Super Bowl ads heavy on cars

Read More at: Sports Illustrated

In the Super Bowl of advertising, Eminem was everywhere, Roseanne Barr took a big hit from a log and Joan Rivers became a GoDaddy girl.

It was also hard to throw a Pepsi can without hitting a car commercial during Super Bowl XLV between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Green Bay Packers. Automakers took advantage of advertising’s biggest showcase to try to show they’re back after two tough years for the industry.

After avoiding the Super Bowl for two years as it went in and out of a government-led bankruptcy, General Motors came back back with five ads for Chevrolet. In one ad, a seemingly mundane car dealership ad is disrupted when a Camaro suddenly morphs into the Bumblebee character from the “Transformers” movies. Chrysler was expected to push the limits of how long a Super Bowl ad could be with a two-minute commercial featuring rapper Eminem.

Overall, celebrities and humor dominated the commercials, which wooed 100 million-plus viewers at cost of $3 million per 30 seconds.

Slapstick violence was the theme of several of PepsiCo’s Pepsi Max and Doritos ads, which were created by consumers and voted on in an online contest called crashthesuperbowl.com. A man got hit in the crotch with a speeding can in one ad, and a jogger got clocked on the head with another flying can. A man taunting a dog with Doritos wound up underneath a glass door.