In Super Bowl ads, a little Interspecies romance scores big, and VW engineers get their wings.

The ad about a spunky little puppy and the Clydesdale horse it loves gave A-B another win this year. It is a great spot, even if it is a kind of ‘sequel’ to last year's, which was about a savvy horse that kept returning to its trainer.

For the 26th consecutive year, USA TODAY's Ad Meter reached out to consumers to vote for their favorite Super Bowl commercials. This online audience of 6,272 preregistered panelists voted from across the country. The game featured nearly 50 commercials that cost advertisers a record $4 million per 30-second slot. The audience was estimated as high as 100 million viewers.

Complete list of Ad Meter Results:

http://admeter.usatoday.com/story/sports/ad-meter/super-bowl/2014/02/03/ad-meter-story-final-ad-meter-rankings/5173807/?sf22359773=1

As in the beverage category, it seems like new ideas are few and far between in the car business. Only one car ad made the top ten, and it wasn’t the Chevy Silverado ‘romance’ spot with the stud bull. It was something from Hyundai called ‘Sixth Sense’ and it scored a 6.87. I’m not sure why.

Best car ad of the bunch was VW’s “Wings” spot, which outscored everybody in the category except for that ho-hum Hyundai execution. It's no surprise to me. Here was an ad that actually reinforced the brand positioning by reminding us of the ‘German engineering’ that goes into every one of VW's cars, and what it means (durability, value) to the consumer. Wow, make a statement about the stuff your car is made of while being fun and entertaining? This is not brain surgery, people. 

Chrysler’s ad with Bob Dylan was impactful and memorable because of the surprise factor. It was kept under wraps. The other carmakers could have saved their money. Kia, Maserati, Toyota, Honda, Jeep, Audi, and even Jaguar with their first Super Bowl spot fielded pretty unremarkable work.

Honda takes worst car commercial of 2014 spot, hands down.

Honda’s latest attempt to sell cars to people who know nothing about cars, or don't really want one,  is this weird and very annoying “Today is Pretty Great” spot for the 2014 Civic Coupe. Leave it to Honda – desperate in their attempt to appeal to anxious millennials – to produce a spot that goes out of its way to avoid showing you the actual product.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp7CwfYSXro

Now, maybe I’m just being old and crusty here, but where do I start to address everything that’s so absolutely wrong with this thing?

What were they thinking, starting a spot with the Vintage Trouble guy belting out the lyrics, “Today, the world is pretty sad?” Now that’s some brilliant marketing. You should always have your product associated with negatives, right?

As if that isn’t bad enough, the clips that follow include a landfill and a visual reference to bankruptcy. Sure, I want my product to be associated with all of these great things!
According to The Detorit News, the spot originally featured demonstrators outside the Detroit bankruptcy court and caused enough anger in the community that the footage was changed. What, indeed, were they thinking?

Next, couldn’t we feel the breeze in our facial hair, dress in super hero costumes, go parasailing or do  any number of fun things and get there in any other car? Actually, for many of those fun recreational activities shown in the spot, I don’t think a Civic Coupe will cut it. Better off buying a used SUV, kids.

And how many times an hour do I have to have it pounded into my head? This spot will drive buyers away in droves.

WSJ looks back at best and worst ads of 2013.

At the risk of being predictable, I thought it would be appropriate to wrap up the year with a look at best and worst advertising executions of 2013. Suzanne Vranica's Wall Street Journal piece points out a few surprises and a few others maybe not so much.

Among the very best - the Dodge Ram spot featuring the late Paul Harvey reading from his 'So God Made a Farmer' essay.

How good was the Dodge Ram spot? Viewed online more than 22 million times, and according to a Chrysler spokesperson, the brand gained nearly a point of market share between January and October. Now that's moving the needle, and doing it in a genuine, original, heartfelt way. As much as I dislike using religious references to sell products, you have to admit this one makes you feel something, and certainly appeals to the core truck buyer. This is the kind of spot Hal Riney used to make, and seeing it brings to mind the "Morning in America" work Riney did for Ronald Reagan's re-election campaign in 1984.

Let's hope 2014 brings us a lot more advertising like this.

Tongue-in-cheek holiday ads shake off the sugarcoating - is this a surprise, or just good advertising?

"We were surprised that a majority of Americans said they like to see Scrooge-like themes, or the naughtier side of things, in holiday ads." That was the statement by Becky Jones, vice president of marketing and research at Viamedia, the Kentucky-based cable advertising sales firm that conducted a recent study on the matter of holiday advertising. Her comments were included in an interesting LA Times piece about holiday ads.

I don't know if this makes me sound like a Scrooge, but is anyone surprised by this? Isn’t this what good advertising should be doing? Being disruptive? Entertaining? Amusing? If it isn’t doing any of these, how will it break through the clutter? How will it get people talking about the brand? And we know there is plenty of clutter around the Christmas shopping season.

