Game Day Ads

The big game is this weekend and you know what that means don't you? Ads, ads, and more ads. Yes, companies we all know and love (or love to hate perhaps) have forked over millions once again to reach a captive audience. Millions tune in on game day and in the days following to see just what ranked among the top Super Bowl ads of the year. As a communications professional married to an advertising creative guy, I can`t help but get a little excited.

Normally, as we`re here in Canada, we have to wait until the day after the game to see what was tops. Not this year. Nope, this year many companies have released their ads or have given sneak previews well in advance of game day. And why not? With a pretty price of about $116 thousand dollars per second, you can hardly blame them for wanting to get the most out of their investments.

So far I've seen a couple that I quite enjoy, including this one by Honda with Matthew Broderick and it's play on the classic film Ferris Bueller's Day Off:

And this one by Budweiser strikes an emotional chord, which is refreshing to see from a beer company where the MO is usually girls, skin, and sexual innuendo.

One I'm not loving though is VW's "Dog Strikes Back". If you remember last year, VW had a wildly popular ad with the little kid as Darth Vader. They tried to tie that in this year`s ad with the dog and, in my books, it is a FAIL. It comes across as just weird to me.

I like the pre-grame preview. It`s fun. Now to wait for the whole wrap-up on Monday. What about you...
do you tune in on game day/post game to catch the ads?