SCOTT JACOBS

Once upon a time a cute little kid (now probably in his late 30’s) handed Mean Joe Greene a Coke, and the infamous tough guy returned the favor by throwing his jersey to the kid.  “Hey kid, catch!”  Okay, so I wasn’t actually alive then, but I’ve seen the ad (as have you most likely) many, many times.  It’s considered one of the greatest ads in Super Bowl history.  Not to mention one of the most memorable.

Well, could you imagine if after the kid got the jersey, he peered into the lens of the camera and stated aloud, “see more at coke.com/meanjoe.”  Now before you go hustling over to that website which is fictional and does not exist, I want you to think about how much advetising has changed and how the internet has turned the world of advertising on its head.  I’m not exactly re-inventing the wheel telling you this, but it dawned on me yesterday during the Super Bowl, that ads have gone from 30 second masterpieces handcrafted to maximize every ounce of their multi mullion dollar time slot, to teasers with more to see on their websites.

I’m not quite sure where this trend emerged.  You may recall Reebok’s very popular Terry Tate ads, which told viewers that if they wanted to see more, they could, at reebok.com/terrytate.  That’s the first company I really recall doing that.

Of course yesterday, advertisers for the Super Bowl showed the direction that advertisements are really going in– the internet.  No longer is 30 seconds enough to get our attention and get out of the way.  Everything has to be extended, uncensored, unrated, out of control, or just simply continued.  When Apple rolled out their epically bizarre 1984 commercial many years ago, could you have imagined if it said, “see if the world ends at apple.com.”

Yeah, me neither.

I carefully went back and looked at all of the big Super Bowl ads from yesterday.  True to their nature Coke unveiled another brilliant masterpiece of color and sound with the familiar Coke bottle using Simpsons characters this time to carry out their message that all your problems can be solved by Coke.  Actually I think the real message was closer along the lines of ‘do something nice for someone who’s down and you have no idea how much that will brighten their day.’  But, Coke being Coke, chooses to instead portray Coke as saving the world.  You had your typical crazy beer commercials from a house made of beer (brilliant) to the world going to end because of a meteor (hysterical) all the way to your typical crazy Doritos commercials with dogs controlling man (funny) and man faking his own death to be buried in a casket with Doritos and tv (disturbing).  Those are the type of ads we come to expect from these companies on Super Sunday for years.

Where the game of advertising has changed is with companies like GoDaddy.com and new faces like HomeAway and For the Family, offering trailer like clips of their commercial on TV, before giving you the chance to watch the entire thing on their website.  GoDaddy.com has been doing raunchy, some might say offensive ads for years.  But as my colleague Mitch pointed out, people remember their name because of it, and isn’t that the point of advertising?

The internet has given us not only the opportunity to basically immortalize our favorite ads, but it has also given companies a chance to latch onto their target audience and drag them deeper into what they want to sell.

But GoDaddy.com is old news, despite their creative approaches to making fun of pop culture.  HomeAway is brand new.  Well, not brand new, but I’d never heard of it until yesterday.  They took a really intriguing new approach to advertising.  A trailer to a short film, which in essence makes a brilliant case for why you should stay in a rented house over a hotel.

The commercial which ran for about 30 seconds saw Chevy Chase and Beverly DeAngelo reprise their roles as the Griswolds in a short film called  Hotel Hell Vacation.  The film was nearly 14 minutes long.  You would never have seen anything like this some 15-20 years ago.  Commercials then were quick, many forgotten, and the few that stuck out were shown a few more times and then put away in the annals of history.

But in the rat race that is today’s advertising world, companies have come up with new and creative ways to get people to become interested in their product.  Some work, others flop.  But the internet has given us not only the opportunity to basically immortalize our favorite ads, but it has also given companies a chance to latch onto their target audience and drag them deeper into what they want to sell.

The short film, which I expected to be dumb and relatively short, was hysterical and well thought out.  Had it not been for a company, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see it on TV as just a regular made for TV program.  I went to the website Focus on the Family after Tim Tebow’s somewhat controversial ad about abortion ran.  There they had a good 10 minute plus video sit down interview with Tim’s parents, who came clean about the entire story.  While the commercial touched the surface of Tebow’s story, the video on their website unveiled all of it.

While the story was wrapped all around religious overtones, the details were pretty amazing.  Tebow’s mother, despite already having four kids, was willing to risk her life to give berth to Tim.  Pro-life or Pro-choice, it’s an incredible story.

The point here is this.  Advertisers have a platform unlike ever before to sell their products and brand their name.  In fact, the future is a little scary.  Vizio’s ad which featured Beyonce announced to the world that they now have applications for your television.  Instead of going online to see the message, you can now apparently just use your TV through the internet?

While the Hyundai ad with Brett Favre’s waffling was a slam dunk, the message of the commercial was even more interesting: Just what will the world be like in 10 years?  If the evolution of ads are any indication, I don’t even know where to begin.

But isn’t it ironic that while some companies use this new platform to market their product, some old tried and true companies simply choose to re-make ads that were once upon a time, so simple, so innovative, and had no ‘to be continued.’  Coke Zero did it last year with Troy Polamulu taking over for Mean Joe Greene and this past Super Bowl, McDonalds remade their famous Larry Bird-Michael Jordan horse commercial from many, many years ago.  Only this one featured Dwight Howard and LeBron James.  At the end, an older, much different looking Bird looks out at the two stars, while holding his McDonalds bag, and simply quips, “Great show guys!  And thanks for lunch.”

“Who’s that guy?” says Dwight.  “I have no idea,” says Lebron.

That’s where advertising is heading.  Ten years from now what will advertising be like?  I have no idea either.

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