Super Bowl 58 Grins and Groans

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Super Bowl 58 has come and gone, and two things are evident: Post Malone is a pretty darn good singer, and the Chiefs are apparently a very good football team. [Congratulations to them and their fans on being the first team to win back-to-back championships since the New England Patriots nearly 20 years ago.]

Speaking of back-to-back, it appears the advertising bowl was a repeat of last year as well. Nothing risky, nothing wildly interesting, nothing off the wall but really smart. You like to be WOWED with Super Bowl advertising, and – for the second year in a row – I suspect there were not a lot of “wows” being uttered in living rooms across the world.

Some themes that emerged last night:

Religion is apparently making a comeback. A total of five spots were dedicated to some form of religiosity: two spots for Jesus, a spot reminding us to stand up to Jewish hate (sad that we have to be reminded of that,) the annual pitch for Scientology, and Mark Wahlberg hawking Hallow, a new prayer app. (Sad that we need an app for that.)

Repetition was a theme last night as well. And this I like. If you’re trying to get some of the 115 million+ people (in the US) watching the game to REMEMBER you, repetition is a pretty strong tool. And if you can repeat creatively, all the better. A few brands managed to pull this off last night, some with more efficiency than others. Kate McKinnon’s cat meows over and over again, but it sounds like “mayo” for Hellmann’s; and Aubrey Plaza continually reminding us she’s having a “blast” for Mountain Dew; both were fairly effective. But Arnold Schwarzenegger using his own accent as a comic tool when he repeats the word “nay-bah” for State Farm and their “like a good neighbor” tagline was both effective AND funny. And Doordash really hit the repetition ball out of the park with their spot, continually repeating the word “dash” to great effect, while reminding viewers of the actual brand name in the process.

Meta, (the concept, not the company,) was also a theme. We saw a lot of spots using the “let’s make a commercial about making a commercial” theme. It’s a strong device, given that this is the biggest platform on the planet for commercial-making.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

BetMGM bet on Vince Vaughn doing Vince Vaughn things, and it worked. Throw in Tom Brady and Wayne Gretzky for the typical Super Bowl celebrity-stuffing and you get a pretty good spot.

Ken Jeong is just hilarious, and his turn as a recently-unfrozen-cryogenic-experiment was a laugh. When he’s told it’s Popeye’s, he asks “the sailor man?” Loved it, and sincerely hope that was ad-libbed.

Christopher Walken being hounded by people attempting Christopher Walken impersonations is always welcome. And BMW wrapped it up nicely with the line “the rest are just imitations.”

Reese’s probably gave us the most fun spot of the night with “big change.” Narrator having fun with a roomful of people having outsized reactions – classic fun, and pretty memorable.

Poppi soda made a nice, simple, smart statement about their soda being better than what we all think “soda” is. Less sugar, prebiotics, cool flavors. Nice.

PlutoTV did a nice job of growing couch potatoes in an entertaining spot for their streaming service. They had a good gag, and took it all the way to the farm.

And let’s face it. Chris Pratt kinda does look like the Pringles guy, right?

GRINS:

T-Mobile has been crushing it on Super Bowl ads the last couple of years, and they kept it up with two fun spots. They love singing in their commercials, and this year we got Jason Momoa showing off his pipes and some feats of acrobatics. And their “audition” spot, a Bradley-Cooper-and-his-mom spot, which featured cameos by Laura Dern, Patrick J. Adams and Gabriel Nacht of “Suits” fame, Common, and Jennifer Hudson was entertaining and smart to boot (the idea is no one has to “audition” to get T-Mobile’s Magenta Status VIP treatment.)

Last year, Dunkin’ went all in on the Ben Affleck/Jennifer Lopez thing, and they’ve continued the story this year with Ben trying to break into the pop music business with his group “The Dunkings,” which also features Tom Brady on keyboards. Probably not the best brand-building spot we’ve ever seen, (they’re going all in on the Boston thing,) but it’s cute, and the self-effacing turn from Matt Damon made it really funny.

