Today’s the day – SuperBowl XLI. Hundreds of millions of people around the world will eat junk food, drink beer, and watch the best television advertising all year interrupted periodically with a football game.
Six startups (Meebo, Meez, Multiply, Plaxo, RockYou and Technorati) who can’t afford the $2.5 million plus for a thirty second spot during the game got together to produce low-budget “SuperBowl” ads and put them on YouTube. Some of them are pretty entertaining. Others, not so much. We’ve embedded all of them below and have a poll to see which one you like the best.
By the way, last year’s real SuperBowl ads are still up on Google Video at video.google.com/superbowl.html. I assume Google will replace those ads with SuperBowl XLI ads tomorrow. Yahoo will also be hosting the actual SuperBowl ads once the games starts at Yahoo Video.
My favorite “startup” ad is Technorati, although they cheated by using footage from one of my favorite movies. Plaxo and Meebo are tied for second place.
The ads and poll are below, in this order: Meebo, Meez, Multiply, Plaxo, RockYou and Technorati:
- Technorati
- Plaxo
- Meebo
- RockYou
- Meez
- Multiply
Total Votes: 1038
Started: February 4, 2007
the plaxo spot is my favorit. i dont know if any of the startups can afford such huge amounts for adertising only 30 seconds – the ROI for web 2.0 startups would be very low. I´ve listened to an interview with the reddit founders where they explained the fact that they did not afford to participate to a tech conference due to the low budget they initially had.. so i don’t thing they would evan think of spending such huge amounts of money on super bowl advertising.
what a waste of suck
They all suck
Because of the new maturity of online video, these Superbowl ads seem to just be getting bigger and bigger. The companies behind them must giggle with delight when the adverts get millions of more views on the Internet after they are shown on TV.
holy SH** these are awful, thank GOD these companies didn’t have the 2.5mil otherwise god knows what abominations they would have unleashed to the masses. these are all very very bad, and I hope that the people who made them come here, read the comments, and cry.
I think that plaxo really identified one of their benefits in this commercial, I’m not sure the others did.
A commercial still needs to tell a story – funny is not enough.
Thats some loooooow budget production! They should consider taking lessons from kids on youtube.
im not really a fuseball fan lol…and those commercials do suck pretty bad… look out for our commercial on http://www.dobizo.com
a good one!
No wonder these companies don’t have the money for a SuperBowl ad.
Didn’t vote, they all sucked too bad.
Worst game ever.
http://r2000.blogspot.com
They were fun. Dont be so mean.
http://microimage.blogspot.com
Some of the videos are pretty cute, but almost all of them use copyrighted material (music clips, movie clips) etc. which I find quite disturbing.
I am however a believer in viral video, especially for smaller companies that do not have a budget to compete with the big guys. We have produced 25 viral commercials (released every Monday) at a very low budget ($10,000) for our personals website WITHOUT using copyrighted material…
http://www.yout...=lonelybloggers
Again, almost all of the companies Michael mentioned broke the law by integrating using copyrighted material whether it be sound clips or video clips from movies … We had to produce all of our own original material and not use any commercial songs, the companies above should be held to the same standards. (you know the law..)
Hey Mike,
You should start a section on your website called TechCrunch Commercials where web2.0 startups submit commercials of their services and you post them. You would have a seperate RSS feed for it too. Hopefully they would be a lot better than what these Hacks have put together, the Meez one is not bad though.
Stan
Idea Thunderdome
Probably would have been better for bunch of startups to get together and make a higher-budget commercial “starring your friends on the Internet”, although I’m not sure anything but the social aspect tied them together. Overall, a sucky bunch of ads, but Technorati and Plaxo seemed to be shinier turds.
Technorati is the funniest, but only because it’s a clip ripped from an actual movie that I find funny… For that reason, I go with the second funniest – Plaxo.
“Taste my 3000 friends!” ?
And, I totally forgot about Plaxo. I need that.
They are all so horrible.
All of them were extremely weak.
man, those are all pretty awful. i voted for technorati because they referenced a movie and at least the movie was cool.
I am underwhelmed. Still, it was funny to see how creative they could get with little money.
