Media mavens know the world series of advertising is, in fact, not the World Series but the Super Bowl. So what does that make baseball’s championship series?
Let’s say it’s more than a bunt, less than a grand slam.
For the Rockies-Red Sox showdown, Fox is commanding north of $400,000 per 30-second spot. That’s the minor leagues if you consider it’s about one-fifth the 2007 Super Bowl commercial price tag.
Still, it’s not pocket change.
At that rate, you’d think the advertisers would want their messages to be memorable. Or at least decipherable.
Wednesday night’s telecast included some solid hits and a few errors:
Taco Bell nicely made fun of macho posturing in its spot starring a lap dog.
Conversely, the most annoyingly macho, not to mention xenophobic, ad was the Toyota Tundra spot, playing on the presumption that a foreign import couldn’t possibly measure up to an American-made truck.
That tough-guy imperial attitude was balanced by the humble spot for Flomax medication, promising relief for enlarged prostates.
The best, most inviting and visually distinctive ad of the night was the new HP spot starring Jerry Seinfeld, in which the comic shows off his HP notebook and plugs his “Bee Movie” while appearing to work some fancy digital magic. Smartly self-conscious and funny, too.
Fox took advantage of the inflated audience to prominently pitch its upcoming action-drama series, “The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” as well as the ongoing series “House,” “Bones,” “The Simpsons” and “Nip/Tuck” on sister cable channel FX.
The DirecTV blimp hovering in the rain over Fenway Park, complete with an HD aerial camera system and the world’s largest airborne LED video screen, got a plug from Joe Buck and Tim McCarver between Fox’s annoyingly busy graphics and comments on the soggy weather.
Viewers are now so accustomed to the virtual ads behind home plate – those digitally inserted logos that look like billboards but change periodically – that they’re no longer distracting. Like the Chevy Malibu, they’ve become easy to ignore.
The best aspect of Fox’s heavily wired coverage was the “sounds of the game” feature that allowed for running commentary on the bad weather and the slick balls from the groundsmen.
Finally, there was the spot that’s not the worst, only the most tiresome of the month. Are you sick of Dane Cook yet? The actor-comedian is pitching for Major League Baseball (“There is only one postseason, there is only one fall classic, there is only one October”) and by now, we’ve seen his mug more often than Clint Hurdle’s.
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com