Disney+ put in a surprisingly good turn this year with their “well said” spot. Just plain typewriter text (not quite Courier, but close,) on a white screen, scrolling through some of the more memorable phrases in Disney history, including “who’s the fairest of them all?” and “the Force will be with you…always” and “To infinity…and beyond.” Some might call this lazy. I saw it as a way to break through the clutter (and a noisy living room hosting a Super Bowl party) and deliver something powerful. Winner of the “sneaky good” category.

NFL made some important statements about bullying and mental health in two semi-PSAs/semi-self-congratulatory spots. But their full length spot, featuring Quesi, a young boy from Ghana with big NFL dreams, made a salient point: “it doesn’t matter where you’re born, as long as you’re born to play.” That line is delivered by Osi Umenyiora, a former NFL player of Nigerian descent. The NFL is committed to growing the game internationally, and this spot shed light on that initiative with warmth and fun and facts. Well done.

One of my favorites of the evening was this spot for CeraVe, another meta take on commercial-making, where quirky actor Michael Cera is pitching the dermatology board at CeraVe skin care to use him as their spokesman. The screen cuts to bold text (love that Din Pro font family,) that says “Developed with Dermatologists. Not Michael Cera.” It manages to deliver silliness, seriousness, a singular brand platform that their products are indeed developed by dermatologists, name recognition and memorability all at once. Exactly what a Super Bowl spot should do.

This spot from Verizon, featuring Beyonce trying to “break the Internet” was a masterclass in over the top advertising. First off, she’s wildly popular. Second, she pretty much HAS broken the Internet over her career. This spot features her going to outrageous lengths to TRY and break the Internet, but Verizon’s incredible coverage never wavers. A great performance by Beyonce, a hint of self-effacing humor shows she doesn’t take herself THAT seriously, and lots of smart and timely pop culture references. And that she’s using it as a platform to tease/drop new music is even cooler.

I think one of the best spots of the night was made by Bud Light. A return to form for this brand, (who has been in the news the last year or two for all the wrong reasons,) which is to be big, brash, unapologetically silly and fun. They take a simple concept, stretch it out as far as it can go, add a couple of big celebrities (Peyton Manning and Post Malone, with a cameo by Tyrannosaurus Rex,) and execute the heck out of it. The perfect recipe for really strong Super Bowl advertising.

MY WINNER:

Dove returns with another smart ad that’s tactfully and intelligently delivered. Using the “It’s a Hard Knock Life” song, we see a montage of girls flubbing it at sports from gymnastics to ice skating, basketball and softball. And even though they do, they smile and press on. The text on the ad reads “the knocks don’t stop girls playing sports…low body confidence does.” Wow. BANG. The ad gets quiet, and we get a peek at a young girl in a bathing suit looking at herself somewhat disapprovingly in a mirror. Text reads “45% of girls quit sports by age 14…together we can keep them in the game.” And we’re encouraged to “Join the Body Confident Sport program.” This brand hardly sells soap anymore – they sell esteem and female empowerment and tolerance and acceptance and…and..and…Great work as usual.

GROANS:

The Google Pixel ad was a good moment. Lovely story of a semi-blind man named Javier who is now able to capture photos on his phone with the help of the phone’s AI assistant. I liked it initially, and the final scene was touching. It’s also technically good advertising because it focuses on a singular feature. I just think that accessibility is about so much more than taking selfies, and I thought this ad undercut the mission a little bit.

The Nerds Gummy Clusters ad was just kind of confusing. It features Addison Rae, a Gen Z singer/influencer, and a blobby Nerd candy (I guess?) recreating the iconic scene from Flashdance. It just felt weirdly mistargeted, as I’m not sure how much of the Super Bowl audience under 40 would even know or remember Flashdance. Compare this with the Skechers ad using Mr.T as a conduit – at least those sneakers are targeted to an aging Gen X audience that would actually know who he is.

