Li’l Norm Loves His Pop

The cute animals went head-to-head vs. the cute little kids in the annual Super Bowl advertising competition, and the winner on my card was: Norman Pheeny.

That’s a kid, not an animal.

More on Norman in just a minute, but first let me give you the results of the evening’s other big contest, the annual matchup of good taste vs. bad taste in the halftime show. Good taste was roundly thrashed again, making it 0-31 in Super Bowl halftime competition. How can I describe how dumb this halftime show was? Let me put it this way: The classiest thing about it was the name, and it was named after a wiener.

But back to Norman. Norman is the two-day-old star of my favorite ad. This little guy is gurgling away in his bassinet in the hospital nursery, when three fabulous models walk up and start cooing over him. He learns how to focus his eyes faster than any newborn ever, and he sees Cindy Crawford mouth the words “I love you.”

Then, our hero does what any suave American male would do, even a suave American male who still has a little section of umbilical cord attached to him. He makes little kissing motions with his lips, and then he winks. The screen says, “Norman Pheeny, Pepsi drinker for life.”

Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that the models were holding Pepsi cans. For the people who spent $1.2 million for thirty seconds of ad time, that sort of thing is important.

Norman Pheeny’s Oscar-worthy performance impressed me so much that I have declared Pepsi the winner in the big-money war against Budweiser. Pepsi was also helped by one of the best of the cute-animal ads (the game contained eight, by actual count). This ad showed a small-town sheriff on the trail of some cola-guzzling Pepsi thieves. The sheriff follows the trail of empties to a field full of cows, and one cow says to another, “I think the fat one knows.”

Budweiser also had one inspired animal ad, in which the enduring question, “Why did the chicken cross the road?” was finally answered. (To get to the Budweiser). But Budweiser’s “Power Failure” ad took the animal motif just a bit too far. Nothing can make a rodent cute.

And then there were the Budweiser ads in which cavemen are knocked on the head by falling Bud bottles. The blow causes them to look goofy, lose consciousness and dream about women. When you think about it, this is almost exactly what happens when you drink beer: You get stupid, you think every woman you see is a fashion model ,and then you pass out. That’s fine, but I’m just not sure this is the corporate image that Budweiser should be going for.

My second-favorite ad of the evening was another animal ad, in which a guy and his dog go for a ride in his Nissan truck. The dog starts picking up all of his canine buddies. Next thing you know, the guy is standing in the middle of the street and the dogs are driving off heaven knows where, probably to find a fire hydrant and do something rude.

The Bob Dole ad for Visa was a winner, even if it wasn’t really his home town. Dole delivered the tag line perfectly: “I just can’t win.”

The younger generation was courted frantically by two competing soft drinks, Surge and (of course) Pepsi. Both campaigns were long on attitude but short on coherence.

“That makes no sense,” said my household’s resident member of Generationext, after one particularly baffling Surge ad.

As for the worst ad, it was a dead heat between an ad for the Howard Stern movie “Private Parts” and a local ad for Check X-Change. Some guy was stuffing something in a blender. I had no clue what this had to do with checks, and I still had no clue even after they repeated the ad a minute later,.

Here are few other assorted notes and questions:

Why did Budweiser have a blimp overhead for a game in a dome?

Why exactly, does “Li’l Penny” feel the need to screech non-stop during those annoying Nike ads?

Don’t you think Fred Astaire, dead or alive, has too much class to hawk something called a “Dirt Devil”?

What is the point of that stupid bird on those Cadillac Catera ads.

And finally, we come to the Oscar Mayer Halftime Show. It was a compelling mix of Harley Davidsons, flashpots, lip-synched rock music and the Blues Brothers, a trio of Hollywood actors who are under the mistaken impression that they can sing the blues. At least James Brown was there. He’s a REAL soul man; he doesn’t just play one on TV.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jim Kershner The Spokesman-Review