The Brainzooming Group

I first met Julie Cottineau when she was at Interbrand, and we were working with Interbrand on how to handle our branding after an M&A spree. After Interbrand, Julie was at Virgin as VP of Brand. She recently founded her own brand consultancy, BrandTwist, to help small businesses and entrepreneurs, and she will soon launch Brand School, an online course to teach small business owners everything they need to know to build, grow and monetize a brand.

We’ve tweeted each other, and Julie has participated in the #BZBowl and #SBExp events over the years, so it was wonderful to talk live and see if she’d contribute a guest blog. Not only did she share this guest blog post on “The Top Three Don’ts of Brand Building,” she’s offering a free 5 Minute Brand Thermometer Diagnostic for Brainzooming readers. The 5 Minute Brand Thermometer Diagnostic will help you quickly determine the health of your brand and what areas might need more attention.

The Top Three Don’ts of Brand Building

As a reader of the Brainzooming blog, you know the importance of having a crystal clear brand – even for small or medium sized businesses.

Staking that claim in your clients’ mind, as the go-to resource for the things you do best, makes all the difference in the world when it comes to securing new business. It’s the difference between searching for business, and being sought out.

You know what a good brand looks like. You probably even have some good ideas about how to begin building a brand. What you may not be too good at, however, is recognizing when you’re committing branding no-nos.

Which is why we’ve put together this mini-list of the top three brand don’ts.

1. Don’t put brand building off for later

There will be plenty of opportunities to put off building your brand. It’s always easy to say you don’t have the time, money, or bandwidth to focus on brand. You may also rationalize that you need to focus instead on building your business.

But here’s the thing: Building your brand is fundamental to building your business. The two are inextricably linked.

Having a strong brand has tangible business value. It will allow you to charge a premium, keep customers loyal when competitors come knocking, get customers to ask for you by name, and to recommend you to friends and even strangers.  A strong brand increases the likelihood of trial of new products and services. It will even help customers to forgive you more easily when your brand messes up (and, let’s face it, we all make mistakes from time to time).

Be sure to make it a priority to build your brand.

2. Don’t try to do all the brand building efforts yourself

Your ideas and your business building strategy may be flawless, but your DIY brand still doesn’t look as good or work as well as you think it does.

On the contrary, 100% homemade brands often look unprofessional and unreliable. Unless you’re an expert marketer, designer, copywriter and web developer in addition to your day job, there are lots of things you don’t know and skills you don’t have when it comes to building a brand.

Admit it to yourself, and invest in some outside brand building expertise.

You don’t have to hire a full-time staff. You’ll get far with, for example, some design help from 99designs.com, a web developer from oDesk, some marketing advice from a friend who knows what she’s talking about, and a few books on copywriting. (May we suggest On Writing Well for learning the art of writing, and The Ultimate Sales Letter for learning how to use your newfound writing skills to sell?)

The point is that you need to be willing to invest in building a brand.

3. Don’t ever think you’re done with brand building efforts

Brand building is more journey than destination. There is no point where you’ve got your stationary and business cards, a sign on the wall and a well-developed elevator pitch, and you can just wrap it up and be done with your brand building efforts.

There is always more to learn – about your customers and your target audience, about growing and building a brand, and about strategically leveraging social media. If you somehow get to a point where you can’t see any possible way to improve, beware: It’s only a matter of time until someone else comes along and puts your brand out of business.

So pay attention to your customers and how the world develops around you; find out how and where you can strengthen your brand building and make it happen. – Julie Cottineau

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The 2012 Super Bowl advertising experience was very different for me this year. For the first time since the dawn of Twitter, I wasn’t sitting by myself, focused on the computer and television screens with little on my mind but moderating #BZBowl via social media and Super Bowl ads.