All of the Homes.com ads (there were three of them at least,) went too far into the gags without clearly making the points they were hoping to deliver. The ads say some really good things about the brand like “gathering up close and detailed information on neighborhoods, and hiring top experts to get you insider info on local schools…” All good stuff, but the core messaging gets blurred out in the outlandish mayhem designed to be funny. They further confused the point by introducing Jeff Goldblum into one of the ads – he’s the Apartments.com spokesman – for comedic effect. The only effect it had was an unclear value proposition, poorly delivered across several ads. The parent company, CoStar Group, reportedly spent $35 million on all their ad exposure. Yikes.

Oreo delivered a big-budget ad with big scenarios throughout history left to chance, with decision-makers deciding on which way to go by “twisting on it.” Yeah – they twist their Oreo cookies, and if the cream is on the left, homo sapiens split off from the dinosaurs and survive the asteroid hit that kicks off the ice age. If the twist reveals cream on the right, we get boy bands and the Kardashians. Ugh. I always like the let’s-show-the-product-in-action approach, so I’ll submit that as a plus. But “let’s twist on it” sounds forced, and it looked that way too.

I know it’s sacrilege, but is it okay if I didn’t like the Martin Scorsese-directed spot for Squarespace? It just seemed like more of a commentary on people’s obsession with smartphones, and made exactly ZERO mention of any brand benefits. Squarespace is a website that makes it easy to build websites, and it’s never mentioned. Not once. And the only ones who use it are aliens trying to get noticed? Then they end with the tagline “A website makes it real.” Makes WHAT real, exactly? Meh.

And probably my biggest groan of the night was Crowdstrike’s attempt at a “big” commercial for the Super Bowl. It’s set in the Wild West…in the past? Or is it a post-apocalpytic future? Hard to tell. Some people are dressed like it’s 1820. The spokeswoman is standard 2024 every-woman. What the what? And if you’re still watching, she tells the cyborg sheriff (not kidding) that she’s got it covered. Then she proceeds to digitally undress the invading virus-borgs (also not kidding) so they’re embarrassed and run away. I think I’ve got that right. What a confusing mess.

But hey, at least we didn’t have to watch any faux-patriotic spots from Weather Tech, right? What were your favorites? Let’s hear it in the comments.

Until next year!

What’s next. For text.

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This week, it was announced that Apple is adopting RCS (Rich Communications Service) as a standard feature on its next iOS version. RCS is aptly named, as it does enable more rich forms of communication to be sent over the texting network. (Textwork? Nextext? Just spitballing.) Now, instead of just text in a blue – sometimes green – bubble, or the occasional animated GIF from friends or bit.ly link from brands, images and videos can now be shared, and even interactive features.

Obviously, this news is rife with marketing and business implications.  A survey from Juniper Research, a UK-based telecom research firm, found that “business messaging traffic will grow from $1.3 billion to $8 billion in 2025.” Wowzers. That’s a lot. And soon. Some of that growth is to be realized in no small way by Apple’s 900 million devices entering the fray.

RCS is also notable for providing end-to-end encryption so that messages can’t be intercepted. Apple, who has been prickly about privacy, especially as it relates to marketing via mobile devices, probably saw this is an opportunity to deliver more robust services to iPhone users while toeing the line of its newer, harsher security stance.

As it relates to marketing, the possibilities seem both endless and exciting. More rich media often holds the door open for more robust and interactive engagements. Surveys. Games. Direct app downloads. Oh my!

So, could this be a kind of renaissance moment for the oft-maligned outpost known as direct marketing? Methinks perhaps. Instead of just offering the standard “reply STOP to opt-out” or  “1 to reply YES” options, recipients of RCS messages can now explore the brands’ text-messaged offerings in private, low-risk interactions and decide (if the brands do this correctly) on a number of engagement pathways.

So everybody wins: brands get to design and deliver more interesting and more entertaining features directly to consumers to increase engagement and drive whatever metrics they’re chasing. Consumers get to engage with cooler marketing tactics while still feeling in control of the conversation (remember, you can opt out or just delete anytime you like.) Heck, direct marketing wins by getting a slick, new, digital shot in the arm.

But the real winners? It’s the carriers.

That’s right. AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile. At least in the United States, they stand to gain most from this boon since they’ll be double-dipping their way to some of that 4X growth predicted by Juniper in their report.

