TVSquad

(NOTE: The following post talks about my favorite commercials of this past Super Bowl. There are absolutely no spoilers in this post. That is, unless you didn't watch the Super Bowl, recorded it for future viewing, and have decided to ignore every single other media outlet, as well as friends and family so no one tells you who won. If that's the case, don't blame us for your extremely poor time management skills.)

Well, it's all over except for the pack-up, the clean-up and the over-analyzing of the analyzing of the game that was actually played in Tampa. Super Bowl XLIII is now in the history books and so are its commercials. This year featured some returning companies, some new ones, plenty of NBC promos, and a koala puppet being punched in the face. In other words, a bit of everything. Out of all of them, here are some of my favorites.

(NOTE 2: The embedded videos come courtesy of Hulu. If you cannot view these videos I have linked the commercial titles to another site that you should be able to view.)

This was a decent commercial too. We hear opera music from Carmen, and a man in a suit with slicked back hair is using Doritos to set a mouse trap. He sets his trap, and then sits back in a comfy armchair. He is sitting in the chair, listening to the music and he starts stuffing his face with Doritos. Suddenly, the wall contorts as a huge figure starts bursting through the wall and comes at the man. A huge, human-sized mouse (obviously a guy in a mouse suit) tips the chair back to the floor and starts beating Opera Guy for his Doritos.

I admit it. I laughed out loud.

Doritos this year turned their 60-second spot into a competition. The winner, voted on by fans before the game, gets their video aired in the Doritos commercial slot and a record deal with Interscope Records. And the winner is: Kina Grannis (Mission Viego, CA), who performs her song "Messager From Your Heart." She has a Michelle Branch sound to her, but I like her. A very clever idea by Doritos and a huge opportunity for Grannis, but I only worry that people will forget Doritos' connection to the spot.

Heinz ketchup is running a contest where it is asking regular folks to make a Heinz commercial for the chance of winning $57,000. Only, it's not going very well.

According to an article in The New York Times, running the contest takes about as much time and energy as it would just to come up with their own damn ad campaign. So far, Heinz has rejected more than 300 submissions because they're too long, pointless, or gross. You can see many of the horrible submissions on YouTube, including this one of a guy brushing his teeth and shaving with ketchup. Ew.

Heinz has also become the target of angry commenters who accuse the company of being "lazy" and "cheap" for asking people to do advertising for free. I have to admit that I bristled when I saw ads for the contest. Even though it turns out Heinz is still paying a lot for the advertising, I'm still annoyed that it is asking people to essentially create a viral video for them.

How do you feel about companies like Doritos, Heinz and Dodge holding this user-generated advertising contests?

TiVo's released a top 10 list showing the commercials that TiVo owners watched the most during the Super Bowl. The list includes two Doritos commercials that were produced as user-generated videos in a Frito-Lay/Yahoo Video contest, and a Chevrolet Ad produced by 19-year old University of Wisconsin Student Katie Crabb as part of a similar contest.

The complete list is after the jump.

This was a very funny ad, mostly because of the performance of the cashier. "Blazin' Buffalo and Ranch. Giddyup!" The little flirtation between mustache guy, seriously that's some mustache, and the cashier was cute. I liked how she was a little startled by his growl. And the clean up punchline at the end sold it well. Nice job.

I think this will fall short of the massive buzz generated by the Ali Landry "Doritos Girl" commercials, but they gain points for doing something different. A solid entry in the competition.