Blogging about commercials / Watching a 49ers game

1:23 PM / September 24, 2006 – I am blogging live from the San Francisco 49ers and Philadelphia Eagles game.
I am blogging this game for three reason:
1. Hopefully this will even out my month-long absence of writing for the blog
2. The advertising during the game promises to be interesting, repetitive, and hopefully enjoyable.
3. The 49ers are my team and if they can beat the Eagles, it would be nice to have a journal of it.

1:25 1st commercial for the new Robin Williams movie where he plays the politician who won’t censor what he says and stays honest. I saw this movie before, when it was called “Dave.”

1:27 – Budwieser Select is a sponsor of today’s game – I still don’t get where they are positioning this product. I’ve heard some say it’s the Michelob Ultra of the Budweiser brand, and I’ve heard others say that it is supposed to be a premium beer. Anybody know? I am sure I could read about it or go and search out that info.  Come on though, who is going to do research on why they should be drinking a beer?

1:29 – GM commercial where the cars fly – I don’t like it. Period. I know it is supposed to be showing their new 100,000 super-warranty, but I just think the flying car concept doesn’t match what they are trying to do. Reliability just does not seem to match with this. It brings us idiot football viewers into memories of Hoverboards in Back to the Future 2. Now that’s what we need, hoverboards. The commercial looks good, but what do flying cars have to do with dependability?

NOTE: While trying to find video of this ad, I found out that GM is also taking a viral approach to this. I like this idea as well, but I am still not liking the flying car approach.

1:34 – Bill Walsh commercial is on where he is in the Coors Light press conference – I like this idea. Dick Vermeil is in a couple as well. The thing about these is that they is using actual press conferences and then dub in the Coors Light portions. The problem though is that many people may not actually get the fact that they are using old press conference footage.
Since they are doing this, they really need to be using two famous press conferences:
1. Bill Mora of the Indy Colts screaming: “PLAYOFFS?!”
2. Any recent Dick Vermeil press conference where he is crying (which has been immortalized by Bill Simmons).
The thing is that these commercials actually exist. I understand Coors Light ran these by test audience and they didn’t test well. How can “PLAYOFFS?!” not test well?

1:38 – Oddly enough, we have not yet see a commercial for Prison Break or House.

1:40 Niners look lousy today, hopefully the commercials will be good. 14 – 0 Eagles.

1:42 – When did Steve Young, Dan Marino, and Phil Simms decide that they needed Hollywood agents and that they should be in at least 5 commercials every season? I will say though that I enjoy Steve Young in Nike’s Briscoe High School Football commercials.

1:43 – OK, include Peyton Manning in that group. They just showed two of his commercials, and neither was the Sprint commercial with him in the adult film mustache.

1:56 – Ladies and gentlemen, your first House and Prison Break commercials have just been shown. It will be great when they start showing 5 second clips of 24 in November for the January premier. I think it premiers right after the super bowl in which the 49ers will not be playing.

1:59 – “Bold Moves – They Happen Every Day,” this is the Ford commercial where this divorced dad gets to spend a weekend with the kids and his ex. Seth Stevens with Slate wrote about it and felt the same way as me – It’s just weird. Bold, yes. But weird as well. Plus, what the hell is so bold about their vehicles? Last I checked, thousands of people were losing their jobs and asked to consider buying out their pensions because Ford couldn’t come up with something Bold like the Chrysler 300.

Review of advert on CNBC

2:09 – Our first commercials for the Fox Sunday night lineup. How the hell does Michael Rappaport still have a show on tv, but Arrested Development gets canceled?

2:11 – New Microsoft commercial where the guy walks on to flight and to the boardroom with nothing but a PDA powered with a power point presentation. Not bad. Simple, gets the point across, and doesn’t cloud the message with too much content.

2:17 – Reggie Bush competes against a Diet Pepsi machine for playing time. Cute. Some creative director out there will be looking for a new job soon.

2:19 – 49ers down 21 – 3. At least I have Brian Westbrook on my fantasy team. (Fantasy rant coming soon)

2:37 – Showing the power of youtube – Fox leads the next game segment with the song from the treadmill music video. Wow. Nobody knew about these guy 2 months ago.

3:00 – I went and bought beer and coffee. I need all the assistance I can get to power through the second half. All I need now is a couple Head On commercials and some nice catches by Antonio Bryant. Don’t call it a comeback.

3:06 – They’ve been showing some B2B UPS commercials during the game. I’ve always wondered how successful B2B commercials are during casual / recreational TV viewing. I could be considered someone who makes decisions about what vendor to use during my day job, but I can’t say that I think about those things while watching football on a Sunday. It must work though, or they wouldn’t be doing it.

3:10 – If I saw Alex Smith, Frank Gore, or most NFL players on the street today, I wouldn’t know who they were. But, If I saw Donovan McNabb, Peyton Manning, Michael Strahan, Brian Urlacher, or Tiki Barber, I would recognize them right away. Why? Because they have endorsement deals. Think about it. Football players are the most anonymous pro athletes we all know. Their faces are always covered and furthermore, players are actually fined if they remove their helmets in certain situations on the field. I definitely understand why players pursue endorsement deals, especially considering their relatively short playing careers. http://www.forbes.com/2003/01/24/cx_dd_0124players.html

3:25 – There was just an AT&T add featuring “Kara.” She asks us how certain improvements to communication would help us. Bold, yellow fonts highlight what she is saying. Then at the end they show a production line with white and pink boxes. Up until the end of the commercial, we don’t know what brand she represents. If I were to think of a brand using yellow fonts, I’d thing of Sprint Nextel. But then again, the pink and white boxes remind me of T-Mobile. Nothing about this advertisement makes me think about AT&T until the logo shows at the end.

3:55 – I have been pleasantly surprised at the relative lack of commercials in this game.

3:56 – My favorite ad campaign of the football season – Briscoe High Football by Nike. The first commercial with 2-a-days was great. I especially like how they are driving a late model import sedan with “upgraded” rims. Classic. The whole campaign is solid. They get the fine points too – players not listening during class, checking out the hot girls, and then winning under the friday night lights. I like it.

One of the intricacies of this campaign is that it puts NFL players in Nike gear. Under a licensing agreement with the NFL, players are restricted to Reebok gear. Putting them on a high school team however, lets Nike use the pros.

4:09 – Texas Instruments DLP televisions – Freaky commercials with a young girl standing in unique environments with an elephant. The commercials are definitely geared toward selling the HD aspect of the DLP sets. Not sure I get where they are going with this, but it is definitely clear that the commercial was filmed in HD. I watched it on HD and I could notice the individual hairs on the elephant’s back. I wonder if a non-HD viewer sees this and it looks muted and blurry? Maybe that’s the angle here.

All in all, a decent football game. I had expected to see more new and fresh commercials, but there were some solid campaigns nontheless..