For Dip 1, it will cost brands more to send these richer engagements across the texting network (Textnet? TheNextwork? Still working on ideas.) through the various third party mass texting platforms that enable them. Because the platform rates will go up on a per-message basis as well to cover the increased carrier fees. Hmmm.

And for Dip 2, carriers will quietly pass additional fees on to consumers on their monthly bills. That old “text and data fees may apply” disclaimer is now going to cost a titch more than it used to the more you start opting in for these newer, brighter, more colorful and more animated engagements. The fees will be nominal to each consumer, but across these networks of hundreds of millions of subscribers, it will amount to some delicious over-the-transom revenue from both sides of the marketing equation. And with no additional infrastructure costs.

Well done, you sneaky little bastards.

X. Why?

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This week, Elon Musk unceremoniously revealed the new brand name (and Unicode character logo, more on that later,) for what used to be Twitter. It’s simply called “X.”

And bye, bye, birdie. That most recognizable icon that adorns hundreds of thousands of websites with social connectivity, is now a part of history. And I have questions. Chief among them, of course, is why? Why take one of the world’s most popular, most recognizable, most iconic brands and just…dump it? Let’s explore.

The idea behind this seemingly rash decision is Elon Musk’s desire – and corporate directive to new CEO Linda Yaccarino – to transform the company into an all-in-one life management platform. A site for music, video, messaging, even banking and personal payments. (A super-app platform like that exists already. It’s called WeChat, and it disregards any semblance of privacy for its mainland China users. Sigh.) His contention, and I’m guessing here, is that people only see Twitter as a messaging platform, and that, in order to see it as something new and bigger, the name had to change.

But that name, and everything associated with it, had immense value. So much so that Elon Musk is reported to have paid roughly $44 billion for it. I’m no finance expert, but if you pay that much money for something, it’s because you think it has, or at least will gain, significantly more value over time. Okay, that’s a clear concept. But then you don’t change the name of that valuable thing into something banal and unrecognizable, right? RIGHT?

Twitter – whether you liked it or not, or used it or not – was a wonderfully integrated conceptual framework of idea, artwork and practical application. (And yes, I’m deliberately using the past tense here.) At the time it was developed, the idea was probably that everyone has an opinion and could chime in, er, chirp, er tweet that opinion anytime they chose. And other people could tweet. And pretty soon, everyone is all a-twitter. And so you represent that interactivity concept with a lovely little logo of a blue singing bird and it all fits together so well. A few years go by, the bird is everywhere, some big names use the platform and big things materialize, and suddenly you have a brand worth billions. And it’s represented sensibly.

Twitter – and tweeting – had become a generic term in our vernacular. So-and-so just “tweeted.” Or “re-tweeted!” There’s value there. Like when someone says “just Google it.” Or I need a “Band-Aid.” When your trademarked name becomes a verb in the English language, it likely has amassed considerable value in the process.

And speaking of value, Aisha Counts and Jesse Levine wrote in an article on Time.com, “Musk’s move wiped out anywhere between $4 billion and $20 billion in value, according to analysts and brand agencies.” This is equity that the brand took 15 years to build.

Say what you will about Elon Musk, but he has never seemed like a follower. Yet, it does seem to be a trend in the mega-tech space to dump equitable brands for less stellar superbrands. Google is now Alphabet, although Google still exists. Facebook is now Meta, although Facebook still exists. But by all accounts, Twitter is going away. It’s not clear yet if the url twitter.com will be forwarded to x.com or something similar. But there has been no indication that X is a superbrand that’s absorbing Twitter.

Let’s also remember that Musk has a thing for “X,” calling his space exploration company SpaceX. So there’s some continuity and connectivity there. (Golf clap.) But his car company is not called CarX. That would make sense. And he’s not calling this future everything-in-one app AppX. That would make sense. But I guess if people start referring to you as a genius, making sense falls low on the list of priorities.

