signature: "Having sex is like playing bridge. If you don't have a good partner, you'd better have a good hand (at least sex toys)"

Agata

V1650

Message sent and received.

smart42

om Bronx de Mowgli

now about ads: Coke I suppose were my better.. though the careerbuilder ones were different and most likely my favorites.(though from what I remember after last year's super bowl, I was in the minority that liked the careerbuilder spots with the guys in the forest wearing binders as head protection etc)

sunsilk wasted the $10Million they paid Madonna for those 5 seconds and I HATED the Toyota spot.

om Bronx de Mowgli

And yeah, I liked the Coke spots...the Carville/Frist and even the hot air balloons. Maybe that last one is because I lived down the street from where they blow them up on the Upper West Side.

Al Navarro

mikedrawcar

Scored at 5.49. Beats Hyundai, but not Sun Silk or the Toyota "Badgers & Cannons" ad.

Al Navarro

I guess I fall into the category of "when you have a car this good to promote, just show me the car, and let me hear the f-ing sweet sounds of it driving"...they could have looped that for the full 60 and it would have worked better for me.

My favorite ads of the night were the Coke ones.

Al Navarro

The boldness was appealing, the shot of the LEDs was amazing on my projector and the f'in exhaust sounded A-OK in 6.1!!! wee hoo

All in all, I get the borrowed interest (shit Renault and Simpson's are at it as of today) but still think it was a great introduction of their award winning car to the masses. At least they didn't tout that in the spot!

om Bronx de Mowgli

FЯeeMan is slowly cЯawling out of the new commenting system

i don't know....i thought the 'new luxury' tag was alright, but i currently think of Audis as cars for sorority girls once they grow up and get a decent job. VWs are what they drive while in school..

drewheyman

Worst. Car. Commercial. Launched. At. The. 2008. Superbowl. Ever.

If I was more than a guest poster at the Jalop, I would have toiled long into the night picking this spot apart frame by frame and posted my Monday Morning Creative Director commentary early this AM.

However, I was too busy enjoying the low scoring game and sleeping to do so. Let's just say I thought the Audi R8 spot was terrible. Awful. Far worse than the Hyundai spots.

Here's a quickie why:

I'm pretty sure this ran in the first commercial break after kickoff. Premium placement. So you better pull out your best stuff. And what does Audi and its agency Venables Bell & Partners give us? Borrowed interest.

For those not familiar with the term, "borrowed interest" is when an advertiser uses some theme/device to promote a product which has very little to nothing to do with your product. Think Met Life and Snoopy. Okay, when you throw a lot of money over a period of time at a concept like this, it can work. Like Met Life and Snoopy.

But in the case of the Audi spot, for their 60 seconds in the sun, they chose to borrow a leitmotif from The Godfather. The famous horse head in bed scene. But instead of a horse's head, they use a caricature of a "luxury car" (I see Rolls/Checker Cab) front clip. And the wronged-by-Johnny Fontaine producer stand-in screams. Cut to R8 outside, getting ready to zoom away. Then zooming away. There are some supers/slates about "putting luxury cars on notice" or some other self-aggrandizing line mixed in there too.

The client and agency's tragic flaw in the process was thinking that a car as amazing as the R8 needs to resort to borrowed interest. At least Ford knew better when it did that GT "Pace car for an entire company" commercial a few years back. Audi could have just shown the R8 driving in anger complete with engine sounds and it would have been better. A lot better. Sniff.

(FWIW, I am a huge fan of Audi cars and drive a TT daily.)

Al Navarro

pferde_schwanz

bmoredlj

die cheap luxury...die!!!

Stuntdriver

In the hard-to-reach "Cynical Car-Hating 18-22" Demographic, the ad did pretty well after the token "WTFs" and "OMG, we don't know anything about cars and naturally I hate anything I don't know about" comments halfway through, until the tagline resulted in some amusement. Too bad said chortling prevented me from hearing the glorious exhaust note that redeemed this otherwise random, potentially cringe-worthy commercial.

bzr

om Bronx de Mowgli

peakay

smokyburnout

mikedrawcar

The R8 is new luxury only to those who did too much coke in the '80s to remember the M1, Espirit and numerous Italian cars. Come to think of it, that's probably not a horrible target demographic for the car.

no_slushbox

RottNDude

With the asking price what it is there is hardly anything else in it's price range that gives you the best of both worlds quite as well.

apexpredator

djmolwi

Leofan7

Charles_Barrett - Now with Variable-Valve Timing

sos10

smokyburnout

DoctorNine makes tires squeal in terror

NovaloadMissesPolar

KatzManDu

KatzManDu

superbad

UDMan

oneswellfoop

Ted Striker

R-GTI

R-GTI

SLR_BlowerMania

camp6ell

pjsammy

DoctorNine makes tires squeal in terror

Is that the same car that we've seen in the Iron Man promos?

rejectnation

At least now we know the real purpose of those side blades.

j6r

sos10

MustaineGT

The-Simpsons-Rule!!

stevecmh

PatFromGundo