No, this year I was actually invited to a party at the home of a long-time friend and Brainzooming blog reader who was nice enough to put up with me live tweeting about Super Bowl advertising during his party. And for the 2012 Super Advertising experience, instead of #BZBowl, we participated in #SBExp with Jim Joseph, so even my moderation duties for the Super Bowl Twitter chat were dramatically lessened.

When you’re among other people talking, cheering, and moving about the room, the criteria by which you judge Super Bowl advertising change. It’s a lot less about isolated strategic and creative criteria, and much more about what gets the crowd’s attention.

Because of the change in my experience, it would be difficult to guess what I’d have chosen as the best Super Bowl advertising under my recent years’ viewing situation. Instead, I’ll offer my perspectives based on what stood out either to me or to the eight to ten people in the room. Remember too, I’d purposely seen only a few ads before the game, and have tried to stay away from other “best of 2012 Super Bowl advertising” articles before getting my thoughts down here.

The Best of the 2012 Super Bowl Advertising Experience

M&M’s Ms. Brown

This to me was the first really strong Super Bowl ad. In what were big themes during the night, it mined previous ads (the M&M’s out mingling with people looking to eat them) and used a hint of skin (or chocolate in this case) to catch attention. The M&Ms Super Bowl ad, however, was able to integrate with past creative while not being detrimentally saddled with it. The spot introduced Ms. Brown (yeah, I know, the name may have caught my attention) explaining her brown color didn’t she was naked, without a coating. The red M&M saw her from across the room though and took it as a cue to get nekkid and start the party. A product everybody knows with some sexually-oriented playfulness that was fun, not pandering, and scored some early points. Maybe GoDaddy.com should look at M&M’s agency for next year.

GE Turbines

I’ll be interested to see if this clearly business-to-business oriented spot from GE shows up on anybody’s list. Maybe it’s my business-to-business roots, but I thought GE did an effective job of making a play for itself as an innovative, important ingredient brand in a memorable way by demonstrating its industrial turbines are key components of creating Budweiser. Sure the second half of the commercial looked like Budweiser Super Bowl advertising, but it was exactly this integration with its much more prominent Super Bowl advertising customer that provided this spot’s memorability. As an example, there was another GE business-to-business oriented spot, but I have no recollection what specific category is was portraying. With GE Turbines, even some industrial skin might be able to sell hard.

H&M – David Beckham

I can’t tell whether I’m in the target market for the H&M David Beckham ad, but I’d seen a print version of the ad earlier in the afternoon in the newest edition of Men’s Health, so give them points for an integrated campaign. Of any Super Bowl ad, this spot featuring a very tattooed, only underwear wearing David Beckham, received more tweet attention than anything all night.

I initially said this ad was payback for all the GoDaddy.com female skin revealing Super Bowl commercials over the years, but having gotten through the rest of the ads in the game, this ad was the most memorable for me. Why? Go back and watch it. Within the first few seconds, it blatantly says H&M, David Beckham, and underwear (okay it says Bodywear, but it’s underwear to me). And you know what happens at the end of the ad? It blatantly says H&M, David Beckham, and underwear. There’s a winning formula there (beyond simply that “skin sells”) that advertisers and agencies have forgotten for Super Bowl ads, but more about that tomorrow.

NFL Timeline

It’s the NFL’s show, so why shouldn’t they do a great Super Bowl ad. Not sure that the NFL has to sell much, especially since they came out of what could have been a crippling labor situation completely unblemished this year, but the combo of history, familiar images, and iconic music worked well, as usual, for the NFL.

Hyundai – Get Your Pulse Going

The Hyundai “Think Fast” spot worked for me amid the variety of auto-related Super Bowl ads (although the Fiat Super Bowl ad got laughs and interest from all the men in the audience). The message of get your pulse going tied in an inventive way to the advertisement’s storyline and an underlying message about the car and the Hyundai brand.

