Poll: Your opinion of the Pepsi-iTunes Superbowl Ad?

[MacRumors]

Vote: Poll: Your opinion of the Pepsi-iTunes Superbowl Ad? (http://www.macpolls.com/?poll_id=366)

[Waluigi]

I was at a superbowl party at a fraternity house, and the reaction was great. Everyone laughed their ass off when they said 'and we still will'

Brillant!

--Waluigi

[pugnus maximus]

cheese

[jrv3034]

It was a good Pepsi ad and good promotion for Apple, but it wasn't spectacular. It was cute. The real publicity for Apple will be when all those people go to the iTunes website to redeem those songs.

[Lemming]

It was a 'meh', the song was the best part. Personally I thought what the people said was pretty stupid.

[winmacguy]

Originally posted by Lemming
It was a 'meh', the song was the best part. Personally I thought what the people said was pretty stupid.

Being that it was a bunch of young teenagers who got busted for illegal filesharing, what were you expecting?
Mature adult comments?!
The ad was aimed at 13-15 year olds who down load music and drink sugar water and who would have that sort of mentality so i would say that the ad hit the mark. The number of REDEMED free downloads will tell.

[earthsaver]

I remain a passionate Mac power user, however I will continue (since Steve's introduction of the upcoming promotion) to be unhappy that Apple has decided to partner with a company whose products contribute to obesity and the development of diabetes.

[mac15]

it had potential....

[azdude]

I remain a passionate Mac power user, however I will continue (since Steve's introduction of the upcoming promotion) to be unhappy that Apple has decided to partner with a company whose products contribute to obesity and the development of diabetes.

Hmm... I dunno. Sitting in front of my Mac so much has probably contributed more to my obesity than anything else :D :D :D

[FriarTuck]

My technology-agnostic father's only comment was to question the wisdom of putting a bunch of criminals on TV as your pitchmen.

[winmacguy]

Originally posted by FriarTuck
My technology-agnostic father's only comment was to question the wisdom of putting a bunch of criminals on TV as your pitchmen.
And there are probably a lot more PC users out there where that lot came from :)

[Bunzi2k4]

i thought it was ok, but i didn't like this year's super bowl commercials... the only good one was the charmin add and the King of Queens... those 2 were good... everything else was ok

[theipodgod16]

its a pepsi ad. its not very good. better than britney spears ones though.

im a liittle biased, as i just watched 1984 about 5 times in the past 5 minutes. i'm reading the book for the first time, and realizing all of the little hidden messages and secrets.

[Sabenth]

i watched the add from apple.com all i can say is. that just didnt cut the tune for me at all. :) music great add crap .. but ok i guess again had a lot more going for it but they floped it once again

[simX]

Lol, just a quick question: did it dawn on anyone else to test out the code under the cap that they showed in the ad? Obviously it didn't work, but it was worth a shot. :p

[TwitchOSX]

Originally posted by winmacguy
Being that it was a bunch of young teenagers who got busted for illegal filesharing, what were you expecting?
Mature adult comments?!
The ad was aimed at 13-15 year olds who down load music and drink sugar water and who would have that sort of mentality so i would say that the ad hit the mark. The number of REDEMED free downloads will tell.

My first thought to that comment is that, well, i dont know many 13-15 year olds that care about the superbowl, let alone a superbowl if "thier" team isnt in it. Pretty good game though. Commercials sucked.

The commercial I saw for the Pepsi / Apple .. (were there more than one?) had some girl that I couldnt understand worth ****. I really got the jist once the end came up and told everybody what was up. They should have made a commercial twice as long and gotten more of the free minds at Apple to come up with something really cool.

[virividox]

Originally posted by earthsaver
I remain a passionate Mac power user, however I will continue (since Steve's introduction of the upcoming promotion) to be unhappy that Apple has decided to partner with a company whose products contribute to obesity and the development of diabetes.

people contribute to obesity and diabetes if they dont take care of their own bodies. self control. you cant baby people thats why its a free country, so you can make choices, i dont think apple has done anything wrong by teaming up, its great publicity for them.

[virividox]

its funny when the first versions of the adds were leaked it got such terrible comments on the forum, but now the poll says its okay. haha

[slowtreme]

Originally posted by Lemming
It was a 'meh', the song was the best part. Personally I thought what the people said was pretty stupid. I thought "meh" too. I didn't think what they said was stupid, I thought they sounded stupid.

I was kinda upset to see Muhammed Ali in the IBM/Linux commercial.

[IndyGopher]

The only thing that bugs me about the commercial is that the girl was difficult to understand. That might work in their favor, though, if they play the commercial enough as people will listen more closely to try to understand her.

I liked the other Pepsi commercial, with the bears, better. Best commercial, I thought, was the Dodge commercial with the monkeys.

