Fast Food Super Bowl Commercial Round Up

By Jesse | February 8, 2010

This week I’m replacing the usual news round up with a special, Super Bowl commercial round up from last night’s big game. I was happy to see a victory by America’s new favorite team, the city of New Orleans deserved it.

I had prepared myself for a night of fast food commercials to go along with my heaping pile of football. However, I was disappointed by the lack of spots. While there was a boat load of food commercials, there were only two pure fast food spots. I knew the industry was down this past year, but I didn’t realize how much.

Let’s take a look at our spots.

McDonalds:

Our first spot, a dunk competition over lunch, is a rehash of those old Michael Jordan and Larry Bird “nothing but net” commercials from the 80s. This time, its two current NBA stars, LeBron James and Dwight Howard. The commercial has some nice CGI enhanced aerials by the two superstars. In the end, Larry Bird makes an appearance to steal the show, and the lunch.

Here’s the original Larry Bird and Michael Jordan “Nothing but Net” spot:

I thought the new spot was just OK. While I enjoyed the tribute to those great commercials of the past, the spot lacked creativity. This lack of creativity was a theme for last night’s commercials across the board. The ad agency world appears to be getting lazy, especially by jumping on viral video trends. The dramatic chipmunk appeared in at least two spots. Come on agency creatives, you can do better.

Grade: B-

Taco Bell:

Taco Bell got into the Super Bowl commercial action by promoting their new 5 Buck Box with “Sir” Charles Barkely. They had been teasing the commercial for a couple of weeks.

The Teaser Spot:

Super Bowl Spot:

Uh yeah. While I like the idea of teasing a commercial, the final product needs to be worth teasing. This spot was not. It’s forgettable, uninteresting, and not funny. Again taking a page from Subway’s book after creating their own diet and Jared, Taco Bell is trying to get into the $5 action with their own rhyme. Unfortunately for them, it sucked. “Five dollar box, it rocks, it rocks,” will never have the head haunting power of the $5 footlong song. At least T Bell is not chasing the health angle on these boxes, cause Sir Charles looks like he’s packed on the pounds since his basketball days.

Grade: D

Other Food Spots:

Since this year’s big game was light on fast food commercials, I thought I would mention a few related food/restaurant commercials.

Doritos:

Frito Lay had an aggressive media buy for their Doritos brand this year with a slew of forgettable commercials. They’re attempts at humor felt off. Sort of like that awkward kid in grade school that tries really hard to be funny but only succeeds in making the rest of the class uncomfortable. The dog spot was particularly bad. It didn’t make any sense. Why didn’t the dog take the collar off in the first place? Why does he scream when the dog barks? Honestly, I’m pretty sure that awkward kid in grade school could make a better commercial.

Denny’s

Denny’s my favorite series of spots from this year’s Super Bowl. Not only were they promoting and incredible deal with their free Grand Slam breakfasts tomorrow, the spots were actually funny. There’s just something about chickens dressed up like people screaming that just worked.

Check out their Facebook page here.

Well that’s it for tonight. What was your favorite spot from last night’s game?

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