the Informer

Courtesy of media.timesfreepress.com

For me, one of the most memorable parts of Super Bowl XLV wasn’t anything to do with football, but rather the pint-sized Darth Vader who thought he started his dad’s Passat using the force.

The Volkswagen ad was one of the best received, boasting 10 million views on Youtube before it even aired, largely due to the adorable “Little Darth” played by a captivating six-year-old named Max.

This year VW is attempting to use the force to rise to the top again, this time replacing the 3-foot villain with a bunch of dogs. Deutsch, the agency behind these apt ads, released a teaser this week titled “The Bark Side,” featuring a myriad of dogs barking the tune of the Star Wars theme.

I’m not really sure if off-tune dog barking really has me sold as a best-ad contender this year, but the fact that during the Super Bowl even the commercials have commercials shows that while quarterbacks are trying to pull away from the rest of the pack, it’s advertising agencies that are trying to make their own touchdowns by doing the same.

Now in its forty-sixth year, the underlying sport, the super bowl of advertising, has been molded into the one day consumers actively pay attention.

Disinterested party-goers everywhere who only attend for the football-themed hor d’ouvres subconsciously wait for another Betty White Snickers spot, while girlfriends anxiously anticipate the commercial breaks as their only form of entertainment on game day.

This inevitable exposure doesn’t guarantee success. In this day an age, in order to be the best of the best, no ad will get there without publicizing itself.

At roughly $3 million per 30-second commercial, it’s not just Volkswagen that’s getting a head start. In an advantageous effort to make impressions, Doritos is currently holding its “Crash the Super Bowl,” contest for the sixth year in a row.

Users were challenged to make their own commercial and upload it to the website where anybody can vote for the their favorites. Currently, submissions have been narrowed down to five finalists, the winner of which will have their commercial aired during game time, as well as a chance to work with comedy group, Lonely Island, for a future spot.

The website already boasts almost 400 thousand votes on the finalists alone, and 77 thousand likes on Facebook. The viral world becomes essential. While Doritos are currently in the lead with most views during this particular week, brands like Nokia trailing close behind with an ad featuring (yet another) cute boy playing with the phone’s newest face-recognition technology.

When Volkswagen used “The Force” to become the most-viewed Super Bowl ad on the Internet, it was estimated that those free impressions were worth about $538,470, according to media estimating firm Kantar Analytics.

If online presence is any indication of which ads will reign supreme, which past years have shown is true, Doritos look like they’ve got this one in the bag. But while Volkswagen aims for the cute approach to face off against the humor, it’s still a matter of a good quality ad that will steal the game.Courtesy of timesfreepress.com