[IndyGopher]

Originally posted by slowtreme
I was kinda upset to see Muhammed Ali in the IBM/Linux commercial.
Why did you find that upsetting?

[eric_n_dfw]

Originally posted by slowtreme
I thought "meh" too. I didn't think what they said was stupid, I thought they sounded stupid.

I was kinda upset to see Muhammed Ali in the IBM/Linux commercial. You must have been upset for a year now, the first one of those Linux kid commercials is about a year old (SuperBowl XXXVII ad?) -- and it had Ali in it.

Overall, I thought the commercials were pretty bad. This is the first year in a while that the game actually was more interesting than the commercials for me!

BTW - what did everyone think about Ms. Jackson's little stunt at the end of the halftime show? I thought it was in prett bad taste on prime-time TV with millions of kids watching. :eek:

[yamabushi]

My diabetic friends drink Diet Coke all the time. They prefer it to the taste of Diet Pepsi. Neither one causes or aggravates their diabetes.

A 12 ounce can of reguar Pepsi has only 150 calories (kilocalories to be more accurate). One can a day in addition to an otherwise balanced diet probably won't be a problem. The key is moderation. Drinking an entire case in a day is bound to cause problems. Total daily caloric intake has to match your activity level or your weight is likely to change.

All carbohydrates, whether from bread, rice, pasta, or corn syrup are eventually broken down into glucose. It doesn't matter too much what form it begins as - your body doesn't care. Only the absoption rate and efficiency will differ. The main problem with foods which contain a large amount of simple sugar is that they often lack other nutrients such as vitamins, minerals, healthy lipids, and dietary fiber. However your energy has to come from somewhere. If a can of Pepsi is the most convenient source available, so be it.

Oh, and now that I have seen the ad I can say for sure that I don't like it. But that's just my opinion.

[Jerry Spoon]

I thought the commercial was OK, but did the add say that you could do this on your mac or pc? I know they showed that girl using an iMac, but I was wondering if that left some pc users not familiar with iTunes thinking it was only a mac thing.
Maybe if you're with it enough to know that was a mac then you're at least willing to try to go to itunes.com to see if you can use your pc to get this free music too.

[eyelikeart]

I found it to be much like a PSA, without being too much over the top in that fashion.

I liked it. :)

[edenwaith]

I watched nearly all of the Commercial Bowl, mostly for the ads, and I didn't see the Pepsi-iTunes ad! I stepped out for about five minutes during the third quarter. When was the iTunes ad run? Did everything supposedly happen when I was gone? *grumble* Well, at least the Bud commercials were funny. Still, I think the best one I saw was a Tobasco commercial several years ago with the exploding mosquito.

[Trowaman]

Originally posted by edenwaith
I watched nearly all of the Commercial Bowl, mostly for the ads, and I didn't see the Pepsi-iTunes ad! I stepped out for about five minutes during the third quarter. When was the iTunes ad run? Did everything supposedly happen when I was gone? *grumble* Well, at least the Bud commercials were funny. Still, I think the best one I saw was a Tobasco commercial several years ago with the exploding mosquito.

It was in the first half of the second quarter.

[Trowaman]

So yeah, they got the more famous of the kids (the 12 year old) and no one notices or cares, instead people complain that you can't understand her. Oh well. I would have liked them to mention somehing about going to download iTunes and how it works on mac OS X and Windowz. Again, great song (thank you Green Day). However the line "And there's nothing they can do about it" as stated in another thread got much cheering and applause in my college's lounge area. It was wonderful.

[1macker1]

It wasn't that good if you ask me. It was corny.

[Trekkie]

Am I the only one who thought most of the commercials were pretty lack luster? there have been funnier years to me.

[eric_n_dfw]

Originally posted by Trekkie
Am I the only one who thought most of the commercials were pretty lack luster? there have been funnier years to me. Definately.

My favorite is still the EDS cat herding one from a few years ago - my job often feels like that!

[the_mole1314]

Reaction here was good, many liked it, but they didn't know what it was for.

[TimDaddy]

I liked the ad. I loved the attitude, the girl saying "...we are still going to download music free off of the internet. And there's not a thing anyone can do about it." If you were looking away from the tv and heard that, I think you'd probably look back, just to see what the Hell she was talking about. I didn't like that the girl sounded like she had a mouth full of poop.
My wife laughed at the commercial, but disagreed with me on the mouth full of poop thing. She said the girl did a good job, considering she was just a regular kid with no previous acting experience (as far as we know). But, my wife works with two-year olds and elementary school kids, so she just loves kids and won't be too critical as long as they try.

