Our consultant, Ralph Cipolla, is still frustrated that his beloved Buffalo Bills still haven't won the big one. Undaunted, here are some of his observations from Super Bowl XLIV:
Here are some reflections of the big game from my couch:
- We saw The Saints win their first NFL championship in their history, a franchise that was formed a week after the first Super Bowl was played. The Saints went 10 years before posting a .500 season, and saw 20 years pass before realizing a winning season.
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We saw a victory that vindicated the loyalty of their long-suffering fans, and another layer of healing balm settle upon on a great city, that lest we forget, has endured insufferable trials.
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We saw 65 year-old Roger Daltrey and 64 year-old bandmate Pete Townshend belt out a 12-minute medley of Who classics. In 1970, when the NFL and rival league AFL merged to form the NFL as we now know it, both rockers were 25, contemporaries of many of the guys on the field.
- We also saw another crop of SuperBowl ads, each 30-second avail costing between $2.5 and $3 million, lower than NBC's 2009 rates of $3 million per, when adjusted for inflation.
There were several different Budweiser ads, the perennial FCC-taunting Go Daddy ads, and several others of far less than "epic" production quality.
And then there was this :60 ad, which stood in stark contrast to the others. No famous actors, no rap stars, no Hollywood director, no Avatar-rivaling computer-generated graphics.
Google's first foray into Super Bowl advertising, was most-likely the least-expensive and conceptually simplest and least expensive of the lot. To my eye, it was also the most engaging, did the best job of actually demonstrating the product, and was most worthy of an on-line after-the-game replay.
It also screamed, in a subtle and seductive manner - "new media." If you've ever tried to explain what "search" is all about, Google nailed it in one minute.
Watch the Google Super Bowl ad here, and see if you agree.
<CLICK HERE TO WATCH GOOGLE SUPER BOWL AD>
And because parody is truly flattery, here's another version of it that showed up a few hours after the game:
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