2012 Super Bowl Advertising that Didn’t Work for Me

Pepsi with Elton John, Flavor Flav, and a “Who and the hell was that singing?” Sandwich

Making a movie is obviously a popular approach for Super Bowl ads. When you make a movie that reinforces the brand and message (last year’s Chrysler 300 “Imported from Detroit” Super Bowl ad, but not so much this year’s Chrysler ad) ,  it’s very effective. When you’re Pepsi and you make a movie with Elton John, Flavor Flav, and a singer in between who very few people seemed to recognize in a medieval castle setting, maybe a movie wasn’t your best strategic choice. Pepsi did do something right though, because I knew from early on it was a Pepsi commercial even though I don’t remember what the cue was that signaled it was a Pepsi commercial.

Chrysler – It’s Second Half in America

This one was getting a lot of raves on Twitter last night, but it didn’t work for me. The reason it didn’t work, however, may have been largely because of my viewing environment. Left to mainly go by visual cues, I recognized the visuals early in the spot as Chrysler and Detroit, which put me in the mind of last year’s incredible Eminem Chrysler300 video (my personal favorite). I immediately started to try and listen for the voice, and see where this spot was heading. But by the time it was visually clear Clint Eastwood was the voice, I immediately went to, “What does Client Eastwood have to do with Detroit?” From what I could see and hear, it wasn’t clear as an “America” ad. Going back to watch it again this morning, it’s clear that it starts with America, but that start was completely lost from my viewing vantage. Big lesson here that came up on some other Super Bowl ads: consider the worst possible conditions your audience might experience your creative. Another lesson: after a big win, consider moving on to a completely new game than going back to defend a slightly off version of how you won before.

Me, Just Being Snarky about 2012 Super Bowl Advertising

Coca-Cola Polar Bears

Okay, it was cute to see the Coca-Cola Polar Bears, and I guess there was one spot that was picked based on what was happening in the game. I’d be hard pressed to tell you which Coca-Cola Super Bowl ad it was, although I suspect it was the one where the Polar Bears clearly had more than 12 bears on the field, since that seemed to be a favorite miscue in the game along with illegal grounding from the end zone and an illegal huddle (watch yourselves in there guys). Anyway, if you were a Coca-Cola brand manager, how could you resist throwing at least ONE white labeled, save the polar bears Coca-Cola bottle into those Super Bowl ads?

Chevy Trucks

In this Armageddon scenario, Chevy Trucks offered up Barry F’n Manilow, mentioned Ford more than its own brand, and so prominently featured Twinkies that I thought it was a Hostess ad until the end. Huh?

Battleship

The Battleship ad looked like the revenge of the IBM Selectrics. #YoungPeopleAskYourParents

Teleflora – Valentine’s Day

I was watching with a largely male crowd, and let me tell you, there was SILENCE during this ad, just as during the David Beckham ad. Clearly, it was that whole skin selling hard thing again, because at the climax of this Teleflora Valentine’s Day Super Bowl ad, all the guys were ready to order flowers and wait for the paybacks. Talk about ROI from advertising.

What Did You Think?

This post is a work in process, as I’m both writing it and publishing updates as I go (the reason why I don’t usually write newsy articles here – I don’t like working to tight deadlines). As a result, check back for more updates during the day. But in the meantime, what did you think about the 2012 Super Bowl advertising? What worked, didn’t work, or just made you get all snarky during the marketing event of the year? - Mike Brown

The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can help you enhance your strategy and implementation efforts.

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You’re all invited join us Super Bowl Sunday for a fun, intimate Twitter chat all about the Super Bowl advertising and everything else going on with the game. By including the hashtag #SBExp in your tweets, you’ll be a part of a great group of marketers and pop culture fans, curated by Jim Joseph, author of “The Experience Effect” and “The Experience Effect for Small Business,” just released this week. While The Brainzooming Group hosted #BZBowl during the past two Super Bowls, we’re putting our energy behind the #SBExp chat for Super Bowl XLVI.