[nickmcghie]

anybody notice that in the first leaked copies of the ad, the girl says "and i'm here to announce in front of one hundred of million people that we're still going to...", yet in the actual superbowl she says "and I'm here to announce in front of everybody that we're still going to..." ???

notice the change in wording. i wonder why they would do that

[nickmcghie]

hmmm..also noticed that the text is shown on screen differently in the different versions of the commercial

[TwitchOSX]

Hmm... also notice that that commercial could have been created in 2 days by a Highschool Video lab?

Wasnt. That. Good.

The Janet Jackson thing was pretty good. Didnt even notice it until it got circulated on the web.

Best commercial was Dodge.. and damn was that car sweet as well.

[Dont Hurt Me]

It did very little for Apple in my view. In fact if you werent a Mac user you probably wouldnt even noticed it had anything to do with Apple. I give it a Ok at best. by the way what happened to Apple? the biggest watched TV event of the year and they dont even do 1 Mac Plug? if they were coming out with something big i think this is where to show it off. you know like that new Ford Sports car. I might be wrong but i think apple just keeps missing the mark. Anyone see any G5 ads lately ? i havent. any imac adds? i havent. sometimes i feel they are still being ran by a bunch of clueless bean counters or what is it that Steve calls them Sales guys. marketshare is not going up folks its been going down.

[mrsebastian]

it was ok. i think they could have done more to make sure itunes was more "visible." it doesn't really tell you much about the promotion, but i'm sure there will be plenty of follow up advertising. now if they would have had justin and janet doing their thing while wearing ipods... :D

[wdlove]

I gave it a good, there should have been an "I liked it" Was hoping that they would have run it more than once. It definitely never make the top 10.

[Mr. Anderson]

Some of the original adds where the guy was burning a CD of songs and all the stars were on the stage giving him advice was much more entertaining than this. Unless you knew that those kids were the ones who got sued for downloading music, it really didn't make that much sense.

It was a pretty lame 20th anniversary spot for Apple....they could have done so much better.

D

[SilentPanda]

I watched the superbowl with a rather large group of people... and from what I could tell not a single one of them got it. It was about as bland as the anti-smoking ads (which were good in their own right but "not funny" and "boring"). I voted that I hated it just on the basis that I don't really think many people got it. They could've put some random teenagers in the commercial and had just as much of an effect. Hopefully there will be more commercials about the promotion but not this same one ever again.

[iPC]

Bad.

Just not imaginative. Not up to Apple's normal quality (exluding the blown away G5 - yuck), or that of some of the other Super Bowl adverts.

I wasn't expecting another 1984 ad... but I was hoping for something a little more unique. The legal angle is pretty weak for the target audience of that ad...

[mrsebastian]

here's an interesting poll in usa today about superbowl advertising: out of 60 commercials the pepsi/itunes commercial ranked 49th in their poll, with a score 5.90. comparatively the best score went to bud light (owners demonstrate how their dogs fetch bud light), with a score of 9.04. the worst went to levitra (short version), with a score of 4.08.

considering advertisers had to pay $2.3 million for every 30 seconds, apple and pepsi probably should have come up with something a little better for the itunes promotion. as others have mentioned in this thread, i have talked to quite a few people today and most (mac users or not) didn't get what the commercial was selling. heck, they could have done all kinds of stuff that would have been better and been able to show off, both apple and pepsi branding.

here's my idea on how they could have poked a little fun at the music industry and still showed off the products: a pepsi truck comes to a screaching halt in front of a suburban home. pepsi guys rush in with hundreds/thousands of bottles of pepsi. we follow them past the barking dog, past the uninterested father watching the superbowl, and enter a teenagers room. the room is stacked high with pepsi everywhere. closing on the kid, there are bottle caps everywhere and he/she is at their g5 downloading music off of itunes like crazy, with mom standing encouragingly watching. we pull back from itunes on the monitor to mom, who smiles and says "it's cheaper than getting sued". big smile and gulp of pepsi. fade to white, title with voiceover: apple and pepsi bring you free legal music downloads. optional 2-second clip on end: dog sipping pepsi from bowl while listening to ipod.

[SilentPanda]

See that Pepsi! ----^ much better commercial...

Please remember it *is* a Pepsi commercial... not an Apple commercial.

[Trekkie]

Originally posted by Mr. Anderson

It was a pretty lame 20th anniversary spot for Apple....they could have done so much better.

D

For the record, it was a Pepsi ad.

