SB Nation St. Louis - 2011 Super Bowl: Packers Winners 31-25 Over Steelers

Eminem, Chrysler Super Bowl Commercial: Sequels To Be "Imported From Detroit"

2011-02-11T01:31:11Z

Of all the 2011 Super Bowl commercials, none has proven more quite so resonant to quite so many people as Eminem and Chrysler’s paean to the Motor City, “Imported from Detroit”; apparently Edmunds.com’s Chrysler search traffic jumped 328% after the ad. No Super Bowl ad had quite as tall an order as this one, which sought successfully to put the Chrysler 200 in car-buyers’ minds just as the company looks to get the Chrysler Sebring out of it.

The Wall Street Journal gives us a nice history of the ad; apparently the Eminem cameo and the long running time were last-second decisions. A good thing, too—the commercial derives much of its weird strength from its slow build and its surprisingly appropriate Eminem cameo, which situates their use of “Lose Yourself.”

I don’t know that there’s a more impressive metric than this: apparently 839 people requested quotes for the 200 between the ad airing and that midnight. For a car that was either invisible in the market or derided for its ancestry prior to that moment that’s an impressive response, one that could go part of the way toward paying for two minutes of extremely expensive Super Bowl ad time.

Need I remind Chrysler: This opportunity comes once in a lifetime, as a Michigander philosopher’s single once impressed upon my rap-crazy high school class. Hopefully the 200 is a good impression for the new Detroit.

Super Bowl Commercials 2011: USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter Likes Dogs

2011-02-09T17:46:01Z

I am not one to typically impugn the USA Today, which has a lot of good newspaper design ideas, but their Super Bowl Ad Meter has done a fantastic job of picking not the best commercials so much as Super Bowl 2011 commercials that feature dogs. The winners: A tie between an execrable Bud Light ad that I think might have been about underground dogfighting, and the Doritos ad about the pug who, wait for it, loves Doritos.

Number three, at least, is Volkswagen's popular Darth Vader ad. But Pepsi Max, another failure, is next, Bud Light, like Derek Jeter, continues to get overrated for former performances, and the brilliant Audi Luxury Prison ad is stuck at 20th.

At least they got the bottom right. Along with two boring but inoffensive Hyundai ads viewers responded the least to yet another miserable GoDaddy ad. No commercial has made me less likely to use a product than GoDaddy's base attempts to sell domain names to people who don't need them, and I'm including those cigarette ads with huge pictures of diseased lungs on them.

Darth Vader Super Bowl Commercial: Lord Vader, Your Volkswagen Passat Is Ready

2011-02-07T22:22:22Z

Until recently the Darth Vader connection was typically made with cars that were sinister, all-black, and typically angular—the Buick GNX, the Chevy Impala SS, et al. But the time finally came for a Darth Vader Super Bowl commercial, and we got—a silver Volkswagen Passat. And Darth Vader is an adorable six-year-old who just wants to Force Choke an alternator.

The new Passat is made specifically for American tastes—i.e. they a little condescendingly made it Bigger And Cheaper—but their commercial is more tonally appropriate. They took an American icon, they made it ironic and cute, and they made us feel good at the end.

Well done, Volkswagen. I still don’t know why anybody buys your cars, but I’m glad Affluent Youngish Dad got the one with remote-start, so as to help his kid continue his dreams of becoming a Sith Lord. Thus ends the reign of the Impala SS and the Grand National and any other black car with a big engine. Lord Vader, your juice box is ready. I hope you like Ecto Cooler.

Super Bowl Commercials 2011: Doritos Gets Horror Movie Weird

2011-02-07T18:41:43Z

I don’t think any 2011 Super Bowl Commercial got closer to that weird, internet-born tone of creepy weirdness for its own sake than Doritos’ leadoff ad, which featured a guy who loves all of the worst parts of Doritos. Maybe it’s my fault for working at a keyboard all day, but I can’t believe in a Doritos ad that suggests fingers covered in cheese-dust are a positive:

The pug ad was a little more conventional, but this one just continued to leave a bad taste in my mouth throughout Super Bowl XLV. Maybe because that guy’s fingers were in there. If I may TV-Trope one major feature of a lot of recent horror movies, it’s this: The Human Who Doesn’t Act Like A Human Or Move In Human Ways. Japanese films are especially good at this. It doesn’t make me laugh in a Super Bowl ad.

