[Emu the Foo]

This guys is a genius. I don't mean that in a sarcastic way. The point was to wet your appitite and make you curious. I have a bunch of people who have shared it on FB and they are iphone users. Stop effing complaining.

[hispanola]

I had to see the ad two times to get it. To me that's not a good thing. Part of that I attribute to being a BB fan and wanting to see something spot on and what I got was a thud. One of the people watching it with me simply replied that Blackberry sucks. BB has it's work cut out for it in the US. I hope it succeeds.

[BBVegasGirl80]

I think the ad did its job. I like that it made me say, "Huh?" and make me go look at it again. BB gently poked fun at themselves in a playful, clever, ironic way and complimented all of its users by making us superheroes with a powerful new smartphone. All the symbols are there for a reason. Even the song they used was fitting for the ad. Even if people hate it and thinks it sucks, it got them talking about BB.

[pooger]

The part that bothered me about it was that I didn't know what it was about. If I hadn't been looking for the bb commercial I would have never known it was one because the narration at the end of it went by too quickly.

Sent from my BlackBerry 9930

[unbreakablej]

I think the concept was absolutely brilliant but maybe they should have more
. Human interactions/ funny actions that will let people imitate and to enforce the concept of communication. E.g. You cant use your phone to make your friend pick her nose but you could have sent her a msg.. or something like that.

[itsyaboy]

Wow.. I didn't check out the site that the ad was referring to.. but now that I have.. that was AWESOME!!!!! Must say that I "get" the ad a lot better now. The only thing is, people do have to check out that site! I hope non-BlackBerry people take their time to check it out.. nice touch, integrating it with facebook. I especially lol'ed when I saw my displaypicture on the 'cover' of a magazine haha

[Buju Banton]

If everyone misses the point of an ad, it's not a good ad.

period.

[Buju Banton]

I checked out the commercial on the nfl.com website and it was ranked #1 amongst all commercials shown during the super bowl! (At least for me it was) So a lot of people thought it was very good

more like a lot of people from this site went and voted for it

[raysgrumpy]

I was shocked when I read (on this site) that the commercial was #1 on nfl.com. I haven't heard anybody talk about the commercial and never heard it mentioned on any TV show or website the next day

[darkehawke]

It wasn't to show off the phone, it was clear you can't do that in 30 seconds...it was also clear (to me) that they were intending to drive traffic to the website BlackBerry Z10 Experience to see what the Z10 CAN do...there is a very cool new BlackBerry experience up on that page now that ties in with your Facebook account to draw your own photos and friends into the phone's display so you can see what the experience would look like for you...clever in my opinion, given the constraints of the 30 seconds...Samsung's ad was 2 minutes, so obviously they were able to give it more zing.

i got the point. but the website appeared for less then 5 seconds. the ad did not grab attention. i saw what they were trying to do, and they failed.
put it this way, if i wasnt looking out for a blackberry ad, i would never have seen it

[cpsquires]

If everyone misses the point of an ad, it's not a good ad.

period.

If a lot of people missed the point, I am sad for the state of people....

[BlackStormRising]

I totally got the point of the commercial, and since our friendly retailers refused to sell me a Z10 on account of they don't like the colour of my money, I picked me up a QuackBerry similar to the ones I saw in the commercial.

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...oEiSI2On9qJ7PZ

[SparkyBC]

I was shocked when I read (on this site) that the commercial was #1 on nfl.com. I haven't heard anybody talk about the commercial and never heard it mentioned on any TV show or website the next day

Because crackberry drove the hits..lol

[BlackStormRising]

If a lot of people missed the point, I am sad for the state of people....

Here's one who missed the point and thinks it was awful:
BlackBerry

I shall rebut:
Crackberry forum members have been waiting for a Super Bowl ad since at least Jan 2011 (the anticipated PlayBook launch). This year they got their wish, and unless you bleed BlackBerry juice, you were not going to "get" the message. The ad was filled with metaphoric imagery, the "Torch", the "Storm" sewer. The super hero motif was an obvious one for a company that names some of it's phones after comic book heros. Superhero references, superphone, Super Bowl, it's a natural fit.

The central character has just bought his first BlackBerry superphone and he's loving it, but the ad elevates the character above the product (flatters the user) until the very end, when he does something "heroic" with the phone and saves the day. The ad plays to the home crowd (the core fanbase). The central character is framed as someone young, independent, SECURE. And he clearly knows how to play Brickbreaker - L. O. L.

