Advertising wants to be the biggest and the baddest.   Advertising tries to blow itself out of the water.   I’m not insinuating that we shouldn’t strive for excellence and progress.  Just sayin’ that excellence and progress are not synonymous with over-the-top and in-your-face.  It is synonymous with creative thinking and innovation.

Let’s talk Superbowl for a sec.

30-second ad slots selling for un-godly amounts of cash.  Notably the best commercials of the year air during the Superbowl, and not without reason.  If I was getting millions of viewers, I’d want my brand to be seen too.  However, being seen, as we just talked about, does not mean being the biggest and the baddest.

Getting seen means standing out.  And being simple is standing out.

Think of the Superbowl ads you see.  Clean, suave, sexy, appealing, funny, enticing, and tantalizing.  They evoke all of these emotions.

But what about surprise and simplicity?  I envision a Superbowl ad that packs just as much punch as a “traditional Superbowl ad”, but is simplified by 10^-9.  Here’s what I came up with:

An old-school movie countdown from 25, and 5 seconds of an image for whatever the product is (let’s pretend it’s beer).  You KNOW that for those 25 seconds, you are not going to leave your couch.  You are too confused and interested in what is going to happen to leave.  This advertising is the most memorable of the game.

Take that Budweiser.

Photo credit seantoyer