While there are a LOT of Twitter chats, tweeting during a live TV event provides a unique twist since you have a large audience focused on and reacting to the same content. And as almost a sub-chat of the bigger Super Bowl XLVI ad tweeting, #SBExp provides an opportunity to both MEET new people and to actually INTERACT with one another.

Since we hope to attract some new tweeters for Sunday’s #SBExp chat, here are 11 live event Twitter chat tips to make #SBExp more fun and exciting for you (and btw, Jim Joseph, there are some curation tips I’ve learned in here that could be helpful for you too).

11 Tips for a Great #SBExp Chat Experience

1. A Twitter chat isn’t about making pronouncements or simply blasting messages. In a discussion-based Twitter chat, there is typically a moderator asking questions for the the group to react to individually. When you’re chatting about an event, there are probably not going to be planned questions posed. In these cases, watch what other participants are tweeting, answering and responding to others, even if there isn’t a question involved.

2. When it comes to what Twitter platform to use, try Twitterchat.com. Since Twitterchat.com automatically inserts the hashtag for you, it offsets the effects of Number 5 on this list. Tweetdeck (at least the old Tweetdeck) is faster than Hootsuite, and refresh speed is really important if you don’t want to be 5 minutes behind (although expect tweets to be running slowly on Super Bowl Sunday).

3. Keep some tweeting energy in reserve. If you’re really into a live event Twitter chat, you’ll be surprised at how draining tweeting can be. Pace yourself and still be there at the end.

4. Think of a live event Twitter chat as your chance to be a character on MST3K. Find your inner Tom Servo. Be profound, be insightful, be fun, be snarky – and use multiple tweets to be all these things if you need to!

5. Alcohol helps during a Twitter chat. Nuff said.

6. Since so many people are watching the event, it’s more fun to turn your tweets into a running commentary. People aren’t looking for news reporting about what’s going on at the event; they want to hear your ideas.

7. If you’re ever going to be outrageous on Twitter, a live TV event is the time to do it. Outrageousness earns retweets and followers.

8. Think about your spelling, but don’t agonize over your spelling. Get your ideas out there fast. People will usually figure out minor spelling mistakes with no problem.

9. If you’re in a sub-chat (i.e. a focused chat within a bigger event) such as #SBExp, include the hashtag for the bigger event (i.e., #BrandBowl, #SuperBowlAds) in your best tweets. It can attract new people to your group and grow the audience.

10. Follow the people you’re tweeting with during the event. And it’s fine to carry one side conversations while the event is going on. It’s about the event, but it’s also about meeting new people you’ll enjoy tweeting with in the future as well.

11. Even though Twitter chats are silent, they’re actually incredibly loud. Don’t believe it? If you’re really into an event-related chat, try to “hear” people talking around you and process what they’re saying. It sounds odd, but if you experience deafening tweet loudness, you’re not alone.

I know there are more live event Twitter chat tips that should go on this list, so I’ll add to it as they occur to me on Super Bowl Sunday. Remember, get your Super Bowl XLVI advertising, marketing, and popular culture kicks with us Sunday on #SBExp!   - Mike Brown

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#BZBowl Is Moving to #SBExp for Super Bowl XLVI

With the Super Bowl this Sunday, I’ve been getting questions about #BZBowl, the Twitter chat The Brainzooming Group hosted the last two years to critique Super Bowl ads, the game, the Super Bowl hoopla, and all the popular culture surrounding the Super Bowl.

Here’s the #BZBowl update for Super Bowl XLVI.

During last year’s #BZBowl, author and good friend Jim Joseph participated during the game from New Orleans, shared his perspectives in a post-Super Bowl blog post, and was a guest along with Nate Riggs, Chris Reaburn, Alex Greenwood, and Barrett Sydnor during a special #BZBowl edition of Kelly Scanlon’s radio show I hosted. Since last year’s Super Bowl, Jim has hosted live Twitter chats for a variety of events, including The Grammys, Oscars, Oprah’s last show, and most recently, The Golden Globes.

