Is there a writer in the house?

Rick Stanton, Creative Director / President

Stanton & Everybody Advertising + Design + Media

I’ve waited a few days to wade in on the Super Bowl ads in hopes I wouldn’t come across as a grouchy old creative director.

Unfortunately, the wait provided no relief from my point of view.

With a couple of exceptions, the ads really sucked.

They suffered from what I refer to as the “1985s.”

For those of you too young to remember1985, give or take a year, was largely the time of no concept, no story line and TV advertising being hijacked by art directors.

It was the time of incredibly expensive shoots on location.

It was the time of visual trickery.

And if there was an idea in there, it was camouflaged by edits that were so plentiful and so fast they caused epilepsy.

I fear this unfortunate development has returned based on what I saw Sunday.

Most of the ads were by products of ridiculous budgets.

Locations now are places created by computers and yes, art directors.

And the ads that weren’t hatched in that approach were sophomoric or had been done better before by someone else ten years earlier.

Where were the ideas? Where were the opportunities to show how smart advertising can be?

What a disappointment.

The only ad that had any compelling story line or evidence that a smart writer was involved was the Clint Eastwood spot for Chrysler.

This has been a difficult time for advertising.

We have been commoditized.

Ideas and thinking seem to be less important than how much something costs.

Unless of course, you’re one of the clients who spent a ton on production and media Sunday. They should have given the money to charity.

To the issue of cost, I still think the ad Google did in last year’s Super Bowl was brilliant, it didn’t cost a thing to produce and it showed perfectly the magic that is Google.

Enjoy the links below and do what you can to help advertising be great.