The Super Bowl is the biggest day of the year for two things: football and advertising. That’s why Pavone created SpotBowl.com, which I’d like to invite everyone to visit if you’re looking for a worthy distraction before, during or after the big game (kickoff is Sunday at 6:28 p.m.).

Many of you are probably already familiar with our annual ode to the ads. Now in its seventh year, SpotBowl is an advertising poll that lets America sound off about what they really thought of the game’s ads. Last year, as it has in many of the past years, SpotBowl registered more than 100,000 votes from fans in all 50 states and several countries around the world.

At its core, SpotBowl is a public survey – polls open as soon as the game starts and remain open until Monday at 3 p.m. – but it’s grown into much more than that. For instance, this year, Pavone has optimized the site to allow mobile voting for the first time ever (I’m pretty sure it’s the first ad poll of any kind to do so). That means Super Bowl viewers can watch the ads and register their votes from their iPhones, Blackberrys and other web-browsing devices from wherever they may be on Super Bowl Sunday.

We’ve also upped the pre-game draw by adding a section of the site that helps fans plan the ultimate commercial-watching party, complete with recipes provided by some of the best food and beverage brands in the nation.

So I invite you to check it out and let me know what you think. I also invite you to vote as often as you’d like. And don’t be afraid to be blunt in your assessment of the ads that fumbled. For $2.8 million per 30-second airing, they deserve nothing but our brutally honest opinions.

May the best ad win! (And it might just be the one below.)

Okay, I know a Super Bowl themed edition of “Ads I love and hate” is a little overdue, but it’s taken me three weeks just to recover from what feels like getting hit in the groin on a Japanese game show because of the awfulness of some of this year’s ads. That’s not to say that they were all bad though. In fact, for the most part, I’d say they were well done.

There were some funny spots out there. However, as someone that works in advertising I get insulted by everyone thinking funny automatically means its good. It’s not that I don’t enjoy dudes taking snow globes to their, um, snow globes and the senseless beating of Koala bears, but just because it makes you laugh doesn’t mean it’s right for the brand.

ADS I LOVED

Miller High Life – “One second ad”

Outstanding.  Those of us in the advertising industry will tell you that the one second spot is just like trying to tell a joke in a crowded conference room.  Few people have the stones to do it, and If you go through with it…it better good. Miller succeeded with this one. They started a buzz with a full 30 second spot and backed it up perfectly on their website. As far as I am concerned this is a case study in how a one second spot can be successful. Even the most internet ignorant people I know heard about this campaign and were looking out for it on the night of the big game.  With Superbowl spots costing $3 million (or up to three Illinois senate seats), that easily makes this $100,000 spend the best Superbowl ROI of 2009.

ADS I HATED

Pepsi – “Pepsuber”

Oh I get it, because Saturday Night Live came out with a moderately funny skit mocking MacGyver, you think it’s fiscally responsible to dump $3 million into riding their coat tails?  That’s a real win. In the wake of spending $1.2 billion overhauling the Pepsi brand, you feel it is in your best interest to hit the market with something unoriginal? I really hope this embarrassment doesn’t get blamed on their creative agency, because at one point a bunch of overpaid executives sat around a conference room and approved this one minute waste of time. And way to go on showcasing that brand new logo you paid so much money for. If you had planned on taking the “intentionally making a commercial that sucks” route, you should have at least made sure your multi-million dollar logo was visible.

Thanks for listening, and if you want to check out all the spots and America’s opinion of them, stop by our Spotbowl website.

The Super Bowl is less than four weeks away, which is pretty exciting because the Super Bowl is like the Super Bowl of advertising. Did you know that 50 percent of the nearly 100 million Americans who watch the game tune in just for the ads? It’s true. That’s why, for the past six years, Pavone has created SpotBowl, a website that lets ad fans throughout the world view the commercials and vote for their favorites. It was either that, or convince one of our clients to shell out $3 million for a 30-second ad in the big game.

SpotBowl is no small feat either, and we’re pretty damn proud of it. Last year our spokespersons did more than 150 radio interviews from Houston to LA to Chicago to New York to Seattle to Hawaii to Miami to…you get the idea. All those interviews helped SpotBowl net votes from all 50 states and dozens of countries worldwide. And when the media talks about the ads after the game, the results of SpotBowl are mentioned in same breath as USA Today’s fancy Ad Meter (which is really only a small focus group).

