Rookies Interfere With Super Bowl Ads

Weekly Standard: Winning Contest Doesn't Mean Amateurs Can (Or Should) Make Ads

(Weekly Standard)  This column was written by Andrew Keen.

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It's amateur hour at the Super Bowl this year. On Sunday, 90 million television viewers on CBS will be subjected to commercials made by "You" — Time magazine's Person of The Year for 2006. Three Super Bowl XLI advertisers — Doritos, the National Football League, and Chevrolet — will all be running 30-second commercial spots made by amateurs. The Web 2.0 revolution in user-generated content has infiltrated the American living room. These amateur creators, who Time praise as "people formerly known as consumers," are now providing the entertainment at the biggest event in the media calendar.

This is not good news. The shift from professionally produced to user-generated advertising makes us poorer in both economic and cultural terms. The arrival of user-created commercials at Super Bowl XLI represents the American Idolization of traditional entertainment — the degeneration of professional content into a "talent show" for amateurs.

We, the conventional television audience, are certainly losers in this new fashion for user-generated advertisements. We have traditionally watched Super Bowl commercials to be entertained by memorable ads. Often, these commercials are more memorable than the game. Occasionally, they even represent significant cultural moments in American history. Few of us, for example, can remember who won Super Bowl in 1984 (Los Angeles Raiders 38, Washington Redskins 9), where it was played (Tampa), or who sang the national anthem (Barry Manilow). But most of us can remember the Chiat/Day produced, Ridley Scott directed, commercial for the Macintosh computer, with its Orwellian subtext and its indelible explanation of why "1984 wasn't going to be like 1984."

Don't expect a repeat of Chiat/Day and Ridley Scott's creative genius during Super Bowl XLI. Doritos are already previewing the five finalists in their competition on the Yahoo! website. One commercial features a chip-chomping rock climber falling off a mountain; another has a giant mouse bursting out of a wall, scavenging for cheese-flavored chips; a third has a young woman falling over because she's looking at her chips and not the road. All five of the finalists contain the same predictable, dorm-room aesthetic, low production qualities, and poor acting. The brain trust at Doritos deserves thanks for not exposing us to the other 1,100 entrants.

Why is the work of the amateur of a lesser quality than professionally made content? There's the intrinsic talent of a lifelong professional, such as Ridley Scott, of course. Then there's the financial resources made available to the professional content creator. Back in 1984, Apple paid Chiat/Day $1.6 million to produce their Mac ad. Today, according to the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the average professionally-produced 30-second spot costs $381,000. In contrast, wedding photographer Jarod Cicon, one of the five finalists in the Doritos competition, estimates that his 30-second ad cost $150 to produce.

Web 2.0 advocates, who are apologists for user-generated content (such as Chris Anderson, the author of the best-selling book "The Long Tail"), promise that the amateurs of the new digital democracy can create the same quality content for a tiny proportion of the traditional cost. But this simply isn't true. Watch the Doritos commercials side-by-side with some classic Super Bowl commercials, such as the Budweiser "Frogs" (1995) or "Cedric" (2001) spots. It's like tasting a homemade elderberry wine after a glass of the best Cabernet.

The economics of amateur hour at the Super Bowl are disturbing. If today's typical commercial costs $381,000 and an amateur advertisement costs $150 to produce, then what happens to the money which isn't spent on the creative? Given that Doritos are awarding $10,000 to the five finalists in their talent show, that still leaves some $331,000 on the table. To use a fashionable Web 2.0 term, the professional creator is being "disintermediated." CBS doesn't lose anything because they still charge Doritos over $2.5 million for the 30 second spot. Instead, it's the professional creator — the scriptwriter, cameraman, audio expert — who is being squeezed out of the economy by this infestation of amateur content.

Markets are markets and there's no reason to cry for simply for the loss of jobs in one sector, so long as new efficiencies are being created. But in this instance, the loss of jobs is accompanied by worse, not better products. This is true across the media industry and not just in the advertising business.

As Columbia University Economics professor Jagwish Bhagwati has argued, digital technology is undermining the wages of the American middle class. Web 2.0 technologies which enable amateurs to make dumbed-down replicas of professional work are particularly responsible for what Bhagwati calls the "tsumani" of downward pressure on wages created by new technology.