On the logo: The symbol itself is a Unicode 3.1 character – U1D54F – which was part of a version released around 2001. In a very simplistic explanation, Unicode is a character set (designed by a group of Palo Alto techies in the early 1990’s) to be international and multilingual, mostly aimed at standardizing software coding to render text sets and symbols in various languages. Maybe it’s Musk’s tech-geek attempt at a “universal” application? Spitballing.

At first, I thought this was another IHOB PR stunt, so Musk could grab a ton of media attention to make some kind of big tentpole announcement. But when you take down the sign at the San Francisco headquarters, it probably means you’re serious. Also he took over the Twitter account @X, and there’s a kerfuffle over that, too. Man, this is a mess.

Most analysts think this is a bad idea for various reasons. I think this is a bad idea, mostly because valuable brands are so hard to come by and cultivate and grow. And people are still going to call it Twitter, and use the generic verb “tweet” for a long time. No matter what the new billionaire genius owner wants to call it.

Super Bowl 57 Grins and Groans

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Congratulations (choke!) to the (cough!) Kansas City Chiefs on another (gag!) well-earned Super Bowl victory. Sorry, but when you’re a fan of another team, it hurts to give props to anyone else. #GoBills.

Aside from the football, there was, of course, the advertising. And it was anything BUT super this year. Really just a strange mix of blah ideas, very few risks taken, heavy on celebrities, light on diversity and originality. So here goes.

GRINS

While there was not much to celebrate, there were a few ads that stood out this year. Like the game, it was pretty slow going in the first half, and then revved up after the halftime show. While we’re at halftime, I don’t know enough about Rihanna’s music to say if it was good or bad, but I was pretty impressed with the floating stages, the drone shots, and the visual intrigue that was created. Also, she basically put on a 15-minute commercial for her fashion and beauty brands Fenty and Savage X Fenty, while announcing her pregnancy to the world. Good on her. At least SOMEBODY got the idea about marketing during the Super Bowl.

I’ll give it up to Ben Affleck, shilling for Dunkin’ at the drive thru. JLo ordering him to “bring me a glazed” was pretty funny. ETrade brings the babies back again this year, but at least it was funny, with a few killer lines and lots of cute kids being AI’d into silly dialogue.

In a meta spot for T-Mobile, Bradley Cooper and his mom couldn’t finish the commercial, but still managed to get some important feature points across about the Price Lock guarantee. And Michelob Ultra revived Caddyshack (twice, actually) with Brian Cox, Serena Williams and Tony Romo standing in for Ted Knight, Chevy Chase and Bill Murray. Probably completely lost on anyone born after 1975, but still, beer and golf play well together.

Adam Driver was tongue-in-cheek enough to deliver a pretty solid message for Squarespace, repeating the core premise “a website that makes websites.” And Super Bowl 57 was heavy on 90’s nostalgia with Diddy doing a sort of it’s-not-a-jingle commercial for Uber Eats. Oh, and Jennifer Coolidge is just plain funny. Her over-the-top antics for E.L.F. cosmetics, using the “sticky” gag was delicious!

And while we’re talking about celebrities being a little self-effacing, props to Sarah McLachlan for spoofing herself in a beer ad for Busch Light, where she – almost – launches into one of her “save the pets” PSAs, only to find out it’s the “wrong shelter, Sarah…also, that’s a wolf.” Funny. And I have to say, John Travolta reviving “Summer Nights” with Zach Braff and Donald Faison for T-Mobile in-home wifi was well-executed and had some really funny lines, (and a nice three-part harmony!) including feature points like “it’s just fifty bucks.” Mr. Peanut also allowed himself to get “roasted” by Jeff Ross and others in a smart turn of phrase. And Dave Grohl (who is a great comedic pitchman) celebrated all the exports of Canada in a cheeky spot (and a nice not-so-serious approach) for Crown Royal. A refreshing detour from typical spirits ads.

Three honorable mentions:

Nick Jonas for Dexcom, a diabetes monitoring device and corresponding app, was remarkably well-done and should be an indication that they’re targeting a younger demographic. After all, that target is more likely to embrace lifesaving tech without a second thought, and more likely to know who this kid is. And having a JoBro deliver the message actually makes it seem fairly cool. Smart!