[coumerelli]

Originally posted by mrsebastian
here's an interesting poll in usa today about superbowl advertising: out of 60 commercials the pepsi/itunes commercial ranked 49th in their poll, with a score 5.90. comparatively the best score went to bud light (owners demonstrate how their dogs fetch bud light), with a score of 9.04. the worst went to levitra (short version), with a score of 4.08.

considering advertisers had to pay $2.3 million for every 30 seconds, apple and pepsi probably should have come up with something a little better for the itunes promotion. as others have mentioned in this thread, i have talked to quite a few people today and most (mac users or not) didn't get what the commercial was selling. heck, they could have done all kinds of stuff that would have been better and been able to show off, both apple and pepsi branding.

here's my idea on how they could have poked a little fun at the music industry and still showed off the products: a pepsi truck comes to a screaching halt in front of a suburban home. pepsi guys rush in with hundreds/thousands of bottles of pepsi. we follow them past the barking dog, past the uninterested father watching the superbowl, and enter a teenagers room. the room is stacked high with pepsi everywhere. closing on the kid, there are bottle caps everywhere and he/she is at their g5 downloading music off of itunes like crazy, with mom standing encouragingly watching. we pull back from itunes on the monitor to mom, who smiles and says "it's cheaper than getting sued". big smile and gulp of pepsi. fade to white, title with voiceover: apple and pepsi bring you free legal music downloads. optional 2-second clip on end: dog sipping pepsi from bowl while listening to ipod.

out loud I chucked and said "Heh, that's good!" Pepsi needs to sign you up!

[~Shard~]

Good, but nothing special - I expected more from Apple. In general though I didn't find the commercials very good at all this year... at least not compared to previous years.

Ah well, it was a good game at least - much better than previous years!

[mms]

Originally posted by TwitchOSX
My first thought to that comment is that, well, i dont know many 13-15 year olds that care about the superbowl, let alone a superbowl if "thier" team isnt in it.

As a thirteen year old myself, I have to disagree with you. Almost everybody I know watched the SuperBowl. Even the girls who could care less about football watch the game just for the ads, and many people watch just to keep up with the conversation the day after. All that is talked about for the night and the entire next day is the big plays, the commercials, and other quirks (like Janet Jackson and the streaker).

However, watching the SuperBowl at a party with thirty kids my age, I can say that the ad did not cater well to its intended audience. Obviously the commercial targeted illegal downloads, and the biggest group that does it is the teenagers, who are also the future of technology. The music was good, but the message did not get through with such a bad commercial. The biggest hits were the commercials that made kids laugh, with Bud Lite's "Good Dog" the first by far (although we can't drink alcohol). Those are the type of commercials that Apple needs to air to reach the teenage crowd.

However, the game itself was awesome, thrilling especially remembering last year's lame game. The SuperBowl record 85 yard pass by Delhomme and the last kick by Vinatieri certainly kept things entertaining. As a Patriots fan, I was sitting on the edge of my chair when New England was down by a point with five minutes in the fourth quarter. My throat still hurts from all the celebrating I did after Vinatieri scored that last field goal.

[Earendil]

Does anyone have a link to an article or source proclaiming who is responsible for the commercial in both design and funding? I heard some off handed comments about Apple having nothing to do with it, I was just wondering where these comments came from, and if I could get some proof (to show someone else).

Thanks :)

Earendil
Tyler

[rickvanr]

Originally posted by eric_n_dfw
Definately.

My favorite is still the EDS cat herding one from a few years ago - my job often feels like that!

that was drop dead halarious... near wet myself. Thinking about it is even funny to a certain extent

[obeygiant]

I liked the ad, but I thought Pepsi could have done a better job getting the yellow capped bottles into stores sooner. I looked everywhere and couldn't find any. They should have released the yellow caps day earlier so that people could have at least had it during the superbowl. I'm not in NY or LA but I'm not in the far corners of the galaxy either.

Tangent... Another commercial I really enjoyed, besides the farting horse ad was the Football ref commercial. When they cut to his wife screaming in his ear, i about spilled my diet pepsi in laughter.

[cb911]

i voted 'good' - mainly because it was good to see someone stick it up the RIAA.

i just heard about Janet Jackson & Justin Timberlakes stunt... they were calling it a 'wardrobe malfunction'. LOL!! :D

also, i just saw some of the other ads that were played at the superbowl (at least i think they were from this superbowl... just got them off BitTorrent :)) that one where the people are building a 747 in-flight... priceless. :D

[King Cobra]

That background music should be set on fire...:mad:

Negative vote (with polls closed, again........)

[edenwaith]

Originally posted by obeygiant
I liked the ad, but I thought Pepsi could have done a better job getting the yellow capped bottles into stores sooner. I looked everywhere and couldn't find any. They should have released the yellow caps day earlier so that people could have at least had it during the superbowl. I'm not in NY or LA but I'm not in the far corners of the galaxy either.

Tangent... Another commercial I really enjoyed, besides the farting horse ad was the Football ref commercial. When they cut to his wife screaming in his ear, i about spilled my diet pepsi in laughter.

You aren't the only one. I've checked in multiple stores in Illinois, and still haven't seen a single bottle. I've seen ads for them at stores, but no bottles. Not very effective, folks.