General

Soon, Every Super Bowl Commercial will Be a Retread

Jan 15, 2010, 5:30 PM UTC

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â†µLast year, Coke remade its iconic Mean Joe Greene jersey tossing commercial with Troy Polamalu in the starring role. This year, LeBron James and Dwight Howard are teaming up to recreate the classic McDonald’s ad with Michael Jordan and Larry Bird calling elaborate shot after elaborate shot.â†µâ†µNow members of the ‘85 Bears are getting together to recreate the Super Bowl Shuffle in an ad for Boost Mobile. Granted, the Super Bowl Shuffle wasn’t originally an advertisement, and it’s not like it’s one of our nation’s cultural treasures, but for how vaunted the Super Bowl commercials are, you would think more of the companies shelling out millions for their ad time would shoot for something original and lasting.â†µ

â†µâ†µThose who work in marketing bemoan Super Bowl ads as the most overly tinkered with by executives, who desire to include as many elements they think will help move product as possible. The result is a jumbled mess of what might have been a simple effective idea. â†µ

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â†µRemakes are safe. They involve associations people already have. With so much money on the line, one could understand why corporations might want to go that route. Moreover, our entertainment culture already overruns with recycled ideas. Why should marketing be any different?â†µ

â†µâ†µBut while the remake guarantees sites like this one write about it and people pay attention to the ad when it airs, it comes at the price of possibly creating something that resonates with viewers.â†µ

â†µâ†µWhich is really the whole point of making ads in the first place.â†µ

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This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.

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