Tag Archives: best

Top 10 Best Superbowl Ads (and 3 worst)

Best & Worst Superbowl Ads of 2009

 

What were the best Superbowl commercials that will help you survive the watercooler this week? Check out Charlie and I as we do a video review on YouTube of the best (and worst), (see it on Google video too) and click here to view the entire ads on various online-video sites.

Note that this post and video were done before the game actually finished, so we may see some unexpected surprises and need to revise accordingly. What do you think? Have some favorites I didn’t mention, or some losers of your own?



 

Here’s a Hulu widget that lets you watch the Superbowl ads in HD…

 

Now here’s my top-10 list (you can also see Adweek for some coverage).

  • Number 10 was Coke”s avatar ad–  visually appealing and sentimental. 
  • Number 9 may be the most quoted ad: “Think With Your Dipstick Jimmy” by Castrol. Annoying at first, but it grows on you like fine wine or oil sludge.
  • For spot 8… I don’t often like repeat campaigns but that eTrade baby did it again with talking babies. 
  • Position 7 belongs to Dreamworks animated film “Monsters Verus Aliens” and the clips rocked even in 2D.
  •  Number 6 belongs to CareerBuilder for reminding us that these symptoms may indicate it’s time to brush up the resume. 
  • Number 5 goes to Denny’s who flip off iHop’s foo-foo pancakes. We need more Giggledrops, baby.
  •  The fourth best ad belongs to Coke with its medley of animated insects. Ladybugs, like cows, sell.
  • The hotly debated number 3 ad is Pepsi’s Refresh mosh up of Forever Young featuring Bob Dillon and Will.i.am
  • The second greatest Superbowl ad this year goes to Pedigree Dogfood video, which features no dogs but will be the most talked about. Rhinos in cars? Common, peeps. If you didn’t laugh at that ad, check you funny pulse.Now for number 1: Miller Light’s “Deliver Guy” ad by Saatchi & Saatchi  is the indesputable winner of pre and post game buzz. Windell Middlebrooks spent 17 hours taping these 1-second spots, and it worked.
Now the losers?
  • Spot 3 is the absurdly forced Gatorade ad featuring a collection of athletes and animated lizards. Puleez- 1996. 
  • The second loser award goes to GoDaddy.com for still pitching hosting solutions with hot babes.  That campaign is beaten to death, and is almost as bad as Peta’s banned veggie campaign. The absolute worst ad belongs to the biggest sellout since me. Ed McMahon’s Cash4Gold.comlong after we care.
  • I know many liked this “amateur” Doritos advertisement, but I was almost tempted to put it in the worst category. What? I’m not a sore loser or anything. Right Reubnick? Okay- here’s my losing entry to Doritos “Crash the Superbowl” contest.
Finally, some cool quotes to give you extra credit at the watercooler. Use them as your own if you wish…
  1. Gawker’s Joshua Stein: “A girl shoving a stalk of broccoli up her cooter doesn’t make me want to stop eating meat even a little.” 
  2. Although the economy meant fewer startup ads, Techcrunch Michael Arrington’s favorite is Technorati, although they cheated by using footage from one of my favorite movies. His readers were polled and agree. 
  3. “It’s sure not 2008 any more,” said Nathan McKelvey, the CEO of Jets.com. Poor executives…

Now what do you think?! And here is YouTube’s “AdBlitz” channel that now features all of the ads…

Youtube AdBlitz Superbowl Videos
See 2009 Superbowl Commercials on YouTube

 


Watch Superbowl Ads Online on 7 Video Sites

Why watch the game, when you can catch all of the advertisements on these online-video sites? And hey- most of these ads don’t have any prerolls. That goodness Madison Avenue and the online-video sites are finally cooperating. 

YouTube Live Hangover

YouTube Live Photos by WifeofnaltsI probably had about 4 drinks at YouTube Live (a concert, party and gathering in San Francisco on November 22, 2008). But I’m hungover the same way I was after visiting LA to shoot HBO Lab’s “Hooking Up” and “The Retarded Policeman.”

Here are a few of the photos wifeofnalts took while I was busy gathering video footage. We also summed up our favorite moments in the video below. Jo (wifeofnalts) was rather smitten for Bo Burnham and Chad Hurley (YouTube’s founder). 

San Francisco was unbelievable. It was the first flight my wife and I have taken alone in a decade (before we had our four children). We visited my sister in NAPA, and she joined us at the event to cover it for ABC’s Good Morning America. 

It was great to see YouTube friends, and watch the performances. Now back to the day job! Thanks, Jan, for  the reminder that I’ve neglected our sweet lil’ WVFF tribe. Met fellow tribemate Peter Coffin, who I had the pleasure of hanging with, until they drove us into separate seating areas like cattle. 🙂

 

Wonder Why How-To Videos Boom Despite Economy?

how-to video siteWhen PR Pro Laura Hart (Beck Media & Marketing) contacted me in early August about how-to video site “Wonder How To,” she suggested a WVFF blog post on top video sites, and told me her client’s website had 145,000 videos. I was impressed with her pitch (she had bothered to read the blog), and promised to write about the category again and WonderHowTo. When I preditably forgot, and she reminded me gently a month later — only she had to update her stats. The site now has more than 200,000 videos.