Uh… while all were mildly amusing to me, it’s worth nothing that all either took material from existing movies or ads, or imitated other advertising (the car ad and the beer ad). While some might say this is satire, because all of them did it I think it’s because they couldn’t think of a remotely original idea. Pretty sad when people are asked to make an ad promoting their company, most just end up copying other ads. It’s like advertisements for advertisements…
Thank you Tech Crunch… my Sunday morning is off to a tremendous start. All of those ads blew.
removing sharp pencils from my eyeballs…not as painful as watching these spots…
have any of these web 2.blow companies heard of getting their product’s name up front in an ad? storytelling, sound design, editing, lighting…originality? it’s typical that tech companies think their tech product sells itself. for these companies…the products better be good because the money/time/resources spent on these weak ass ‘ads’ isn’t going to help, even with the publicity you’ve given these adolescent efforts.
To LonelyBloggers #15,
These commercials broke no laws because they are “parodies”, and parody is allowed per two Supreme Court decisions. Here is the passage from Wikipedia regarding “Parody”:
“The Supreme Court of the United States stated that parody “is the use of some elements of a prior author’s composition to create a new one that, at least in part, comments on that author’s works.” That commentary function provides some justification for use of the older work. See Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. Other notable US court decisions involving parody include Suntrust v. Houghton Mifflin (Affirming the right of Alice Randall to publish a parody of Gone with the Wind called The Wind Done Gone, which told the same story from the point of view of Scarlett O’Hara’s slaves)…”
so its (protected)Rugby time again in your little corner of the globe is it!.
it amazing that these companys payed good money for these adverts, did any of these really make you (as an american i assume living there)want to go out and buy these things whatever they were?.
whats with the US obsession with more is better, (it fills less, whats that all about?, is that why theres so many fat people over there!).
i thought the advocating of obscureing the drivers view a rather strange message to be putting out.
all this cash and no tallent to speak of, perhaps they might be better to pay a UK/EU inovator to create something far better than this dross i assume you get on your tv screens all the time ?.
its easy today, look on the web for interesting clips produced by talented, send them and email outlining your requirements and personal contact details etc, stick some cash into their accounts for initial costs of producing Proof of concept, then commission some real work that might actually sell your product as it will shine like a bright light over all the dross you seem to be forced to watch?……
rugby the real way to play , football is for pussys and hardcase UK hooligans.
rugby PIP ,EU, earth.
I think these ads suck because these companies suck. What worthless ideas for companies and products.
They all pretty much suck, but Technorati didn’t suck as much as the others. Yawn!!!!
Hey Mike,
Dont forget about Cellswapper’s Superbowl Ad. It sucks at least as much as the others…err less than the others.
http://www.yout...h?v=ravzuTU2SVs
Team Cellswapper
Parody is Fair Use – I understand, but tell that to the music and movie industry people.. The clips above are in clear violations of copyright law (at least in the eyes of the executives out there) trying to combat copyright violation.
Wasn’t YouTube just asked to remove 100,000 clips from Viacom?
When 99% of your video is actual film footage, there is nothing involved there other than theft .. It certainly will be interesting to see how this battle plays out in the future …
We could ask the Vapors how they like having their 1980 hit “Turning Japanese” ripped off too — Retro yes, parody no…
#32 LonelyBloggers says, “It certainly will be interesting to see how this battle plays out in the future…”
The “battle” has been fought. The U. S. Supreme has rendered its opinion in the case of “Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, 510 U.S. 569 (1994)”. From Wikipedia, this is the gist of the case:
“The members of the rap music group 2 Live Crew composed a song called “Pretty Woman,” a parody based on Roy Orbison’s rock ballad, “Oh, Pretty Woman”…Acuff Rose sued 2 Live Crew for copyright infringement. The District Court granted summary judgment for 2 Live Crew, holding that its song was a parody that made fair use of the original song under § 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 (17 U.S.C. § 107)…The case went all the way to The Supreme Court, which held that 2 Live Crew’s commercial parody may be a fair use within the meaning of § 107.”
I’m sure Roy Orbison was pissed, but the U. S. Supreme Court has spoken on the issue of “parody”.
Forget the commercials – GO BEARS!
Technology keeps advancing but quality content less so.