In the week’s before the game, we work pretty hard to track down the latest news and inside info on the ad line-up and you can check out that line-up on the SpotBowl website. I won’t rehash all the highlights here on the Think It So blog (that’s what the SpotBlog is for), but I will say that it’s shaping up to be an interesting year.

Feel free to check out the site. Voting starts as soon as the first commercial airs and doesn’t end until noon on Tuesday which means you can watch the commercials and sneak a few extra votes in at work. Don’t worry, the boss is probably doing the same thing.

For your viewing pleasure, below are the winners of the last five SpotBowl competitions.

SpotBowl I (2004) – Anheuser-Busch (“Donkey Dream”)

SpotBowl II (2005) – Anheuser-Busch (“Troops Applause”)

SpotBowl III (2006) – Fed-Ex (“Caveman”)

SpotBowl IV (2007) – Blockbuster (“Mouse”)

SpotBowl V (2008) – Bridgestone-Firestone (“Scream”) 

As someone who never has had a problem voicing my opinion, I have happily volunteered my services to our blog by sharing some TV spots with you all that I love and, more importantly, ones that I hate. In the spirit of Matthew Berry’s fantasy football forum, I plan to post what I think are the best and worst spots I’ve seen lately. I would encourage our readers to provide us with your opinions on these ads. Just be prepared if that opinion differs from my own.

ADS I LOVE Nike Leave Nothing

Wow. It isn’t very often that a commercial literally sends chills down your spine. The Nike brand strives to position their products as turning you into a badass and they have done nothing short of that in this spot. Good call on the music too. I love it. I saw this for the first time while watching the games with my friends. Even that group of lazy has-beens, who have strapped on nothing but a beer cozie for the last decade, wanted to grab a helmet and hit someone.

ADS I HATE Toyota Saaaaved by Zeeeero

This is a popular pick for awfulness, but my hatred for it runs so deep I had to go with it. I’ll bet 95% of you didn’t even click on the link, and those of you who did got a glare from every co-worker within earshot. I would rather listen to Johnny Cougar Melloncamp try to sell Chevy trucks for a third straight year, than suffer through this pathetic jingle one more time (a sample of an equally awful song by The Fixx). I mean, seriously, there’s an entire Facebook page devoted to getting this earsore out of our lives.

You don’t even have to work in the industry to hate the person who created this catastrophe, and even more so the person who thought it would be a good idea to run it three times in each commercial break on every major network. I would rather buy a Daewoo than give Toyota more money for spots like this one. It’s actually embarrassing that our government has to bail out our domestic car companies when this is what they are competing against.

I still remember asking the question of my mentor, Mr. Vance Von Keisterburn. The Obi Wan to my Jar Jar Binks. The year was 1967 and I had just landed my first copywriting job at a small ad firm outside the Holland Tunnel.

Vance chuckled, puffing smoke from one nostril as he lit his next Tareyton from the redhot filter of the last. (Scroll down the page on that Tareyton link to see how to leverage babies to move the tobacco sales needle.)

“Boy,” he said. He always called me that. “Boy” he said, “Get off the London Fog.” I leapt to my feet and shook a few wrinkles out of his musty trench coat.

Then, through a cloud of cigarette smoke and a cheekful of liverwurst sandwich, this veteran of advertising’s golden age began the morning lesson.

To be honest, I can’t recall most of what he said (we were both drinking at the time). However, I’ve retained a few of his surefire techniques to guarantee at least a good TV spot. (And, let’s be honest, creating a great TV spot calls for more time, money and market insight than most folks are willing to part with.)

So here are some components guaranteed to steer your TV spots into the smooth, speedy express lane to goodness.

A jingle.

* NB: A jingle is the advertising equivalent of a fun date who gets a little bit too into the relationship and IMs you every 10 minutes, calls several times a night, and finally camps out in your driveway. Unforgettable, but quickly tiresome. The difference is, you can’t call the cops on a jingle.

A jingle, take two.

Maybe trumpets are the secret to good advertising. I seem to remember Vance saying that. Or was it?

Beer.
See previous spot.

A jingle and beer.
Ditto previous.

People in costumes.

A jingle with people in costumes.

A celebrity. (Mickey Rooney, if possible.) And beer. And costumes.

Mickey Rooney, beer, and a guy in a beer costume.

That’s enough goodness for now. Tune in next time for Vance’s guide to celebrities to use when Mickey Rooney’s not available. Til then, keep your trumpets polished.