TV Commercials in Super Bowl Drop the Ball

Call it the Super Bomb.

Advertising executives Monday gave a big thumbs down to the batch of commercials that aired during Sunday’s Super Bowl game.

They said that humorous spots missed their marks and celebrity endorsers (both dead and alive) failed to charm viewers.

“About as bad a collection of advertising as I’ve seen in a very long time,” said Jim Smith, managing partner of Ground Zero Advertising in Santa Monica.

As the most-watched television event of the year, the Super Bowl is the ultimate stage for advertisers. It was the fourth-most watched program in history, ranking behind three other Super Bowls with a 43.3 rating.

It is also the most expensive. This year, advertisers paid a record $1.2 million for each 30-second spot in the game.

In years past, the commercials have been more entertaining than the game. But on Sunday, said Bruce Silverman, president of Asher/Gould Advertising in Los Angeles, “the commercials didn’t live up to the game.”

The Green Bay Packers defeated the New England Patriots, 35-21, in a game that appeared up for grabs until the final quarter.

Among the spots getting the worst reviews:

* A commercial for Holiday Inn that shows a transsexual at a class reunion. The ad was intended to dramatize a $1-billion make-over by Holiday Inn.

Lee Kovel, chief creative director of Kovel, Kresser & Partners in Los Angeles, predicted the spot would alienate conservative business travelers.

“I predict we never see the spot again,” he said. A Holiday Inn spokesman told the Associated Press that no decision has been made regarding the ad.

* An animated spot for Auto-by-Tel, an Irvine-based online car-buying service. Kovel said the animation was so bad that he thought the spot was a spoof for “King of the Hill,” which Fox promoted throughout the game.

“It made them look like a second-rate company,” Kovel said. “It just looked cheap.”

Auto-by-Tel President Pete Ellis defended the spot.

“It is not about creativity,” he said. “We had a marketing message.”

He also said that online inquiries about car purchases have “spiked like crazy” since the commercial aired.

* The Dirt Devil spots showing Fred Astaire dancing with dustpans, carpet sweepers and vacuum cleaners.

“I really and truly hate the idea of using dead people,” Silverman said. “Plus, why do you advertise vacuum cleaners on the Super Bowl?”

Several spots got mixed reviews. Advertising executives were amused by the Nissan spot in which a car outmaneuvers a flock of birds. But the commercial is similar to an existing Honda ad, in which a driver leaps on his Civic to protect it from bird droppings.

“I guess they recognize a good idea when they see it,” said Honda spokesman Art Gardner.

Ad executives were intrigued by the spot for Surge, a new soda from Coca-Cola, in which a group of grungy guys scramble over junky couches to grab a drink. Kovel said one drawback was that it closely resembled a commercial for Mountain Dew, the Pepsi soft drink against which Surge is positioned.

“I thought it was really well-executed, but I was surprised it was not more original,” Kovel said.

Ad executives said they weren’t wowed by any commercial. Spots receiving the best comments were a Pepsi ad in which supermodel Cindy Crawford blows a kiss to a baby in a maternity ward, and a Budweiser spot in which a hamster keeps a nuclear generating plant going by running on his wheel in pursuit of a Bud.

“There was just enough of an idea to carry the commercial,” said Smith of the Budweiser spot.