This year, The Brainzooming Group is shifting its strategy and focus for the Super Bowl. As a result, we’re putting our #BZBowl energy behind Jim Joseph and his #SBExp Twitter chat event this Sunday. With Jim’s new book “The Experience Effect For Small Business: Big Brand Results with Small Business Resources” coming out this week, he’s getting a lot of well-deserved attention, and it just makes sense for us to play a supporting role for Super Bowl XLVI.

Watch for more details later in the week, but expect #SBExp to deliver the same Super Bowlicious smart, insightful, snarky, and intimate (i.e., spammer-free) Twitter chat you’ve come to experience with #BZBowl.

AMA Virtual XChange: Changing the Game – Innovations for Future Success

It’s exciting to let you know I’ll be one of the speakers for the American Marketing Association Virtual XChange virtual event on February 9, 2012. Other speakers include authors Brain Solis, Jeffrey Hayzlett, and Graham Brown. The virtual event’s theme is “Changing the Game – Innovations for Future Success,” and I’ll be covering the content behind “Taking the NO Out of Business InNOvation” at 1:45 pm central standard time (US).

“Changing the Game – Innovations for Future Success” is free for all attendees, even if you’re not an American Marketing Association member. Past AMA virtual events have been tremendously valuable with fantastic content, and this one should be no exception.

Please take a moment to register, and I look forward to you joining us Thursday, February 9!

“Why Creativity?” – New Aspindle eBook with David Meerman Scott, Julien Smith (and me)

Tanner Christensen, founder of Aspindle, a resource and incubator of creative ideas and former guest blogger on Brainzooming, has published a new eBook called, “Why Creativity?” with brief essays by “Trust Agents” co-author Julien Smith, “World Wide Rave” author David Meerman Scott, and Patrick Algrim, Matthew E May, Gregg Fraley, and Frank Chimero.

I’m honored to have an article included as well, talking about my lifelong fascination with creativity, even when I don’t have the chops to pull off the creativity I might like. You can download “Why Creativity?” for free, without even having to supply any info at Tanner’s Aspindle website.  - Mike Brown

The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can help you enhance your strategy and implementation efforts.

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Instead of writing blog posts this weekend, I wound up working to prepare for Thursday’s Advanced Twitter class I’m teaching at Enterprise Center of Johnson County. And instead of using Sunday night to at least get Monday’s post written, good friend Jim Joseph lured me into his Golden Globe Awards Twitter Chat, #ggexp. Since Sunday night was full of tweeting, here’s some of my commentweeting the creative highlights of the Golden Globe Awards. (BTW, thanks Amy Balog for that great term, commentweeting.)