The Pop Corners spot, which was executed wonderfully by Aaron Paul, Bryan Cranston and Raymond Cruz (known colloquially as Jesse, Mr. White and Tuco,) of Breaking Bad fame, was hilarious and well-played, especially by Cruz doing his over-the-top hyper-excited drug dealer shouting “SEVEN!” for the amount of flavors he wants. Be careful; the joke is a little lost if you don’t get the references, but if you do, it’s gold.

Tubi used a few sneaky tactics to get our attention. The best was the eerie spot of giant rabbits kidnapping humans and tossing them into “rabbit holes” of content. Pretty out there, and pretty good. We all use the term “I went down a rabbit hole” when we talk about binging, and this was a smart callback to that vernacular. But their “and now back to the game” cutoff, where we thought we were going back to Super Bowl coverage (with Kevin Burkhardt and Greg Olsen) and then got duped into another spot was masterful. It helps that Tubi is a Fox-owned streaming service. They would win the under-the-radar advertiser of the year for sure.

THREE CLEAR WINNERS:

KIA – “Binky Dad”

Kia goes big on a situation that virtually every dad can relate to. They turn it into a determination story, with a hero, a challenge, (not to mention the Bill Conti “Rocky” theme song in the background,) and lots of excitement along the way. This is good advertising: just slightly over the top, but with enough truth and substance at the heart of it that it’s totally believable, even if exaggerated. The SUV has all the capability it needs to turn off road, jump through a concrete water main pipe, and generally haul ass in the service of “getting the baby’s binky.” Cue the poor-dad-you-got-it-wrong-anyway joke at the end, and you have a very satisfying, super entertaining and moderately informative Super Bowl commercial.

DORITOS – “Triangle”

Pop/rap star Jack Harlow seeks something “different” in this spot for Doritos. He ditches rap, and instead takes up playing the triangle, which sets off a national phenomenon. People go crazy for triangles, Harlow starts giving triangle lessons, and he hopes to win triangle player of the year, until he’s usurped by Elton John. Over the top, funny, and sneaky on point: Doritos are, of course, triangle-shaped snack chips. Although the brand is widely known, it’s a return to a simple “what makes you different” focus. That’s good strategy, and it turned out to be very good advertising.

WORKDAY – “Rock Stars”

Corporate types like to call each other “rock stars.” In this spot, some actual rock stars take offense, and provide background to remind Workday, the corporate Finance and HR software platform, that just using it to your advantage does NOT make you an actual rock star. Joan Jett, Billy Idol, Gary Clark Jr, and a hilarious turn by Ozzy Osbourne (“Hi, I’m Oswald,”) make this a glitzy, big, funny, and SUPER memorable spot. I often talk about performance, and how important an element that is in good commercial-making. Paul Stanley plays it perfectly – a little miffed faux-seriousness and a well-delivered comedic performance by him in particular. Best spot of the night, and it wasn’t even close.

GROANS

Sorry to say it, but this Super Bowl was full of groans. Most of it was just boring, or unremarkable, including all the movie promos. Anna Faris in a tired Garden of Eden trope for Avocados from Mexico…hard to follow, which just didn’t make you want to buy or investigate the product in any way. Some gaming company (LimitBreak) did another QR code trick in the first pod, which is the definition of “too soon” after last year’s semi-groundbreaking approach from Coinbase (which crashed their servers, btw.)

Generally, most of the spots just relied too heavily on celebrity to (hopefully) make an impression. Most were misses, like Hellmann’s (Jon Hamm, Brie Larson and a creepy Pete Davidson,) Skechers (Snoop Dogg, Martha Stewart and a funny Tony Romo,) and Paul Rudd as Ant-Man for a non-alcoholic Heineken beer.

The most egregious celebrity-filled spot was the DraftKings “name” spot, where Kevin Hart and others work through a script that was written JUST for the celebrities in the spot. This is a celebrity ad for celebrity ad’s sake kind of approach. Hart says “I’m not an under-taker” just as WWE star Undertaker appears. Or “that’s ludicrous,” when rapper Ludacris appears. Or worse yet, “I’m watching you like a hawk” as skateboarder Tony Hawk tries to get into the party. Just not great advertising, and expensive too!

