the frequency a kenny chung blog

February 2nd, 2014
according to

Here’s a recap of my thoughts on the commercials that aired during Super Bowl 48. Overall, I thought it was a pretty lackluster year. I went out of my way to not watch any of them beforehand (except some for work). Thoughts below:

  • Most of the car commercials were weird for the sake of being weird, or just complete misses.
  • Microsoft had a pretty damn heartwarming commercial (I actually recognized the cochlear implant clip from reddit a few years ago).
  • I don’t know who Cure is, but I hate them.
  • Budweiser went for half quality, half quantity. The Arnold ping pong and the homecoming one were the better ones.
  • Fox did a pretty good job at building interest in the new season of 24.

February 5th, 2012
according to
Great game. Congrats to the New York Giants. But to the majority of the creative ad agencies tonight, shame on you. #SBAds #brandbowl
10:04 PM Feb 5th
B.D. Wong is back! This NBC show “Awake” actually looks promising. But then again, it’s NBC. #SBAds
9:41 PM Feb 5th
That Samsung commercial started out boring and old, but once The Darkness kicked in, it was awesome. #SBAds
9:26 PM Feb 5th
Adriana Lima redux with the Kia commercial. That was kinda hilarious. #SBAds
9:20 PM Feb 5th
Two good commercials. Hyundai and Budweiser. If only the first three quarters had commercials like these. #SBAds
9:14 PM Feb 5th
Nostalgia attack with that Metlife commercial. Not much substance though. #SBAds
9:07 PM Feb 5th
That commercial about NFL safety wasn’t the sexiest topic, but it was done well. That Time Warner spot was a waste of Ricky Gervais. #SBAds
9:02 PM Feb 5th
Jerry Seinfeld is not relevant anymore. #SBAds
8:45 PM Feb 5th
That Toyota commercial wasn’t bad. Not all the jokes hit, but it was a valiant effort. #SBAds
8:43 PM Feb 5th
Surprised that people actually like the Clint Eastwood Chrysler commercial. I thought it was so blatant & trying way too hard to be AMURRCA! #SBAds
8:42 PM Feb 5th
As far as the objectification of women goes, that Fiat commercial was a lot better than the Teleflora one. #SBAds
8:40 PM Feb 5th
Drew Brees Chase commercial was good, but not Super Bowl worthy. Ford + Derek Jeter just needs to stop trying. #SBAds
8:31 PM Feb 5th
Chrysler trying to recreate last year’s patriotic sentiment with this Clint Eastwood spot. Lightning didn’t strike twice. Eminem was better.
8:21 PM Feb 5th
For the second year in a row, Ford’s marketing strategy for the Super Bowl is “Derek Jeter”. Seriously, stop wasting money.
7:54 PM Feb 5th
Doritos is the big winner so far in the 2nd quarter. The only 2 good commercials… Wait, did E-trade just make a baby pedophile joke?
7:44 PM Feb 5th
It’s funny watching Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow armed with only a pistol. Batman in the Justice League, she is not.
7:39 PM Feb 5th
AVENGERS!!!!
7:35 PM Feb 5th
BTW, if you haven’t seen the OK GO music video featuring the Chevy Sonic, here’s the @reddit thread about it- http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comme…
7:34 PM Feb 5th
Dear H&M, you do realize this is a FOOTBALL game, right?
7:20 PM Feb 5th
Seriously? Chevy is running an ad that they didn’t even create specifically for the Super Bowl? Google can get away with it; Chevy cannot.
7:08 PM Feb 5th
First quarter of #SBAds has been disappointing. If I had to choose (with a gun to my head), the Chevy 2012 ad is so far the best one.
7:06 PM Feb 5th
Best Buy sucks, but that Zynga Words with Friends gag was hilarious.
6:54 PM Feb 5th
Bud Light Platinum is the first commercial of #SBXLVI. Calling it now – most unintentionally hilarious commercial of the night.
6:40 PM Feb 5th
Is Kelly Clarkson being accompanied by the Best Buy backup choir?
6:18 PM Feb 5th
Adrian Brody has a hell of a goatee.
6:13 PM Feb 6th
February 6th, 2011
according to
These are some of the most disappointing commercials I’ve ever seen. The car ads (especially Ford) are missing the mark left & right. #SBAds
7:21 PM Feb 6th
I really wish that Motorola Xoom commercial was better. Any ad that takes subtle stabs at Apple and their cult-ure is worth creating. #SBAds
7:30 PM Feb 6th
Did Ford seriously pay for TWO of those Derek Jeter/Empire State of Mind “New York” spots? Someone really needs to be fired for that. #SBAds
8:06 PM Feb 6th
This Black Eyed Peas Super Bowl halftime show is like one gigantic commercial for autotune. But wait, isn’t 2008 actually 2000 and late now?
8:13 PM Feb 6th
Wait, WHAT? Did Slash just make a cameo for the f’n Black Eyed Peas?! What a huge waste of Sweet Child of Mine. For shame, Slash. For shame.
8:16 PM Feb 6th
Was there a buy-two-get-one-free deal on Super Bowl ads? There is no other explanation for why I just watched that Ford/Jeter ad THREE times
8:29 PM Feb 6th
Did that Groupon commercial just make light of the struggle of the Tibetans? Can’t decide if that’s worse than the LivingSocial crossdresser
8:51 PM Feb 6th
Wow, Eminem has been in two commercials. That Chrysler ad was actually pretty good. Maybe a little late but the heart was in the right place
9:04 PM Feb 6th
Nostalgia attack! Who would’ve thought that Uncle Jesse and Michael Richards would be part of a Super Bowl spot? Good job with that one, NFL
9:24 PM Feb 6th
I really hope Johnny Depp has a line in that Rango movie where he says, “We can’t stop here, this is owl country.” #SBAds
9:35 PM Feb 6th
That Chevy commercial was all sorts of win. Honorable mention goes to the Verizon iPhone ad. I guess they really did save the best for last.
9:59 PM Feb 6th
February 12th, 2010
according to