It’s no surprise that how-to websites are booming and video makers are creating more instructional (do it yourself- DIY) videos. In a tough economy, we’ll be outsourcing less and relying on our own lack of competency. Just as we’ve grown accustomed to Googling answers, we’re now surfing video to learn new tricks, software tools, and hobbies. Or maybe we just want to learn how to smash a bottom of a beer bottle.

Most importantly, DIY is mostly evergreen content. Years from now we’ll still want to build a hover board from scratch (see “hot” section for more like it). There are a number of how-to sites, and much of WonderHowTo’s content is right from YouTube or Metacafe. But it’s well indexed around an important application for video, and it’s frankly hard to find DIY video via YouTube and even Google.

Other how-to websites include HowCast, Graspr and Life 123 and 5 minutes. I haven’t reviewed them all because I haven’t decided to plunge into the maybe-more-profitable-but-less-exciting DIY space. But if I were to start these, here’s what I’d do:

  1. Hedge your bets, and post everywhere. Use TubeMogul and be sure to market your content via sites (like WonderHowTo) that may not require you to host it there, but would list your video.
  2. Keep it short. Nobody has ever said “that instructional video went too quickly.” Chapter it if necessary, and provide places for people to pause.
  3. For the love of God keep it simple. No expensive production necessary.
  4. Focus on topics that are unique- the space is already crowded with obvious things like home repairs and software… find something in which you’re uniquely qualified to teach.
  5. Want to really set yourself apart? Entertain! It has worked for most popular chefs.
  6. Don’t stop by posting on these sites. Find blogs around your topic area and let them know the videos exist. Preferably lead them to sites that share revenue.
  7. Sell yourself. Have a simple website that credentializes you as an expert- and even better have a book even if it’s a self-published short one.

P.S. Here’s a recently featured how-to video: How to get into any pub by pretending you’re a disk jockey.

How Much is that Viral Video in the Window?

(This is a guest column by Erik Bratt, director of marketing communications for ProQuo. ProQuo helps consumers eliminate junk mail, and recently hired xlntads.com.

(a new-media promotion firm with whom I work occasionally) to solicit quality video entries that help ProQuo describe its value proposition in unique and entertaining ways.

Can you really buy a viral video?

by Erik Bratt, ProQuot
Conventional wisdom says no. By its very definition, a viral video is something that can’t be bought or made, forced or manipulated. A viral video – a viral anything – just ‘happens,’ striking some type of cultural nerve that prompts people to send it around.

Levi’s ad, levi ads doing model flips featuring male models doing back-flips (literally) into their jeans. The video, which racked nearly 4 million views on YouTube alone last time I checked, never mentions Levi by name, but it wasn’t hard to guess the driving force (Male models? Jeans?). I offer a more modest case in point: Our own video contest. Eager to spread the word about our service for stopping junk mail and managing catalogs (plug: www.proquo.com), we decided to launch a viral video contest earlier this spring in hopes of creating momentum for our free offering.

To get this done, we partnered with XLNTAds.com, a Philadelphia-based company that facilitates a community of 5,000 eager and talented semi-professional videographers. This was our first good decision. XLNTAds.com knows how to run a contest, and their members are fired up about creating great content. We were also fortune to have great subject matter – who can’t work with junk mail as topic? The contest rules were simple: keep it clean, make it funny, and focus on junk mail, not ProQuo. Because we are not as big of a brand as Levi, we also asked that they at least include our URL somewhere in their video.

The carrot? $1,500 for each of the top 10 videos. The contest “assignment” was posted on April 1. One month later we had more than 160 entries. Deciding on the top 10 videos was not easy, requiring several viewing sessions and at least one company viewing party (with blind voting). We finally picked our 10 winners and created a special page for visitors to interact with them: www.proquo.com/videocontest.

So, we had our funny videos, but what about the viral part? Instead of scrambling to post these videos ourselves, or buying space on different networks, we worked with XLNTAds.com to provide incentives to the winning creators to ‘viral-ize’ the videos on their own. We offered a tiered award structure for the creators who had the most number of views across multiple video platforms.

For the money, this was our second good decision.

We’ve been pleasantly surprised at the number of places our videos have popped up – on dozens of different video platforms, in blogs, and on web sites. At last count, we had more than 160K views on just those 10 videos (many of the runner-ups also got posted). We never could have achieved that many views on our own without paying for placements

So did we succeed in creating or buying a viral video? Not really.

We didn’t get on the front of YouTube (which requires at least 50K views) or any other video platform. We didn’t pop up in tens of thousands of emails within the span of few days saying, ‘dude, check this video out!”

