Which ad won the super bowl? Madonna's.

So, approximately 169 million people have been buzzing all day around the various watercoolers in the offices of the world, pondering who won the adbowl. The answer is: Madonna did. Refactoring iconic Hollywood with an entrance fit for Elizabeth Taylor, roping in slackrope walkers, doing handstands with cirque du soleil and dubbing her pop princesses, Madonna just showed all you advertising people up. She might have slipped once, but she can hipshake with the best of them, and isn't afraid to elbow one half of LMFAO in the chest for missing his cue. She just showed you adfolks how one borrows interest, rides the wave of the latest trends, and dresses up in "been done before" without losing sight of selling her own brand in the process. Unlike some of the ads in this years superbowl, I think Madonna will move the most units. You ad kids should take notes.

Lets get on to the ads shall we? Even though all you regular adland readers saw them before the superbowl - as usual - but this year was a record. We had 14 out of the 30 ads before the super bowl even aired, and the others had teasers. Like I've been saying for years, it's like opening your gifts before christmas, and the ones we're not opening we're shaking to guess what's inside. This always ends in a miserable christmas with disappointed kids. Can we please stop this?

I had high hopes for Chrysler and their two minute Clint Eastwood peptalk. But when the ad came on, I thought he was running for president. What? Well Ronald Reagen held the "A time for choosing" speech and this sounded a lot like it. I'm honestly confused if the message is buy an American car or vote for Mr. "Do you feel lucky, punk?". Because I would, this guy might be the best candidate out there.
We've seen the national pep-talk ads now. We get it. We are all still hurting from the bad economy (especially here in Sweden after General Motors screwed up our empire of SAAB cars thanksverymuch), but this needs to move on, not just hire more expensive stars.

Now here's a car ad that manages to show very little car, and still paint a picture. Of the car. Hello. You still here?
Now, I might not belong to the group of people who had to stay seated after this aired, but the seductive Italian bombshell of a car does make me go hubba hubba and I adore the new looks of all Fiats. They might have said "it's hella sexy" quite literally, but then it is a hella sexy car and once the viewers are able to stand up and get to a dealer they might even check it out. Honestly, I find it surprising that this tactic hasn't been used before, considering our long standing tradition of shilling cars with leggy ladies.

"A thing called love" for Samsung upheld the superbowlian tradition of being very over the top, even saying so in the ad. The singer Justin Hawkins from the Darkness breaks up the line at an Apple store and it all turns into a spontaneous concert/flashmob thing. All this for a stylus. You know what you do with a stylus? You lose 'em.

The Bud Light dog "Weego" who fetched beer we've already badlanded here, as it's not the first time Bud Light had a dog fetch beer. It's not even the first badlander of this superbowl as Chevy and this SEAT ad from last year looked pretty much the same, and like a scene from Bee Movie.

Speaking of things we've seen before, Hulu repeated their Hulu Aliens eat our brains joke from 2009 super bowl XLIII. It's like a superbowl of re-runs, this - we have The M&M's that should be retired, Coke revisiting their polar bears idea, and that E*trade baby is back once again. Bring back the chimp, all is forgiven, and at least he danced without CGI help. Even Downy went and burned 3.5 million dollars+ on copying the Mean Joe Green Coke ad, as if a remake would capture the magic of the original. Take a note from Madonna, you got to own it when you do this, and you didn't, Downy.

Another ad that went all out with the over-the-top was the KIA ad, where we find the most boobage of any super bowl spot this year. Yes, beating the Toyota Camry "Reinvented" spot. Congratulations to the most Ta-Ta's award, guys.

But when it came to actually demonstrating a selling point, staying on brief without reading the USP lines straight from the brief like Chevy "Apocalypse" and E*trade "fatherhood" did, Audi won. Yes. I didn't like it much, but you remember why all the vampires went *pouf* and disappeared in a cloud of fire-dust, right? UV-lights. Daylight at night. The hashtag #solongvampires didn't have to be there. If you use twitter, you want to click that, and if you dont use twitter you don't know the twitter-injoke of hashtagging stuff just to be funny. #letmeshowyou #presentinghow #likethis #understoodnow #omgthisisannoying