![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.therightbrainstudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Charlize-1.jpeg\")
I always watch the Super Bowl but never watch the Oscars. Seems that I have gotten this dead wrong all these years.<\/p>\nI always watch the Super Bowl but never watch the Oscars. Seems that I have gotten this dead wrong all these years.<\/p>\n
My first issue with the Academy Awards is my personal struggle to ever deem anything \u201cbest.\u201d Favorite song? Favorite movie? There\u2019s no way I will ever make up my mind. Not because I\u2019m indecisive, but because so many songs and films are simply great to me for so many different reasons. What\u2019s better, The Grand Illusion, Jean Renoir\u2019s 1937 WWI masterpiece, or The Big Lebowski? The Beatles I Want to Hold Your Hand, any of a dozen Sinatra songs or Mozart\u2019s Clarinet Concerto?\u201d Citizen Kane or Anchorman? I love them all, but for very different reasons.<\/p>\n
Any of this year\u2019s nominees could have been Best Picture. Green Book wasn\u2019t any \u201cbetter\u201d than The Favourite, BlacKkKlansman or any of the others. Unless our evaluations are based on ticket sales, there\u2019s just no objective way to make sense of subjective judgements.<\/p>\n
Not only have I never cared about the outcome, I could care less about the spectacle. The Oscars were never a \u201cmust see\u201d for me.<\/p>\n
The Super Bowl, on the other hand, combines two of my passions, football and advertising. Three passions actually, if I count, as I must, food. I been going to a fabulous Super Bowl party at my friends Chris & Sue\u2019s house for the past several years. On this one day (in addition to Thanksgiving), I give myself license to feast on chips of all varieties, pastrami and corned beef catered by the legendary Langer\u2019s Deli in L.A., and various other sweet and savory treats. My calorie count for this day likely equals a typical week of normal eating for me.<\/p>\n
But everything is now upside down. This year\u2019s Super Bowl game was just horrible. My home town L.A. Rams performed miserably, but it was so boring and frustrating that it hardly mattered anyway. No one could score. It was endless, seemingly 30 seconds of game for each 5 minutes of ads. I expected to eat too much but regretted it more than ever this year. There were a lot of nice and interesting people around, but that made it noisy and difficult to hear the game or the ads. Still, it was hard to socialize. Everyone mostly stayed in the seats they had staked out as the game was starting and didn\u2019t mix very much.<\/p>\n
There were a few great, what I\u2019d consider Super Bowl caliber, commercials. Most were pretty good commercials that didn\u2019t seem worthy of the $5 million plus price tag for 30 seconds, and there some really bad ones that should never have seen the light of day. No one wants to think about chunky milk on Super Bowl Sunday or any day.<\/p>\n
Much to my surprise, I appreciated the creativity and strategic foundations of the Oscar spots far more. I wound up watching for the first time in many years when a good friend invited me to a small viewing party this past Sunday. As I don\u2019t see enough of him, I thought it was a good enough excuse to just to hang out, Oscar night or not.<\/p>\n
I loved the Google ads. Brilliant, unexpected, compelling and strategic. Borrowing clips of Hollywood films, they demonstrated the utility of their products while evoking the spirit of the night. Budweiser Reserve Copper Lager cast Charlize Theron, with credibility and humor, as an empowered, no-nonsense superwoman who put the \u201cboys\u201d in their place. Nice to see this self-deprecating humor from the Bud team, poking good natured fun at the types of guys they used to lionize in their ads. \u201cHold my beer.\u201d Hysterical. Nike\u2019s \u201cDream Crazier,\u201d narrated by Serena Williams, was inspiring. A true Super Bowl caliber spot crafted for a different event. It also happened to mesh perfectly with Lady Gaga\u2019s acceptance speech about persistence.<\/p>\n
The bottom line? The Super Bowl is way too long and exhausting. The game sometimes stinks. It\u2019s all mind-numbing and you\u2019re nauseous from eating too much. I love my friends but might do my mind and body a favor next year and skip the whole thing. Maybe a movie in a theater all to myself followed by a nice dinner at home. Then waking up and feeling great the next day.<\/p>\n
The Oscars? Long, but tolerable. The no-host thing was great and the evening moved along nicely.\u00a0 Seems like half the time of the Super Bowl ordeal. Good musical interludes. Beautiful people in nice outfits.\u00a0 Not really a chips and dip and endless carbs kind of night where I’m eating mindlessly to pass the time. Fun guessing the winners.<\/p>\n
And this year, better ads.<\/p>\n
Why? While expectations may still be high for advertisers, there is certainly less pressure on the agencies as compared to Super Bowl. Perhaps lower stress levels lead to better creative. Or maybe it\u2019s that advertisers shoot for over-the-top spectacle on Super Bowl Sunday, where the Oscars inspire more thoughtfulness, taste and clever, Hollywood-inspired ingenuity.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s likely that I\u2019ll be tuning in next year to dig into this a bit more deeply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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