Our pre-Super Bowl coverage continues, this time with a little insight from Tripp Westbrook, who’s actually not a character from Knots Landing, but in fact the partner/executive creative director at Dallas-based agency, Firehouse. Conjuring up the words of Padma Lakshmi, here’s a quickfire Q+A regarding the Big Game with Westbrook, who’s worked as a creative director at GSD&M  and an ACD at Fallon prior to Firehouse.

What ads you’re most looking forward to this year?
I’m trying to go into it with no expectations and just let them wash over me. Yes, I think that might be best.

Is the ever-increasing Super bowl ad cost really worth what’s now $4 million a spot?
Wow, that’s certainly a big number to try and get a return on. However, I think that for the right client with the right execution, it’s certainly possible to generate PR, and talk value, that far exceed the actual media cost. The value can get amplified even further if you leverage other digital/social assets to work hand in hand with it.

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Our Super Bowl coverage continues, now with an entry from Brenda Fiala, who’s spent the last three years in New York as SVP, strategy at Blast Radius and had worked for several years as a strategist at Diageo during her career. Here, Fiala has some sage advice for big game advertisers. So, why waste your time with our drivel, read on.

That which drives sales works. That which does not is a huge failure.

Advocacy and social vitality succeed when they drive sales, and that’s why launching the ad in social media prior to the Super Bowl is worth it if the ad connects with audiences to start sales sooner—as in before the actual game. Unfortunately, too many pre-Super Bowl ad launches may fatigue the audience’s patience over time.  TV is still a funny medium in that its effect on brand sales cannot be directly measured. Digital ads, however, are less ambiguous as drivers of sales.

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Yep, it’s just as silly as it sounds, and so is this pre-Super Bowl spot from Deutsch L.A. for Volkswagen, which lured reggae legend Jimmy Cliff, the man behind The Harder They Come, to, as anyone would imagine, sing the quintessential Partridge Family tune, “Come On Get Happy.”

Why? Well, to bring the mentally unstable YouTube stars of yore together, of course, including Ohio Republican gone-berserk Phil Davison, “sad football fan” and others. With the Star Wars nods behind them (for now), Deutsch LA and VW having Cliff imbue the spirit of the Partridges and reuniting some of the biggest viral stars in recent memory yet again refreshes the brand and should be enough to put football fans at ease–well, at least until kickoff. Credits forthcoming.

Though our interest has waned a tad considering that none of our teams actually made the cut, there is as always plenty of anticipation for the marketing bonanza–er, sorry, NFL football championship–that is the Super Bowl. We expect more industry insight as we head towards the Big Game on Feb. 3, and some post-game thoughts afterwards. So, let’s begin with this ditty from Tony Winders, SVP of marketing at L.A. based in-image ad platform, GumGum. Here, Winders advises marketers on digital plans that extend beyond the TV blitz.

As big brands prepare to spend big money to advertise on CBS during Super Bowl XLVII – reportedly $3.5 million for a 30-second spot – smart advertisers are finding more resourceful ways to reach the Super Bowl’s audience online.
While it’s hard to match the impact of television or the captive audience of consumers as hungry for the ads as they are for the game, use of contextual and audience targeting in the days and weeks surrounding the Super Bowl can extend the reach of a television buy and give advertisers who can’t otherwise afford it a way to associate their brands with the biggest television sporting event of the year.

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Now that pro football fans are stuck in the two-week limbo between the NFL championship games and the Super Bowl (no one gives a shit about the Pro Bowl), let’s try to fill the void with something we overlooked last week that is, well, football-related. Here’s a new effort from Martin Agency for Pizza Hut called “Hut Hut Hut,” which as you can imagine, plays off the latter’s name while highlighting the standard call made by quarterbacks to get the ball rolling, so to speak.

Instead of hiring actual NFL stars, though, this somewhat inviting clip, which is part of Martin’s Super Bowl push for the the Hut, salutes the fans, whether they be high-school football players, average joes, parents and/or their kids. The web effort from Martin also happened to serve as a call for viewers to submit their own “hut hut” clips to Pizza Hut’s Facebook page in the hopes of cutting a user-generated version to air in time for the Super Bowl pre-game run-up. Unfortunately, deadline expired on Jan. 20, but we’ll see what agency and client came up with on Feb. 3. Credits after the jump.

