayan farm children for sweatshop labor, because BBH did not make me see stars. In fact, Hayo single-handedly insured that I will never purchase another pair of Levi's again.
I'm not saying that Levi's is not proud of their status as an American icon. And I'm not even saying they shouldn't be. I'm saying that rarely do we stop and realize how much marketing and advertising we are subject to.
A Superbowl spot for Levi's is not about pride. It is about money.
In fact, according to 2002 Nielson Media and Advertising Age Research, the average price for a 30-second Superbowl spot was $1.9 million. Early figures estimate the 2003 spots at about $2 million each.
So, Levi's, don't try to justify your denim-selling techniques with lofty ideals about American dreams.
Not to get preachy, but how many mouths could $2 million feed? How much research could it do? And though the advertising goes to funding what is arguably the biggest sporting event of the year, when do you stop and ask yourself if it's worth it?
The NFL and ABC took the top spots for self-congratulatory drivel, I think. Every other spot was a commercial for The Practice, or it was one of those "Crazy was just 'crazy' until the NFL" commercials.
ABC told the world last night that it is unleashing what will undoubtedly be all-time low in sex appeal and reality-based television shows. The 30-spot featured half-naked women from the neck down and asked its viewers the oh-so-thought-provoking question: Are You Hot?
Regular beer drinkers are not hot, according to Bud Light. Their beer-drinking-mother commercial depicted a guy meeting his girlfriend's mother for the first time. He thinks this is what his chica will look like in 20 years. The mother and daughter arrive at his place. He checks the peephole and thinks hey, she's pretty hot for an old lady. But when he opens the door, she has a rump the size of Texas. Ladies, drink light beer if you ever want a man to love you.
You know, I don't know when they stopped being enjoyable. It could have been when the dot-commers hijacked the airwaves with their sock puppets.
This year, with the help of the talented sports staff at this newspaper and two football-obsessed roommates, I have acquired a love of the game. I like to watch football and thank goodness I do, because companies are spending $2 million on unsalvageable, unimaginative crap. I almost feel like it would be better if these spots made me want to go buy something. They don't. They make me want to run screaming, as if from a herd of buffalo.
Thank you, Levi's.
Photo: Meredith Forrest Kulwicki
