Electronic Arts, 'Dante's Inferno'
Wieden & Kennedy, Portland, Ore.
Gamers like action, detail, fantasy, swords and babes. To the rest
of us, all those countless pixels just represent an inner circle of
hell. Turns out, we're
all correct. An amazing trailer.
No pop-culture icon is too dated for the Super Bowl. This year gave
us Abe Vigoda, Kiss and, here, Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo as
the Griswolds -- from the "Vacation" comedies of the '80s. The
pitch: If you don't want their luck, skip the crappy motel and rent
somebody's house. It scans.
Honda
RPA, Santa Monica, Calif.
The new Honda Crosstour crossover is multifaceted, in its function
and its sheet metal. It also has a lot of storage space, hence the
metaphor of a squirrel stuffing objects into a tree trunk. The
visual gimmick, though, is striking animation that cuts facets into
each object as if it were a gemstone. Way cool.
Innocean Worldwide Americas, Irvine, Calif.
What will happen when your new Hyundai's warranty runs out in 10
years? Brett Favre, at age 50, will be MVP. Nicely done.
Monster.com
Everybody will love the cute fiddling beaver, but, once again, a
Monster spot from
BBDO is simply
confusing. Yeah, the furry violinist applies for jobs online, but
why is he next busking in the subway before playing Carnegie Hall?
It doesn't even make sense, much less illustrate the new search
algorithm.
Motorola
Anomaly, New York
Holy, hell ... a teen-masturbation joke on the Super Bowl! And it's
funny. Even sweet (even with the Union Jack on the door. Hmm.)
Megan Fox sends out a bubble-bath self-portrait and damn near
brings the country to a halt. Yo, you idiots at GoDaddy,
this is how you do a sexy, witty ad. Unfortunately, Fox
doesn't quite properly enunciate "Motoblur" -- whatever that is --
so we don't know what makes Moto other than a commodity smartphone.
NFL
Grey, New York
Us, big fans of NFL football, but not of the NFL, an organization
so authoritarian it makes
Comcast look like a
hippie commune. But we gotta hand it to them; this super-ultra
slo-mo superbly captures the astonishing virtuosity of the players,
the drama of the game and the emotion of the fan experience.
Teleflora
Redemption! After last year ruining a perfectly reasonable USP (you
never known what a wilted mess boxed flowers will be) with cruel
ridicule of homely women, the same folks found a creative solution
that sharpens the pitch and lets Plain Jane triumph over her smug
colleague.
Vizio
Venables, Bell & Partners, San Francisco
An HD TV formatted for web content is dramatized by some industrial
robot plucking stuff from the web culture: the "Numa Numa" song,
the kid drugged from his dental visit ("Is this real life?"),
Twitter, Flickr and other precious e-sources. Unnecessarily
bombastic, but point taken.
Volkswagen
Ah, the mysterious "punch buggy" phenomenon (here called
"punchdub"), liberally applied beyond Beetle sightings to cover all
13 VW models, and here with
adults socking one another in
the shoulder. Quite adorable -- even the cheap Stevie Wonder
kicker.