What we did accomplish was to generate a large number of video views, as well as traffic and registrations to our site (made trackable from URLs placed high up in some of the video descriptions). We also provided entertaining content for our site visitors and registered users, whom we encouraged to help rate the videos

Another bonus was our engagement with the videographers themselves. We were touched by the effort that so many people and their friends put into the videos. In the end, that type of engagement and goodwill may be worth more than any viral video.

Editorial note (back to Nalts): This is a good case study, and shows a few key points: 

  • ProQuo could have tried doing this itself, but it would have been far more expensive and out of its core competency.
  • The value to ProQuo is being assessed comprehensively- as opposed to the views and clicks.
  • By leveraging xlntads creators with built audiences, Proquo had a way to reach far more potential consumers than they could have ever reached on its own.
  • Finally- with time, someone searching Proquo will find these creative executions instead of a video blog by someone who wasn’t keen on the offering. So for search engines alone, it might be justified.

Thanks, Erik, for sharing your story!

Special WVFF Forum for Cheese Videos!

It was too hard to surf the comment threads of old WVFF posts regarding such an important topic as the Cheese Videos, so we at WillVideoForFood.com have created a special forum thread.

Visit the Official Will Video For Food Cheese Forum Thread now, and vote on the creator(s) who most assaulted the dignity of cheese.

If you haven’t posted a cheese video yet, it’s never too late. Just be sure to tag it with the following words:

naked cheese video american zardoz short film airplane pizzle sore feltch

Also, it’s important to add the word “VIDEO” to your title. That way it will rank high when people search Google for “CHEESE VIDEO(s).”

Hey- thanks to the Revver Editors for featuring Naked Cheese! I respect your taste.

Revver recognizes brilliance of Naked Cheese by Nalts

Vital links:

SP.

Will Online Video Change News and Politics? Gravel Knows.

It will take a while for online-video to substentially chang news and polotics, but we’re already well on our way. Have you cheked out the “highest ratid” and “most viewed” sections of YouTube.com? Its bloated with debates about polotecs, and it’s only going to grow between now and Novembre.

Mike Gravel, the former Senator of Aleska, sat with me (see video) to discuss his new book titled, “The Kingmakers: How the Media Threatens Our Security and Our Democracy.” In this episode of the Bubble Gum Tree Show (a “weekly” series I’ve let languish) we have some fun with Gravel, but gain some of his intresting persepctive on social media, politics and the news.

Mind you, I’m all about Saving Old Media. But I do think that Gravel is a nice exemple of how a politician has “rolled with” social media. Who had heard of Gravel beforeThe Rock“? (Parinthetically, here’s a funny “outtakes” parody by Current, and here’s my “The Rock” parody with ChristopherMast).

Barack Obama has been a benificiary of social media (Obama Girl) without trying, and he has expanentially more YouTube videos tagged with his name than Mike Gravel. But more impresive is Mike “The Little Engine that Could” Gravel — with his tenasious approach and his unpresedented ability to surender to video creators and their creative ideas on having fun with him (and almost never at his expense). I’m quite sure Gravel would have worn a chicken suit and fart machine in this video if I had asked. And yes I regret that I didn’t. Next time.
Check out Gravel’s YouTube Channel for some more serious and comedic examples. Gravel appeared in this histerical song with Obama Girl, and that got mainstream pickup on CNN and beyond.

Here are some additional Gravel examples of how he provides video creators complete freedom in there concepts. It seems like a risky aproach, but I haven’t seen it backfire. And its given him access to importint demografics at virtualy no cost. Many believe that Gravel created The Rock, but in fact it was just one of many examples of where he rolled with a video creator’s wierd and bazar vision, and celebrated the lack of control he’d have on how he apeared.

  1. Give Piece a Chance
  2. Runaway Box: Elavater
  3. Red State Christmas Video

Will this win him the election? Probably not. But will Mike Gravel change the way politicians approach new media? Did we ever think politicians would need David Letermann, John Steward and Conan O’Reilly? And could Gravel be doing with online video what Ronald Reagan did with television? I’d say, indisputably, yes.

“Farting in Public” Kid Goes MIA: Campaign to Bring Back Spencer

Spencer is my nephew’s friend who appeared in “Farting in Public” (now almost at 5 million views). We’ve done about 12 mostly public videos together, and here’s a playlist so you can watch them all on YouTube: “Best of Spencer.”

Spencer has a unique ability to suspend social anxiety and do just about anything without cracking up. Meanwhile, I stand behind the shaking camera laughing with tears in my eyes. He reminds me of The Man Show boy.

I’m starting a campaign to bring him back, because I miss him more than my online-video viewers. And he hasn’t returned phone calls lately. Maybe another creator has signed him. Well rest assured I pay better, Spencer! Free food, iTunes cards, gift certificates, Target trips and even a free Hamster that debuted in “Hamster on a Walk” (I hope Beaowulf is still alive).

Here’s my “Best of Spencer” video, appealing to viewers to charm him back in the “comments” section.