Will the "naughty" Jingle Balls spot from K-mart actually make the big K a more interesting place to shop, as suggested by Syracuse University professor Ed Russell? I think that's a bit of a stretch. My local K-Mart could be described in many ways, but "interesting" is not one of them. But in the LA Time piece, he very accurately states this is an ad you would not expect from K-Mart. And that's the whole point. It makes you say, "Hey, that's K-Mart doing that. Maybe they're not so boring these days."

Read the LA Times story - you'll enjoy it.

Year-end venting, bad acronyms and brand fails

It's that time of year again - for well wishes? For glad tidings? New Year's resolutions? Of course not, silly. It's time for me to vent again about how crazy this world of branding has become.

Adweek's 25 biggest brand fails of 2013 is an entertaining look back at a bunch of blunders - some obvious and others much more subjective - by marketers such as JC Penny, Hyundai, Barilla and others.

The sidebar on this is the most revealing misuse of the English language by so-called marketers - "fail." I guess if we accept the use of the word "leverage" as a verb, then why not drag a few verbs down the same linguistic rabbit hole? The comments thread on this one is priceless.

Along the same lines, Valerie Pritchard's 12/18 item on Health Care Communication News was a great summary of pesky jargon that we could really do without in the New Year.

Valeria, I agree whole-heartedly that "learnings" is not a real word, and "tent pole" is a horrible, almost painful metaphor.

I also got a chuckle out of her "worst acronym" example - PANK. Having done a bit of work in two industries that use far too many acronyms - healthcare and telecommunications - I can tell you this was a spot-on example of a genuinely stupid acronym. Go to the story to see what "PANK" stands for.

Happy New Year. Let's hope it's one with fewer acronyms and more learnings.

Microclimates of Exclusivity – the latest product of a society that no longer makes anything.

Frank Bruni’s NYT Op-Ed – ‘The Extra Legroom Society’ describes just how tier-obsessed - and in some cases ridiculous - our society has become.

Bruni begins the piece by describing how his family’s simple plan to visit a well-known Los Angeles amusement park quickly became an adventure in Status Symbol Land (as coined by the Monkees in their song Another Pleasant Valley Sunday).

Americans have long been disciples of status. It is apparent in the things we own, the clubs we join, the fashions we wear and the cars we drive. It’s how we make a statement. It’s how we say, “I’ve made it, and screw you” or, I’ve made it, but I care about the planet” or, I’m too sexy for my Escalade.”

It’s nothing new, so what’s the big deal? Bruni says that lately, what he calls “microclimates of exclusivity” are popping up everywhere, and in an economy that doesn’t manufacture very much these days, we sure know how to create distinctions.

You don’t just buy a ticket and get on a plane – there are ‘levels.’ Want that extra legroom? You’re gonna pay. Want less hassle? You’re gonna pay some more. Want a shorter line at the theme park? Just pay to be bumped up a few rungs on the status ladder and you’ll get a second go-round, even cutting right in front of some poor slob who’s been waiting in line 40 minutes for his first. That one kills me. Instead of making the product better in the form of a shorter wait, these guys increase revenue by exploiting your inconvenience (Bruni didn’t say whether they actually ordered the ‘platinum’ service, or whatever the hell Six Flags calls it).

I realize this is something that's been around for a long time – niche marketing, personalized service, new product extensions created by cubicle dwelling marketing geniuses, swamped in saturated markets. But this kind of elitism makes me a little queazy. Are we in the 80s again?

You really should read this one.

Celebrating 20 Years of 'Got Milk?'

How time flies. This is the 20^th anniversary of one of advertising’s most enduring - and unfortunately most copied - taglines. I refer to the ‘Got Milk?’ campaign, commissioned by the California Milk Processor Board in 1993, then adopted by the National Milk Producers Federation.

The agency that got the job - Goodby, Silverstein and Partners.

According to the ‘history’ page on the agency’s website, around that time they also introduced the less memorable but quite creative Budweiser lizards (Bud-Wise-Er). So it would appear that they had the beverage category creatively covered.

ADWEEK recently featured Jeff Goodby’s recap of this classic campaign.

Goodby says his research shows that "got milk?" has become the most remembered tagline in beverage history, outstripping those of beer and soft drink companies with much larger budgets.

There have been many great food and beverage taglines over the years – ‘Have a Coke and a smile”, “Nobody doesn’t like Sara Lee”, “It’s Miller Time” - but this little piece of culture was a real trend setter back in ‘93. It’s probably advertising’s most competitive category, and one that spawns many examples of much less memorable advertising, indeed.

Far be it from me to dampen this celebration, but no discussion of this great campaign could be complete without mentioning the downside. In this case, the downside is the fact that every low-budget, non-creative thinker on the client’s side of the desk thought it would be a great idea to do a ‘got _____?’ to immortalize their product, and simultaneously celebrate their complete lack of creativity. For me, all those hacks kind of tainted – spoiled if you will – what was honestly a brilliant concept.

When you look back at all those celebrity milk mustaches, you can’t help but smile. And all those ‘got milk’ imitators? I’ll bet you can’t remember a single one.