So far the Super Bowl has been a fertile ground for News Corp. cross promotion.
The cast of Prison Break finally escaped, tunneling up from under ground, breaking through the surface at midfield. The eponymous curmudgeon from the medical drama House strummed out the licks from the Fox’s NFL theme music on his electric guitar, then growled to the camera, “Wear a cup.” Then the latest machine dispatched from the Terminator franchise body slammed the Fox football robot.
From the ads not hawking a Murdoch brand, here are a few of the highlights so far:
Bill Frist and James Carville put their differences aside and came together over a Coke. They rode around D.C. on a tourist trolley and watched the sun set over the reflecting pool. In these politically charged times where polarization and divisiveness are the norm, the scene was refreshing, kind of like a Coke.
eTrade showed us a baby gloating about how easy it is to buy stock online. Click. “Look, I just bought stock.” Then the child spit up on itself. The economy’s tough all around.
SalesGenie.com put its $2.7 million (the going price for a 30-second spot on the game) to good use showing us pandas with ludicrously overdrawn (and borderline offensive, I’d imagine) Asian accents struggling to figure out how to build their business. (Part of the secret turned out to be to stop eating the bamboo furniture. The other part involved using some Web-based lead-generation service. I forget the name.)
In case you missed any of the action (the ads, not the game), News Corp.’s got you covered. You can review all te ads on MySpace, at myspace.com/superbowlads.