BIGGEST GROANS

GM and Netflix teamed up in one of two co-branded spots Netflix did on the night. (The other was a decent pitch for their upcoming “Full Swing” reality show about professional golfers with Michelob Ultra that reprised the Caddyshack theme.) In this spot, Will Ferrell (whose comic genius was utterly wasted in this spot) drives around in an all-electric truck through various scenes of popular Netflix shows. Each line of the script is crafted around popular Netflix shows, but if you a.) don’t have Netflix or b.) don’t watch those particular shows, you’re out of the jokes completely. It’s confusing at best, and self-congratulatory at worst.

WeatherTech continues their participation in the Super Bowl, although most of us wish they wouldn’t. The ad starts out with promise, with various people telling WeatherTech “you can’t do that” when they want to build a factory in the US, and hire bright talent in the US. But it veers off into more patting of their own backs. The ad says “ha! See? We did it, and we’re successful, so there!” There’s nothing of value there for the consumer to hear. Nothing about translating those higher costs and more expensive employees into great quality products, or shorter shipping times, or that you can find the products at stores where you live. Nah, just “we’re awesome. Go America.” Sadly, some people will say it was a great commercial for that exact reason. Ugh.

Pepsi Zero Sugar wins the ignominious award for worst spots of the Super Bowl. There were two of them, actually, which makes it doubly disappointing. Here’s the setup: Ben Stiller and Steve Martin do some acting in various comic and dramatic situations, and talk about the “craft” of acting, and how you never know what’s real and what’s acting. Okay, we’re listening. But then, they take a sip of Pepsi Zero Sugar and exclaim “wow – that’s delicious!” (And this is where it goes awry.) Then they turn to the camera and ask, “or was I acting?” Now, in their defense, the setup is built to deliver the next line “only way to find out is to try it for yourself.” So you could argue there’s a strong call to action to go out and try the product. That’s fair. But let’s remember that the mind is the marketplace when it comes to advertising, and even the mere suggestion that an actor is faking it creates too much doubt. We are all willing to suspend our disbelief when we see commercials, but you never want the consumer wondering if the actor was indeed acting. If you think the pitchman was bullshitting you, and then he admits he might be, I don’t know…that just doesn’t seem like a strong selling idea to me. The better angle would have been to go over the top, and try and plead for the audience’s understanding by saying “no, really…I’m NOT acting right now…this stuff is GREAT!” They got too cute, and I think it cost them.

Until next year…yay advertising!

Here’s mud in your A.I.

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If you’ve been paying attention to the industry news, there’s been a LOT of chatter about AI, (artificial intelligence,) and its various applications. And some of them are really intriguing and useful. With the ability to run predictive diagnostics, artificial intelligence (better described as data-driven machine learning,) is ideal for applications that can benefit from robust and speedy automation.

As is our way, it doesn’t take long for something useful and intriguing to be repurposed into something base and silly. Case in point: AI is also being used now for some fairly sophisticated parlour tricks, like recreating the Mona Lisa.

(Moves soapbox to the foreground.)

But the application of AI in marketing, and most specifically in the creative process, is really (in this sentient blogger’s opinion,) an overreach.

There’s no data set for creativity. In fact, there are no rules. What makes something “creative” is that it is indeed CREATED. By a human being. Part of why we buy paintings, and music and novels and sculpture is because we know there’s a backstory of someone who sweat it out in a studio or at the typewriter. Someone whose fingers bled. Someone who made mistakes, and tried variations, and threw whole passages in a trash can. We celebrate that humanity and that pain and the entire process when we consume anything creative. Not just the end result.

The same is true in marketing. Writing anything – an ad, a blog post, a commercial script – is hard. It’s taking business rules and mandatories into consideration and asking a creative person to then do intellectual gymnastics, linking sometimes disparate ideas in unexpected ways, without a net. Can you write an algorithm for that? Sure, but the results are likely to be shit – the kind of shit a hack would conjure.

