Who are these people who spend $2 million for a 30-second Super Bowl commercial? I want to know, and not because I want to slap them over the head for wasting money, either. OK, I want to slap the folks at Godaddy.com and Salesgenie.com, but that’s a different discussion. I want to know how the people at Doritos and Pepsi predicted and represented the Super Bowl so accurately in their commercials. Then, I would like to ask the people at Planters if their commercial is clinically proven, because that might explain a lot about an eighth grade infatuation.
In case you missed the Super Bowl commercials and have no time to check out the online versions, the Doritos commercial features a man putting a nacho cheese Dorito on a mousetrap. The man then places the trap by a mouse hole and patiently waits on a chair with his big bag of Doritos. As the guy prepares to stuff nearly 15 Doritos in his mouth, a giant mouse — which could be more accurately described as a man in a mouse suit — bursts through the wall and tackles the Dorito-toting guy. This was eerily similar to the way Michael Strahan, Justin Tuck, Osi Umenyiora and especially Jay Alford busted through the Patriots’ offensive wall.
As good at fortune telling as the folks at Doritos were, they’ll never match the abilities of the people at Pepsi.
First, Pepsi spiced up the nod-fest that was the first half of the Super Bowl with a commercial about…(gasp) people nodding off. Not only was this the funniest and most memorable commercial of the night — you can’t go wrong with a cameo cast poking fun at “Night at the Roxbury” — it was the perfect microcosm of the game itself. The game started with people nodding off at the Giants’ nine-minute drive. That trend continued three quarters into the Super Bowl, then the fourth quarter rolled around — everybody presumably drank a Diet Pepsi Max during the commercial break — and then everything came together for one of the most exciting finishes in Super Bowl history. To top it off, Bill Belichick duplicated the way Mr. “Night at the Roxbury,” Chris Kattan, pouted at the end commercial by refusing to stay on the sideline for the last play of the game. (Seriously, the commercials could not have reflected the game any better.)
For an added bonus, Pepsi accurately substituted Justin Timberlake for Belichick, Tom Brady and Co. Then, it correctly predicted how the Patriots — through Timberlake — would have their pretty-boy perfect record dragged across the street, up a building, into a lake, across a soccer field and into a mailbox where their testicles would be subsequently slammed against the mailbox that stood as a perfect metaphor for Eli Manning and the New York Giants.
Therein lies the best part of the Super Bowl.
Three commercials summed up how a coach with the personality of single-ply toilet paper, a pretty-boy overachiever and a group of overconfident athletes were beaten by the ugliest — but most effective — Cinderella in the NFL this season.
