The first round of 2012 Super Bowl commercials is here, and Old Navy has gone the fake brand route, suggesting you Dress Like A Guy, but not their tai-chi-performing 80s thirtysomething in “Corporado,” which—aside from a flip phone in a holster—is just about indistinguishable from the kind of corporate-casual stuff you could buy at, say, Macy’s.
Which is great, but what, exactly, does Old Navy propose men—sorry, Guys—dress like instead? That’s more or less unexplained, though if I’m going off what I saw last time I went to Old Navy it looks a lot like what you could dress like at The Gap, only with more fake branding and locations on the front of the t-shirts.
One of the dangers of making viral ads is that people don’t necessarily want to go to your website to get advertised to some more. I don’t think the average Super Bowl-watching Guy is going to go to Old Navy’s website to figure out their alternate solution—particularly while they’re trying to prove their Guyness by watching the Super Bowl. “Bro, can you pass the iPad? I want to see what’s better than polos and khaki shirts. No, not from an expert, from Old Navy.”