I’m certainly not a lawyer, but you might not want to rely on Wikipedia, either. While parody IS fair-use, commercial use is (typically) not parody, by definition. LonelyBloggers is spot-on here, and I think is just trying to help.
Ok – I’m off to produce a parody video with some hot Paris Hilton or Britney Spears footage then. Thanks Roy and Supreme Court for allowing me to steal content from the people that created it. Go Bears!
Holy Crap I can’t wait for this bubble to burst. If after putting time, effort and creativity into these spots, and all these guys could come up with is stuff that actually made me want to walk away from my computer and read a book!? I have to say the vultures have begun to circle on this internet corpse. Forget about a business plan, if you’re a web 2.0 company and you can’t even get people on youtube to care about you its time to close up shop and go back to your last job – being a stoner (using plaxo to keep your address book of course).
Here’s a neat trick, next time you’re cleaning the espresso machine at some starbucks in silicon valley and come up with a “super-killer-app.” call up some guy in Chicago, anyone it doesn’t even matter, and ask him if he thinks its a cool idea. If you A) can’t even really describe why anyone would want it or B) get dead silence on the other line – go back and finish cleaning the damn machine – you’re not ready to tackle Apple just yet buck-o!
Got to give up to David Sifry’s technorati. Anyone who enjoys Lebowski as much as I do earns my vote.
I don’t understand why you alert us all to splashcast and then post several youtube clips in an unglamourous scroll. I don’t work for splashcast i just don’t understand why you don’t use your own good advice
Wow- Plaxo is still alive? That’s news for me. Not for long though. I hope the other web2.0 startups listed here will follow the steps of Plaxo into oblivion.
Why? Have you seen a viable company doing things like this? Like imageshack.us? Or Flickr? Or craigslist? I do not think so.
OMFGLMAO sutrostyle aced it.
the rock you ad made me laugh so hard. i hope it was a joke
the only one that stands out for me is plaxo’s ad.
um, plaxo’s completely jacked the premise (”just one man, come on!”) and scene (”we’re goin’ streaking!”) from “old school” and the voiceover at the end couldn’t sound more awkward and forced.
SUCK.
Just FYI –
the Google Video SuperBowl link that Mike references will be redirecting to YouTube’s SuperBowl page where the 2007 ads will be featured.
Enjoy!
- Hunter, on behalf of the Google Video team
for those of you that bagged on Plaxo are total H A T E R S!!!!
I looked at the first one, which wasn’t funny, didn’t have a point, did contain a staggeringly grating squeaky voice and told me absolutely nothing about Meebo.
It’s possible that I might feel better about having those two minutes of my life stolen from me if I could shove a dictionary, whole, down the throat of the moron above who seems to think that it in some way meets any definition of a parody. But I doubt it.
The best commercial of the game so far was the snickers commercial. Too funny…do something manly….duh Bears…
“PixelHead
The best commercial of the game so far was the snickers commercial. Too funny…do something manly….duh Bears… ”
as a non amercan reading the blog, i cant see these so called funny adverts, perhasp you have a direct url to them so we can have a laugh when we are bored in the office?.
perhaps a http://www.zude...redContent.html for the better HD quality ones as youtube dont do video very good as they dont seem to like AVC/H.264 my favourite video codec and growing fast in the EU.
Please god why me? Why won’t my eyes stop bleeding!
No seriously, as a founder of a web 2.0 startup and a professional TV commercial producer I can honestly say that these guys didn’t do such a bad job for 1st timers. I mean, I can’t actually remember ever seeing a collection of content that sucked as much ass as this, but that’s the fun of it – cool idea!
I think the prize should be awarded to the suckiest clip of the bunch – judged on who actually tried to make a good commercial and totally fricken blew it. If that was the metric we’d have some serious contenders on the playing field.
None of them deserve a vote. Wow these suck. Can we negative vote?
Wow, those were terrible. Maybe the vote should be for the worst, not best.
Well, vSocial has all the superbowl commercials from this year and last up at http://superbowl.vsocial.com
This is a proPublisher site from our turnkey, self-service, video site offerings.
“Hundreds of millions of people around the world”
Again Arrington, america IS NOT the world
Only american watch the superbowl