Connect with us

Editorials

Worst Super Bowl Ad: Chatter

Published

on

There were a lot of bad commercials during Super Bowl XLV, but the worse one was the one I was looking forward to the most.

My wife and I had a couple of friends over for the big game and they both happen to work for Salesforce.com. They came over pretty early and told us that Salesforce.com would have an ad right before and right after the Black Eyed Peas halftime performance. The Black Eyed Peas were also supposedly in the ad to sex up the cloud services company.

When the announcers said something about the Black Eyed Peas being up next, we all waited for something great. You see, Salesforce.com is known for great marketing and I’ve really enjoyed watching the company grow since I had a brief stint there back in 2001. This is the first Chatter.com ad:

Nobody in the room was impressed. Immediately after the ad, the Black Eyed Peas launched into a medley. The performance was off, to say the least, and there were some obvious technical problems.

When the music died down, the second Chatter.com ad rolled:

Chatter.com is a pretty powerful business tool, but I don’t think these ads reflected that. I’m guessing most people just sat there scratching their heads after watching them .

So what was our crowd’s favorite Super Bowl commercial? It was unanimously the Volkswagon ad featuring a little Darth Vadar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R55e-uHQna0

6 Comments

6 Comments

  1. Sumocat

    02/07/2011 at 5:44 pm

    The Chatter ads did seem ineffective, but I think the Groupon and LivingSocial ads were worse. One made implied that users are callous d-bags, the other implied it will turn you into a cross-dresser. I’m not against cross-dressing nor do I claim to not be a callous d-bag, but I don’t think these messages will appeal to a lot of SB viewers.

  2. Karl Goldfield

    02/07/2011 at 8:30 pm

    Chatter is confusing because the product is a shell of what it should be. You cannot give a good commercial about the unknown when the unknown in not good. Companies need a procial tool not a social one like Teambox.

  3. Alan Beim

    02/07/2011 at 10:33 pm

    This commercial reminds me of one I saw at a Stuperbowl (sic) party years ago when someone at the party said: “Wow that was the best ad I ever saw, I wonder what it was selling?” Right after the Chatter ad ran I ask to people in their 20’s who and what the ad was for and they did not even remember that is was for Chatter! WOW I wish my clients (www.adsthatwork.com) had that kind of money to waste!

  4. Alan Beim

    02/07/2011 at 10:34 pm

    This is a good savvy blog by the way!

  5. Trackster2095

    02/08/2011 at 4:06 pm

    Well, I thought the Black Eyed Peas and Chatter collaboration commercials were pretty cool . . . maybe I’m missing something but they seemed really clever and totally consistent with all the messages the Black Eyed Peas are known for – I totally got the concept of “team” and the Baby Peas doing socially redeeming, politically relevant things using technology tools. But what the heck, I’m weird and kind of geeky I guess – my absolute favorite commercial was the two dudes breaking out of rich people “prison” – in spite of “releasing the hounds” and the narcotic effects of Kenny G music!! Yeah, that was classic . . .

    • Alan Beim

      02/08/2011 at 4:36 pm

      Hi Trackster, I am not sure that the demos and psychographics for Superbowl viewers are geeks; but there are a lot of 50 60 something CEOs who could use Chatter.com if they knew what it was and I think a much simpler sales message could do the job of explaining that. All you may also want to post your Superbowl
      comments on https://adsuccess.wordpress.com/ and you can link to your own web site. Thanks.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.