Monday, February 5. 2007

Off Topic: How Was the Garmin SuperBowl Ad?

Well, Ed Parsons liked it.

- Ed Parsons.com

The critics didn't, but then, they didn't like most of the "first timers" ads.

Commercials from several first-time Super Bowl advertisers were also panned by experts, including spots for online sales lead generator Salesgenie.com, GPS navigation system Garmin and King Pharmaceuticals (Charts), which ran an ad for an American Heart Association Web site.

- CNN

Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University organizes a panel of students to rate the ads. They deemed Garmin's ad "hard to follow."
- Canadian Press

A blogger at Blabbermouth.net has the whole story about the "theme" of the ad, and discusses the use of a metal band lead by Steve Grimmett.

Taken to the extreme, the commercial is a humorous 1960s-style sci-fi piece. The commercial's quirky low-tech production treatment is in playful contrast to Garmin's cutting edge GPS technology and other advertisers' use of complex computer effects.

Ray Somich, president of WELW-AM 1330 in notheat Ohio didn't like it, either.

On the flip side for Somich was a Garmin GPS ad mimicking a Japanese horror flick that did little to reinforce the product, he said. "You watched this thing and it was like, what the heck is this all about?" he said.

- NewsHerald.com
You have to admit the ad got Garmin some good buzz, even if it didn't win the ad sweepstakes.