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WPP’s Kantar Media begs the question, “Was that Super Bowl Ad really worth $3.5 million?” Online video appeared to play a big part in the mix as according to a study from Kantar’s Video division, which claims that within the first three days, the top 10 ads created $862,000 on average in earned video impressions, a 12.7 percent return on the cost of a Super Bowl ad spot. In addition, this year’s big game ads have created over $11 million in earned media and saw a 267% increase in viewership over last year’s Super Bowl. As expected, the Honda/Broderick combination scored big and earned over $2 million along with Seinfeld/Leno’s Acura spot. Read more here.

As our Super Bowl post-game coverage winds down, we give you this write-up from Don Seaman, TVB’s manager of marketing communications, which is the non-profit trade association of America’s commercial broadcast TV industry. Here, the exec discusses his interesting, rather busy Super Bowl viewing experience.

I’m a Giants fan.  I also work in the media industry.  But it pains me to admit that up until Saturday, mine was  among the 30 percent of homes that still don’t have HDTV.  With the Giants in the Super Bowl, it became a moral imperative to experience the game in the best way possible, at least from my own living room.  After all, I had a responsibility to the TVB to make this some cutting edge viewing research.

The thing is, in 2012 watching the game on your living room HDTV isn’t the only “best” way to watch the game anymore.  And no, I didn’t spring for the full 3D TV experience.  It’s bigger than that.  Today, you can virtually have an “all-access” pass to the Super Bowl while still being hundreds of miles from the stadium.

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Well, this probably won’t diffuse any anger felt by those who are accusing W+K, Clint Eastwood and Chrysler for sending out a pro-Obama message in their Super Bowl ad (which is now live again, by the way). But here’s a little clip that’s being dubbed as an “alternate version” of the official big game spot, the latter of which Eastwood has recently defended, claiming there’s no spin to be had in his “Halftime.” But as you’ll see, we can’t say the same for this quick mash-up, which makes its message loud and clear by the end. Did you think the original had an Obama bias or was it “apolitical” as Eastwood claims? Or should we just discontinue the conversation altogether and let the ad be?

On Sunday, Anomaly debuted the above Super Bowl spot for Budweiser, “Eternal Optimism.” In 60 seconds, Budweiser parallels its own history with that of the country of its birth, starting from the end of Prohibition and concluding in the era of pop-up hip-hop concerts aka “present day.” Yes, it’s a bit silly to imagine that Budweiser was the drink of choice for patrons of Studio 54, but it’s always fun to see how advertisers choose to depict (or rewrite) U.S. history. It’s also interesting to note that, as one tipster suggests, Anomaly’s representation of the last century closely resembles TBWA/Chiat/Day’s 2009 Obama inauguration spot for Pepsi.

Before we turn to you, dear readers, for finger pointing/waving, let’s discuss the similarities and differences of these two spots.

Similarities: Flapper girls, the end of WWII, greasers, Studio 54, break dancing, and grunge body-passing.
Differences: Hippies vs. Moon landing, Berlin Wall vs. the “Miracle on Ice,” and Budweiser’s use of the dance party.

Given this evidence, is this case an ad ripoff? Is this a case of coincidence? Or, is this, as they say, “just what happens?”

Hey, if a five-year-old can offer her initial impressions on some of our most notable brandmarks, why can’t an eight-year-old play astute Super Bowl critic? Well, it looks like the folks at Salt Lake City-based Crowell Advertising decided to run with that premise as you can see in the clip above, which features a young lad named Arturo who gives us his take on various spots from the big game. The consensus? Many of the ads were “stupid” and then some. It’s not quite as cute as the brandmarks effort, but we appreciate this kid’s honesty and feedback. We just hope we don’t see 50 more of these types of child-starring projects roll out in the coming weeks/months before they eventually lose all their charm.