Amateur content on user-generated video sites such as Google's YouTube is undermining the value of professionally-made video content. American Idol now has an online competition called "American Idol Underground," which is making the traditional music A&R person redundant. HarperCollins is undermining the traditional role of literary agents by running online competitions to "discover" amateur writers. The result of all this democratization of media is fewer creative jobs and more amateurish books, movies, and music. And commercials, too.

[eggy1620]

Whatever happened to letting the consumer decide?

[tibu987]

How ridiculous, the position of Mr. Keen.
The advertisng business, like any other, is subject to competition and may the best man/woman win. That all creative ideas rest with the agencies is ludicrous.
There is all kinds of talent among the population.
Let it spring forth, ignoring those who would limit creativity and intelligence.
Keen's premise, based only on money, is a weak one.

[dicky_b]

A real tear-jerker this story, or it would be if it had any basis in reality.

In actual fact Madison Avenue has been greedily plundering the Web for ideas for almost a decade.

The emergence of "amateur" ads during the SuperBowl suggests only that corporate America is slowly waking up to the scam, and realizing it doesn't have to pay crazy fees to ad-land "gurus" for their second-hand creativity.

[fryedbread]

We must pass a constitutional amendment to protect the sanctity of Super Bowl ads.

[redstripe12]

Did he just say ameteur advertising makes us poorer in cultural terms? TV is generally *** anyway, and commercials crappier. I would argue that it's amateur fishwrap like "The Weekly Standard" that make us poorer in cultural terms.

First off, commercials aren't culture, they're attempts by corporations to get us to buy more garbage that we don't want and don't need anyway.

Reminds of the old Dudley Moore movie "Crazy People" where a bunch of nuts in the Loonie Bin write commercials and they actually do pretty well. They should try that next year.

[caldwellptr]

For better or worse, it is all a shill - including these commentaries on the CBS web site.

[tuckerndfw]

"Professionals" are overrated and over paid.

Most of them are related to the same people who control the advertising budget.

Besides that, advertising of any kind pollutes the airwaves. Claiming "professional ads" are better than amateur ads is similar to claiming vomit is better than manure.

Ads suck, all of them.

[rray52]

How dare some amateur think they could create a commercial!

What next?

Armatures writing OP/ED articles.

Armatures running for elective office

Armatures daring to questioning the academic elite

Oh no, the world turned upside-down

[joyfulsix]

Actually, it's quite interesting...get consumers to tell you what they WANT to watch by giving them the camera. Does this constitute anarchy? I don't think so. I think we've got a bunch of whiners because the ad agencies didn't get to make the cool millions this year. It went to -- of all things, THE CONSUMERS!! It won't last forever, you'll get your chance again soon.

[mattgersz]

Hey, Weekly Standard: Praising the so-so efforts of "amateurs" who produce add might be a bit silly. But what's off-the-wall ludicrous is to treat any of these Super Bowl sell jobs as video literature or important culture in the first place It's a bloody ADVERTISEMENT, for crying out loud, not the National Cathedral or the War in Iraq. If somebody's trying to convince me to buy something I probably don't need, I could care less if the salesman is from You Tube or Madison Avenue. The rise of amateur salesmen surely isn't going to hasten the decline of American entertainment and American standards. Glorifying those sales pitches in the first place has already done that.

[feelfree1]

Oh my f-ing God!

The bloodthirsty dead-brains of the Weekly Standard are telling others what they are not qualified to do?

Do the angry eunuchs at the Weekly Standard have any expertise on any topic? Their inane fascistic blather seems to indicate otherwise.

[director15-2009]

After 4 years of Film School training and over 35 of professional experience always searching for excellence, I have discovered that I wasted my time. The YouTube generation has become the prevalent force in every aspect. Get a video camera, press record and you are an instant cineaste, forget about lighting, composition or what French critic Andre Bazin called the language of Cinema. I always enjoyed and admired the Super Bowl commercials (The day after,I don't like sports)as symbols of what great advertising was meant to be...I guess now you have to cater to the lowest common denominator. It does make advertising sense!

[linfinster]

It's always, " how can we make a profit, how can we make something cheaper and sell it at the same/more price?" And we the consumer will probably be worse off for it. Just take our food source. Why pay for pure sugar when we can develop cheap chemical alternatives and cause damage to the human body ... wait, that's OK, we'll just "invent" drugs to fix that and charge them MORE money. What a racket!