SB Nation suggests this weirdness comes from the Doritos commercial’s overlap on a certain Venn Diagram: The space in which “Men with Malicious Intentions” and “Men With Severe, Undiagnosed Learning Disabilities” meet, which is in fact where most male commercial figures originate. What I have to wonder is how all these idiotic male figures in Super Bowl commercials managed to get married to their super-hot spouses in the first place. (I sense a Match.com Super Bowl commercial idea coming on…)

Christina Aguilera National Anthem-Gate: Did She Get The Lyrics Wrong?

2011-02-07T17:49:17Z

Christina Aguilera is probably fuming at her timing right now. Judging by the amount of buzz she’s garnering this morning she should have sung the National Anthem’s words wrong before the release of her last movie, the not-quite-worldbeating Burlesque.

SB Nation’s official take is that she went off the rails at the 40-second mark, though we have no idea whether or not she managed to hit the over on that 1:54 prop bet from earlier in the week. (She threatened, at the end, to spend a minute and 54 seconds on the last word alone, which is the bane of all National Anthem purists.)

We can’t act as though she hadn’t warned us more than 10 years ago that this might happen. In “Genie in a Bottle” she clearly suggests that if we want to be with her (in a National Anthem sense), baby there’s a price to pay—she’s a genie in a bottle, and as such hasn’t had a lot of chances to hear the Star-Spangled Banner performed in English. She’d have nailed it in Arabic, whether you rubbed her the right way or not.

Eminem, Chrysler Make Buzzworthy Super Bowl Commercials Comeback

2011-02-07T17:20:10Z

The Super Bowl Commercials 2011 hype going into the big advertising game was for Volkswagen’s Darth Vader ad, but Eminem and Chrysler appear to have been the most effective combination of pop culture icon and down-on-its-luck brand in the 2011 Super Bowl of Car Commercials. “Imported from Detroit”, which met an indifferent response from car aficionados when Chrysler trotted it out in December, has suddenly become a buzzworthy tagline. It’s as unlikely a comeback as Eminem’s huge crossover hits from last year.

In a sporting event designed almost specifically to play on our most patriotic urges and fete our love of the underdog it was a brilliant move, and I’d be stunned if all parties involved—Chrysler, the real Slim Shady, especially Detroit—don’t see significantly higher approval ratings this morning than they did last week.

The 200 isn’t on my must-buy list yet, but I’ll be proud to rent one on accident someday, and I’m lying to you and myself if I don’t say I’ll probably listen to “Lose Yourself” at least once when that happens. The opportunity, I’m told, comes once in a lifetime.

Green Bay Packers Super Bowl Winners; Vince Lombardi Trophy At Ancestral Home

2011-02-07T17:06:42Z

The Green Bay Packers have won Super Bowl XLV, and for the first time since Super Bowl XXXI in 1997 the Vince Lombardi Trophy will return to its ancestral home in Wisconsin. It's the fourth such win for the Packers, putting them within one of second place—the San Francisco 49ers and Dallas Cowboys have five—and two of the Pittsburgh Steelers' six.

The win also leaves Aaron Rodgers tied with Brett Favre for second on the Packers' roster of Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks. Bart Starr took the first two and maintains the record, although Rodgers, 28 next season, has plenty of time to chase Starr down. After half a lifetime of Favre comparisons being compared to another iconic Hall of Fame quarterback should be no big deal.

It's hard to compare quarterbacks across eras, but if Rodgers wasn't quite so flawless as Bart Starr in Super Bowl I he did an outstanding job of playing with the burden of the entire offense on his shoulders—James Starks ran the ball just nine times, so the Packers didn't even pretend otherwise. It was Rodgers' game, and he won it.

Super Bowl XLV Score: Packers Vs. Steelers An Offensive Affair

2011-02-07T17:05:58Z

I was always told, growing up, that defense wins championships. Super Bowl XLV was characterized by some crucial defensive turnovers, including Nick Collins's momentum-shifting pick-six on Ben Roethlisberger in the first quarter. But the final score doesn't look like a matchup between two teams that averaged 15 points allowed a game between them. Both teams finished above their seasonal scoring average, and Aaron Rodgers's three touchdowns turned out to make the difference.

Even the Packers only allowed more than 25 points twice in the regular season—against the New England Patriots and, of all times, the Detroit Lions. The Pittsburgh Steelers only allowed 30 points once, again against the Patriots. Tom Brady, the 2010 NFL MVP, did not play in the 2011 Super Bowl, so far as I can tell.

It was a wild and dynamic game, defense-wise, but there were too many times when Rodgers and Roethlisberger were tearing through defenses as advertised to say that defense won this championship. But I'll have to leave it to Sportswriter-Platitude-Busters to confirm or deny it for good; I haven't yet earned my own cable TV show, so my opinion is not final.