Let me start off by saying that I am a trained advertiser. My certificate from the Miami Ad School will prove that to you. Check it out right here:

I am an also award-winning copywriter. My Andy Award will prove it to you. (I’ve received other awards too, they just wanted us to pay to create a physical version, so we didn’t do that). Check it out right here:

So, I think I’m pretty qualified to analyze Super Bowl Ads. Now, I did not watch the entire Super Bowl, and there’s only one set of ads that I want to talk about — the T-Mobile ones. And although they were very clever and funny, the overall message just doesn’t work and I’ll tell you why. (I hope none of my friends from Ad School were involved with these).

First off, did you watch the video above? Ok, good…

The ad says, DON’T TRUST YOUR LOVE LIFE TO JUST ANY NETWORK. T-Mobile is blaming Adam Levine’s “bad network” for Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani ending up together. So, if Adam Levine would have been using T-Mobile 5G back “a few year ago” then we wouldn’t have Blake and Gwen together today.

A few weeks ago, Bill Maher talked about how America needs a couple like Blake and Gwen to show us that we can all get along. If Blake and Gwen, two people with completely different political beliefs, can find a way to love each other then we should all be able to love each other too (Of course, some people are racist and evil and you don’t have to love them). This ad shows me that T-Mobile supports a divided country and that’s not cool. I am so glad to be an AT&T customer and I hope to one day have a poor service, life-changing FaceTime call with someone.

Now onto the second ad in this series: Gronk and Brady

The second ad shows that a poor service FaceTime call between Tom Brady and Gronk is the whole reason Tom Brady didn’t retire and won another Super Bowl. It’s also the reason why Gronk was forced to come back and get another ring with him. So, again if these two dudes had T-Mobile at the time of this call they would have been living a boring retired life instead of adding to their Super Bowl bling collections.

So, what we have learned from these two commercials?
Sometimes, great things happen when you have crappy service.

For these ads to have worked in T-Mobile’s favor they should have reversed the messaging to:
Bad things happen when you have crappy service.

* * *

There is only one Super Bowl commercial that has ever mattered to me. It was for Colgate (even though I’ve always been a Crest person and now a Sensodyne person). The commerical basically said, “Hey! Turn off the water while you brush your teeth, dummy!” It’s been five years and I still think of that message whenever I leave the faucet on while brushing my teeth.

So, that and of course anything featuring talking M&M’s always wins as my favorite commercials.

Side Note: *The truth is most people are stupid and they’ll just think, ‘Aw, those T-Mobile commercials were real funny. I think I’ll get T-Mobile.’ And they won’t over-analyze the whole situation like me and that’s fine. I don’t actually believe that T-Mobile supports a divided country, I believe they are just as evil as the rest of the phone companies (including AT&T).