“Simpsons” from Coca Cola
Apparently, some people liked this commercial. I found it confusing without any real message. Drinking Coca Cola will make an evil (financially and morally) bankrupt billionaire happy? Is that their target audience? To me, it just seemed like Coca Cola creative didn’t have any real ideas and decided that since The Simpsons is universally recognized, it’d be an easy way to create a very, very costly commercial.

“Charles Barkley” from Taco Bell
Why does this commercial exist? I can see it airing during primetime or late night. But during the Super Bowl?! Why is Charles Barkley the spokesperson for anything? Can somebody please answer that?

“KISS” from Dr. Pepper
First of all, KISS is no longer relevant and the original “Dr. Love” campaign was terrible. So what did Dr. Pepper decide to do? They expanded it and aired it during the Super Bowl. “What’s that, you say? There are midgets little people this time around? Then I’m sure it’ll be a lot better.” Except it wasn’t.

“Life Not Wife” by Bridgestone
This was a real disappointment. They went to great lengths for a pretty corny and forced joke. I liked their Alice Cooper/Richard Simmons ad from last year (or at least didn’t hate it), but this one totally underdelivered and frankly, it was boring.

In the “How The Heck Did They Afford a Super Bowl Spot” category:
“Shape-Ups” by Skechers
This commercial was terrible, but Skechers is a big company. So maybe the question isn’t how they purchased a spot, but WHY? It also featured Joe Montana for some reason. Pass.

“Tech Talk” from Metro PCS
I don’t have a link to this commercial, but trust me, you’re better off for that. It blatantly played off of racial stereotypes. It featured two Indian tech gurus talking about Metro PCS cell phone service. It ended with Indian women dancing around the “contestant” on their talk show. It made very little sense, and probably alienated a lot of people without being the slightest bit amusing. How did they not learn from the whole SalesGenie debacle? Also, how did they afford a Super Bowl spot? Are they really doing that well targeting lower class people?

“Sumo” from kgb
kgb is a service where you text a question to someone and pay a fee for them texting you back the answer. It also started when many people didn’t have Smartphones. Now that almost everyone does, this commercial positioned their product against the slowness of typing a question into a search engine in your browser and having to look through search results to find an answer. How do people do that? That sounds so tedious and pointless and totally sounds like something worth paying someone else to do!

Dishonorable Mentions
CBS had a bunch of commercials advertising their subpar primetime lineup. Last year, NBC also aired a lot of commercials for their shows. Network commercials are a really good indicator of how much advertising budgets have been cut. More CBS commercials means fewer companies purchased Super Bowl spots. There was also an ad featuring David Letterman, Jay Leno and Oprah which I cannot explain.

Who was missing?
In a big surprise, Pepsi pulled out of Super Bowl advertising this year, which reminds me of this little piece of satirical excellence from The Onion. Life imitating art? Perhaps. The real reason is that Pepsi is focused more on online advertising. Maybe this was a godsend for Coca Cola, whose two ads were not particularly great. In the same vein, Anheuser-Busch went uncontested in the beer segment. No Heineken. No Michelob. Are Super Bowl ads not as important, or are they just not worth the cost anymore?

February 8th, 2010
according to

I would be remiss if I didn’t blog about Super Bowl XLIV commercials. I thought last year’s showing was pretty weak (a sign of companies cutting back ad spending), but this year was far worse. There were few that made me laugh out loud, think about something poignant, or really feel any connection to a brand or product.

That is, until Google debuted this wonderful ad titled “Parisian Love”:

Watching it made my jaw drop. It was moving, impressively simple, and 100% Google. It positioned Google as a product anyone at any stage of their life will find useful. It clearly conveyed the point that everybody needs to be using Google. All of the search engine’s many features (translations, maps, directory listings, web definitions, etc.) were seamlessly integrated into the storyline. But it was also simple. It was almost exclusively words typed onto a screen. Anybody with a video editing program could’ve created it from their bedroom.

So why did Google decide to purchase a Super Bowl spot? Maybe the execs felt that Yahoo and Microsoft becoming bedfellows pose a serious threat to Google’s search engine market share. Or maybe it was to combat Apple, who also touts simplicity and usability with all its products, especially the iPhone. But then again, Google has also burst onto the mobile handset scene with its Android operating system. However, this will be a discussion for another time.

Throughout the night, I updated my twitter @kennySHARKchung with my thoughts regarding each commercial break. I decided to create a bracket system that got a little messy; I refined it with some minor changes, and you can see how I decided on my favorite ad by clicking the thumbnail below:

Do you agree or disagree? Leave a comment.

I’ll do a more in-depth analysis of the Super Bowl spots and other honorable mentions.

Update: Turns out Google didn’t even create that ad specifically for the Super Bowl. It’s been available online for 3 months. Somehow I find that more impressive. Sounds like they have ultimate faith in their creative (not to mention the input of the public).