For instance, you’ve probably seen these kinds of promotions for having AI write your next blog post.

What’s really happening there? I don’t claim to have knowledge of any of their algorithms, but I’d bet my last dollar that these are search bots that crawl the web for every piece of content written in the last 10 years about a particular subject. They ingest this huge data set, pick out bits and pieces using sorting criteria that prioritize those with the most clicks, comments and instances, and then rearrange and reconstruct a new version for you.

That’s not creating. That’s recreating at best. And theft at worst.

ChatGPT, the latest and supposedly greatest iteration of AI language prowess, has added a sexy wrinkle into their algorithm. Instead of just swiping content and repurposing it, it adds a level of dialogue formatting to make it sound more conversational, and thus more natural and believable. It claims to “answer follow-up questions” and “admits its mistakes.” And given that it is machine-based learning, it gets “better” the more often it’s used. (It’s driving educators crazy, as students who use it can be deemed to be cheating, not researching.)

What a paradox: a machine learning model that improves the more often it’s used, but also degrades the craft proportionately in the process. [Some disclosures: OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT is funded in part by Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and just got a billion dollar injection of capital from Microsoft.]

In a recent viral kerfuffle on social media, recording artist Nick Cave (throaty lead singer with The Bad Seeds) reacted to a song that was “written” by ChatGPT “in the style of Nick Cave.” He could not have put it any better:

“Songs arise out of suffering, by which I mean they are predicated upon the complex, internal human struggle of creation and, well, as far as I know, algorithms don’t feel. Data doesn’t suffer. ChatGPT has no inner being, it has been nowhere, it has endured nothing, it has not had the audacity to reach beyond its limitations, and hence it doesn’t have the capacity for a shared transcendent experience, as it has no limitations from which to transcend. ChatGPT’s melancholy role is that it is destined to imitate and can never have an authentic human experience, no matter how devalued and inconsequential the human experience may in time become.”

Okay, back to marketing, and particularly the art of writing good advertising. Part of the craft is developing a sense of counterintuitive thought and embracing lateral thinking. Another big part is the symbiotic relationship of the headline and the image. But so much of modern advertising is about contextualizing the brand into the cultural moment from which it arises.

Think of how many great headlines and taglines would never – could never – be written by AI, by virtue of this necessity for divergence and a sense of the cultural periphery.

“Think Small” from DDB was a radical notion at the dawn of the 1960s. As Americans – less than two decades removed from World War II – were upwardly mobile, one of the most pervasive (and comical) trends in automobile-dom was an oblique obsession with size. Bigger was better, and American cars looked like ocean liners. The nation was also wildly nationalistic at the time, and DDB’s assignment was to sell a small, quirky German car to this audience.

To get to the heart of these cultural undertones and suggest an opposite notion was a radical idea. And paired with the spare art direction (bless you Helmut Krone) and that sea of white space, it became a touchstone for our industry. Could AI ever reach that level of insight? Of rebelliousness? Of sheer chutzpah?

“Think Different.” When this campaign (from TBWA/Chiat/Day) was released in the 1990s, it was paired with images of pioneering artists, thinkers and doers, like Einstein, Picasso and Miles Davis. It also featured zero body copy. What’s so interesting about the head/tagline is that it’s not even good English. But it was a fine encapsulation of the Apple brand in that moment and what it stood for. Would AI dare to break grammar rules to create an emotional response?

I suppose it’s mildly ironic, or at least cheeky, that I chose two classic advertising examples that use the word “think” in the headlines. And perhaps that’s exactly what I’m driving at, and what Nick Cave was fuming at.

Maybe I’m an old fart, but I prefer the consternation. The suffering. The pacing and the waiting and the wondering if this “idea” has legs. Give me time to think about what’s going on in the world. Give me the sudden burst of insight when the neurons start to fire. Give me the end of the sentence that starts with “wouldn’t it be cool if…” Give me a person, thinking about another person, and getting them to actually think different.

There’s nothing artificial about that.