not a step

$2 million dollars down the drain

Though the Super Bowl offered a few commercials worth talking about the next day, the vast majority had as much impact as a Richard Simmons haymaker. Some were plain dumb, others were annoying, and far too many traded on catchphrases (Budweiser's "whassup") or jokes (7-Up's "show us your can") that wore out before the full 30 seconds had passed.

Those ads, however, at least gave you a vague idea of who paid for them and what product that company wanted you to purchase. The most alarming trend-one pioneered by the "dot-com" companies during last year's Super Bowl-was commercials that tell you nothing while not entertaining you. That policy seems like an odd trend for a medium whose only goal should be to get you to remember a product the next time you're in a position to buy it. There's nothing brilliant about old standbys like "Honeycomb's big, yeah, yeah, yeah," but you think of it each time you walk through a cereal aisle. At least 25% of the ads that aired during Super Bowl XXXIV left the audience wondering where they would buy the thing the ad was about or if it was even for sale.

The most confusing commercial involved a bunch of special effects making it look like Christopher Reeve could walk. This one came from an outfit called Nuveen Investments, though it remains unclear as to what a more mobile Reeve has to do with that particular company. The two might be directly linked-perhaps Nuveen invests in medical research-or maybe the ad was suggesting that if Reeves invested his money with them, he'd have more to spend on a cure.

Either way, Nuveen might have been better off just writing Superman a check. Instead, the company blew over two million dollars on a Super Bowl ad that, while it might have people talking, will not have them doing any business with Nuveen.

The same can be said for the commercial Agillon offered up during the big game. This one had a random group of people singing an off-key version of Queen's "We are the Champions," and little else. Though the company's name did flash at the end, no explanation was ever made of what the business may or may not do for you. The tagline had something to do with the Internet, but whether Agillon sells toast online or build computers remains a mystery.

You can blame these vague ads on the people who run the big-time advertising agencies. These folks-the same ones who consider David Arquette funny-have apparently gotten bored crafting simple messages like "My bologna has a first name" and have instead decided to get creative.

Trusting the future of your company to the people in this industry makes as much sense as waiting for a rainy, foggy night to get a ride from Ted Kennedy or asking John and Patsy Ramsey to babysit for you. Yet every January, come Super Bowl time, countless otherwise intelligent businesspeople put their survival in the hands of advertising executives.

While this is an industry that has given us "Where's the beef?," "I'm not going to pay a lot for this muffler" and "Good to the last drop," it's also responsible for head-scratchers like "Behold the power of cheese," those Nike ads with all the bleeding people and the drug commercials where they casually mention the product may cause "explosive diarrhea." For every clever Gap ad, there's at least four Old Navy spots, and for every beer ad that makes you giggle, you get a dozen starring burping frogs.

While the pre-game hype over commercials rivaled that of the actual game, there were no home runs among the Super Bowl ads and quite a few strikeouts. Perhaps next year, when many of the companies that bought ads this year are out of business, at least one of the Super Bowl advertisers will demand his agency come up with the next "Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun," or at least a new "Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is."

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