posted by lee on Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 at 7:00am
Here at Overthinking It, we’ve been talking about a disturbing trend in advertising for several years. We saw several (nine, to be exact) instances of this in last Saturday’s Super Bowl. Here’s an example:
Advertiser: Doritos
Message: “Eating Doritos will get you shocked by a dog.”
Huh? Why is this a good thing? How is this supposed to sell Doritos? Well, we’re not really sure, but we’ve coined a phrase that aptly describes this perplexing phenomenon:
“Bad Things Happen To You When You Use Our Product.”
Let’s explore this trend further with some more examples.
posted by Matthew Wrather on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 1:07am
Matthew Wrather hosts with Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, Josh McNeil, and John Perich to overthink Super Bowl XLIV, especially its downtrodden, misogynistic commercials and its geriatric halftime show.
For the second time, we were livestreaming the podcast recording on Ustream (on the Overthinking It Podcast Page, where it will return next Sunday at 9:15pm ET/6:15pm PT).
posted by lee on Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009 at 10:49pm
The day after the game, when our “Superbowl” podcast hit the site, I noticed that our editor had chosen to spell it in one word, as opposed to the standard “Super Bowl.” At first I thought nothing of it; I just attributed the variance to his self-professed ignorance of all things football.
Fear began to overcome me. If the all-powerful media, with its copy checkers and style guides, was getting it wrong, what, then, of the general public?
Google Trends (an infallible source of knowledge) confirmed my worst fears: as a search term, “Superbowl” has pulled ahead of “Super Bowl.” America officially can’t spell.
(Note: The above charts use Google Trends from the US only to minimize the impact of non-English speakers sullying the results.)
Yes, I realize this is teh inturwebz, where mangling the English language is par for the course. But I had faith that Americans would at least take the time to spell “SUPER BOWL,” that most sacred of all American days, properly. I was wrong.
Readers, what do you think? Is this a new American Spelling Crisis, just another case of language evolving, or somethingmuchworse?
posted by lee on Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009 at 8:11am
Overthinking It salutes this year’s Super Bowl champions with some totally unnecessary Excel.
As the series of graphs below demonstrate, the Pittsburgh Steelers perform better when the US produces more steel, but the Denver Nuggets perform worse with increased gold production, as do the Tennessee Titans (formerly the Houston Oilers) with increased oil production.*
Click on any of the graphs for larger versions.
*Yes, I know that extremely weak (i.e., virtually non-existent) correlation does not equal causation.
posted by sheely on Monday, February 2nd, 2009 at 10:08pm
One of the videos that made it into our Super Bowl ad roundup was the Conan O’Brien ad for Bud Light, in which his agent/manager/ambiguous guy in a suit convinces him to make an embarrassing Bud Light Ad by assuring him that it will “only be seen in Sweden”.
The message of this spot seems to be “Drink Bud Light because it is a beer for awesome-non-Eurotrash-American Dudes!” In the world of the commercial, the only way that the effete Swedes could be convinced to drink Bud Light is with fire, mesh tops, and cheesy techno. But does anyone really still hold this view of Europeans?
posted by Matthew Wrather on Monday, February 2nd, 2009 at 12:21am
The Overthinkers tackle everything about the superbowl except, um, football. Matthew Wrather hosts a panel including Matthew Belinkie, Peter Fenzel, and Mark Lee to overthink Superbowl commercials, the Bruce Springsteen halftime show, and why nobody ever made a Star Trek about a cargo ship.
Comments? Rants? Raves? Email podcast at overthinkingit dot com or call 20-EAT-LOG-01 (that’s (203) 285-6401).