• Despite my prediction last year, Ricky Gervais was back as Golden Globe Awards host for the third year in a row in 2012. But for as little time as he was actually on stage, he served more as an on-stage reporter than a host. In any case, the opening line from Ricky Gervais (“Where did I leave off?”) was as good an opener as anything since Pee Wee Herman’s, “Have you heard any good jokes lately?” to open a long ago MTV awards show.
• For all the speeches allowed to go on way too long, they started playing music to get Meryl Streep off the stage. She’s Meryl Streep – our best known American actress – even if she did have a dress that looked as if it were from the Mary Todd Lincoln collection. She should get as much time as she needs (and she needed more time than usual since she forgot her glasses – and everyone was afraid to hand them to her mid-speech).
• There should be a play clock for the Golden Globe Awards show like there is in the NFL. You only have so many seconds to start your speech or there’s a penalty involved.
• Speaking of the NFL, Lifetime Achievement Awards are to awards shows what the Halftime Show is to the Super Bowl. Yawn….
• There was a decent Google Chrome ad (as if Google really needs to advertise its impending world dominance). But the minute the spot ran, Google Chrome would barely run on my computer. Coincidence? I think not.
• There’s a real problem with too-thin female stars. If you put Buffalo Wing sauce on Madonna’s biceps, you could serve them at Buffalo Wild Wings, and I was thinking $5 would be enough to make sure Angelina Jolie gets one meal per day for a whole month!
• Steven Spielberg was thanking people for approving a project he did. Wait a minute. He’s Steven Spielberg! Does anyone really tell him, “NO,” he can’t do a project?
• I don’t know much, if anything, about fashion, but it was clear that Jessica Lange and Jane Fonda are beyond the ages when they should be wearing semi-backless dresses.
• Matt Leblanc (who will forever be known as “Joey from Friends”) won a Golden Globe award for some show where I think he plays himself. I’m not sure why he won, but I was very excited to see I wasn’t the only person tweeting about him with the Twitter hashtag, #JoeyFromFriends.
• NBC kept running ads for its new series, Smash, and saying, “Introducing Katherine McPhee.” “Introducing” Katharine McPhee? I guess the statute of limitations on losing a reality TV show must be 6 years.
• During the 2011 Super Bowl, the Chrysler 300 ad with the car rolling through overcast days and dark nights in Detroit was incredibly cool. The ad last night with the car driving through neighborhoods on a sunny day looked like another car commercial.
• The Hollywood Foreign Press Association needs to inject some NASCAR sensibilities into its sponsorship of the Golden Globes. No sponsor should have to put up with as few sponsor mentions as the Hollywood Foreign Press gets during the broadcast. Maybe they should get a NASCAR driver to host the Golden Globes next year?

My favorite Twitter chat opportunities are those tied to widely-viewed television programs since you can not only get a good small group tweeting together, but you can also see what the nation (and often the world) are thinking about it as well.

Did you watch the Golden Globe Awards? What did you think about this year’s show? Any commentweeting the creative highlights for you? – Mike Brown

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We’re nearing the end of the #BZBowl recap week of wonderful guest posts offering varied perspectives on lessons learned from 2011 Super Bowl ads. (I say the last, but I may still finish the post started in my sketchbook called, “Why Online Ads Are Killing Good Advertising.”) Beyond today’s post, you can listen to several of the #BZBowl bloggers on today’s “Smart Companies Radio” show on 1510 AM in Kansas City, live streaming at 10 am EST / 9 am EST on February 11. One of the bloggers on the radio show, Chris Reaburn, finishes out the week here on the Brainzooming blog. Chris is a services marketing expert and author of the Services Encounters Onstage blog. Chris took on the daunting task of experiencing as many brands as possible of those who bought Super Bowl ads this year to see how well the ads did at matching the experiences he sampled:

During last year’s #BZBowl Twitter chat on Super Bowl ads, participants structured comments around the SUCCES formula from Made To Stick by Chip & Dan Heath.  By those standards, for a message to be memorable, it should possess some combination of Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional and Storytelling elements. It’s a good formula for advertisers to follow and worked well as a tool to evaluate Super Bowl ads.

This year’s Chrysler 200 ad scored well measured against SUCCES criteria and has become a critical favorite. The Detroit story, well enough known and felt in lesser measures throughout the country, feels familiar and real. As a product of Detroit hardship, Eminem lent credibility.  Music, imagery and contrasts in the narrative lent high emotion to what was a good story, well told.

More than just good storytelling, good marketing also makes a promise that has value and ultimately sees it fulfilled through the customer’s experience.

The promise–fulfillment connection led me to experience as many Super Bowl-advertised products & services as possible in advance, including purchases or customer experiences with Teleflora, GoDaddy, cars.com, CarMax, HomeAway, Doritos, Pepsi Max, Coke, Bud Light, Volkswagen, and Best Buy.

Of the Super Bowl advertisers, which ones succeeded in making promises, fulfilling them and linking the experience back to the ads?

• Some matched their promise & experience with their storytelling deliberately and creatively (Coke, Pepsi Max / Married Couple, most of the Chevy ads).
• At least one matched the story with the service experience unintentionally (GoDaddy)
• Others missed a linkage, either failing to reinforce a strong experience (Teleflora, Homeaway.com) or ignoring the experience in the narrative altogether (Kia / Epic Ride, Snickers, Mercedez, CareerBuilder).

