Superbowl Ads: Manhood Sucks, Dodge Doesn’t

Fans couldn’t have been faulted yesterday if they thought they were watching the Hyundai Bowl. The up-and-coming Korean carmaker seemed to have spent about nine trillion bucks on the big game, and the takeaway was certainly that its Sonata model is worthy of consideration. Really. They mean it. After all, they spent 9 trillion bucks propping it on the frikkin’ Superbowl. However, it was Chrysler that stole the show, with its one lousy spot for the Dodge Charger neo-muscle car. Chrysler caught some flack earlier this year for even thinking about a Superbowl spot, as Ford (F) and GM stayed away. The Pentastar’s justification was that, sure, this might not be overtly considered the best use of public funds (Chrsyler is still partly owned by the U.S. government), but the company needs to reintroduce itself to the public, post-bankruptcy.

And reintroduce itself it did. Chrysler’s most recent TV spot, for its Ram truck brand, invited ridicule. But the Charger spot has some good chops and should set off the kind of a old-school water cooler banter that makes Superbowl ads worth the spend (viral action on YouTube should aid in spreading the discussion far and wide). The inner monologues of defeated men echo in the narration, until a Patrick Bateman-esque gent launches into a silent tirade against...well, it’s gotta be the castrating little wife or girlfriend, right? And then declares that for all his suffereing he should get to drive whateve he damn well pleases. The snarling black Charging with its Hemi engine a-snarlin’ becomes his Mad Maxian chariot of liberation: Man’s Last Stand.

Hyundai had the volume. But Chrysler won on sheer cussed cleverness and the ability to craft a spot that directly engaged the male reptile brain at its moment of ultimate stimulation: during the annual biggest of Big Games. The retro hotness came from Wieden and Kennedy, the Portland-based agency that’s best known for its Nike work.

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