It was for this last reason that the Chrysler ad didn’t work for me.  It captivatingly reinforced the Detroit brand and the Eminem brand with a credible message.  But did little for the Chrysler brand, and less to make a promise about what prospective buyers of the 200 – a brand new product – might receive in return for investing themselves in it.

In terms of matching the SUCCES criteria with the ability to convey the promise and fulfill it experientially, the NFL was the best advertiser of the night. The use of both NFL films and classic TV footage wove the fabric of the game together with the fabric of American popular culture, giving it instant credibility and emotion. That we saw the ads during their capstone experience reinforced their story in a very concrete way.

You could say that it is unfair to compare the NFL with other advertisers.  After all, the viewing audience for the ads was almost completely within their target market, and they were viewing them during the event when these customers are showing the most emotional investment.  These were ready buyers of what the NFL has to sell.

But the lesson for others advertising in the Super Bowl (like chatter) is that finding the largest concentrations of your audience and engaging them with a relevant message at the time they are most emotionally involved in your experience isn’t playing with a stacked deck – it’s giving your marketing efforts the highest probability to succeed. - Chris Reaburn

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Back in 2009 when I needed to start writing about The Brainzooming Group and what we were going to do, my creative instigation buddy Jan Harness told me she was too close to me to take the assignment. Instead, Jan introduced me (via email) to Emma Alvarez Gibson. Jan had met Emma on Twitter (back when Jan was trying to do Twitter – at MY instigation), and told me Emma was cool enough to help create the messaging for Brainzooming. Jan was right. Emma challenged me on what I wanted to say and helped us get to a structured way to communicate what The Brainzooming Group offers. Based on her branding experience and her ability to focus and pare down all the things I wanted to say about Brainzooming, Emma is exactly the right person to weigh in on this year’s seemingly disappointing crop of Super Bowl ads, and ask the question,”How does this happen?”:

It’s easy to make the case that the best ad is the one that sells the most product; the purpose of advertising, after all, is to persuade consumers to part with their dollars. Of course, artistry lies in that sweet spot between sending lemmings over the cliff and elevating the consumer along with the brand. That artistry – well, artistry, full stop – was absent from the majority of last Sunday’s Super Bowl ads.

Oh, it’s just TV, I can hear you say, and that’s true: it’s just TV. But it’s also a reflection of who we are as a culture. It’s a bit of anthropology, if you like. And I don’t know about you, but I very much resent being shown a bunch of spots that seemed to have been created by bored, cocksure interns with no knowledge of what’s gone on in this vast American life over the last 20 years, under the guise of great advertising.

From the offensive (hello, Groupon!) to the wildly unoriginal (Pepsi Free? Pepsi Light? Clear Pepsi? What was that “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus” spot for, anyway?), from the stunningly mediocre (“Get a Chevy that will read you what your date said on Facebook, because you’re a lousy excuse for a real man!”) to the blatantly ripped-off (1984? In a spot featuring a non-Apple product?), Sunday’s offerings ran the gamut in all but the one arena that matters: artistry.

Yes, of course, there were a few bright spots: the love letter to Detroit, gorgeously crafted. The joltingly adorable little Darth Vader. The quiet, simple, sweet Coke ad featuring two border patrol guards on opposite sides of the line. There were other more-light-than-dim spots, too. But where was the boom-boom-pow, to use the parlance of our halftime entertainment? What became of the minds that gave us so many gems just 12 months ago?

Look, it’s easy to beat up on someone’s work from my comfy spot on the couch. You win some, you lose some, as the Steelers can attest. Everyone has an off day, an off season. But there’s a difference between missing the mark and joining the ranks of the lowest common denominator.

We can do better, guys. Let’s raise the bar. We can do so much better. – Emma Alvarez Gibson

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