But what about the jackknifing truck at the climactic moment? For some reason Jim Balsillie's "app tonnage" sprung to my mind when I saw that truck suddenly burst into thousands of yellow duckies at the end. Why? Well, a ton of toy birds launched sideways couldn't possibly be an oblique reference to a wildly popular game that IS available on this new phone - could it be?!

Or how about that lovely close up near the end where the "hero" steps on the duck and it squeaks as he walks away with a wry smile on his face? Does that not reflect the BlackBerry user's natural disdain for those oh so pesky novelty apps, those digital whoopie cushion ones (nudge, wink), which admittedly still elicit a smile out of us nevertheless?

Bottom line - the immediate success of the Z10, and the fate of the company is quite likely in the hands of 5 million or so hard core BlackBerry fans, many of whom live on this site. BlackBerry knows this, and aimed that commercial squarely at THEM.
And if the ad succeeds, and 5 million of you buy the phone, the company may live to fight another day, and you WILL be their hero.

Make no mistake, there was a subtle, but unmistakable shot across the bow - "we're not going to tell you what our phone can do..." Code for "that's what the other company does, and besides, we know that YOU know what smartphones can do".

and that kind of subtlety is the very essence of cool.

[rottonj]

Here is what I dont get. Do you think we missed the point because we didnt like it, or because people posted they didnt understand it? I watched it 3 times, I got it, just didnt like it.I wish I did, I'm a fan. This commercial in my opinion wont be remembered. Still giving the phone a shot once it here in the states, but its gonna have to be right for me to keep it. At this point the Z10 seems incomplete to me.

[kbz1960]

I got it and while there were many better ads (sorry there was) I did like it but that samsung ad was the worst, not even funny like it was supposed to be.

[BBVegasGirl80]

Bravo, BlackStormRising! You nailed it. :-)

[cpsquires]

Here is what I dont get. Do you think we missed the point because we didnt like it, or because people posted they didnt understand it? I watched it 3 times, I got it, just didnt like it.I wish I did, I'm a fan. This commercial in my opinion wont be remembered. Still giving the phone a shot once it here in the states, but its gonna have to be right for me to keep it. At this point the Z10 seems incomplete to me.

A lot of people don't get it. Not liking it is fine, no commercial is going to be universally liked. I, for one, loved the Samsung commercial even though most people here hate it. But reading the comments here, its evident that people were just lost.

[Ray III]

Could not agree more... sad so many do not actually understand marketing and advertizing...

The people creating the ad are the ones who need to understand marketing.

As someone said in the other thread, if "most of us don't get it," then the ad was a failure.

[Cale M]

The people creating the ad are the ones who need to understand marketing.

Yes. It was the Michael Bay of commercials. A lot of expensive special effects that said little, and any success is largely due to its fanbase.

Some of us do have an advertising background and can recognize trends. In today's market? A good ad identifies its brand early and maintains that identifcation for more than a few seconds. I've said that before and I'll continue saying that. A more cost effective and attention-getting spot might have been focusing on the sexy new look of the phone itself with clear logos and a web destination that people might not have had to google to remember.

I saw a guy walking down the street playing with what could have been any phone, surrounded by a standardized computer generated extravaganza that might have belonged to Subway for all I knew. Half their audience was probably in the bathroom by the time they blurted out 'Blackberry! ... ah, damn. We missed them.'

Big CG was last decade. We're back to actually wanting to know what's being advertised. Well, unless it's something as dramatic as Paul Harvey's "God Made a Farmer".

"I needed a phone with security strong enough to protect my business, my finance, my life... so RIM made a BlackBerry."

[RECOOL]

They didnt miss the point they interpreted it different.The world has gotten dumber if you doint point out the obvious many will not understand.When things get a little different its complicated people called z10 gestures complicted yet gestures are something kids do when they draw.Not everyone can keep up..

[darkehawke]

They didnt miss the point they interpreted it different.The world has gotten dumber if you doint point out the obvious many will not understand.When things get a little different its complicated people called z10 gestures complicted yet gestures are something kids do when they draw.Not everyone can keep up..

none of that changes the fact it was a bad ad.


Sent from my BlackBerry 9810 using Tapatalk

[BlackStormRising]

I think many have missed the point of this thread's title. It's not about whether it was a good or bad ad. Frankly, any ad that gets 100 million+ audience surely must be a "good" ad, but maybe not a "great ad". A great ad "might" translate into robust sales, which is clearly not happening with the Z10. The NYT told me so.

Sent from my BlackBerry 9790 using Tapatalk

[cpsquires]

People are talking like this is the only BB10 ad. It didn't need to show off or sell its features, its just needed to create buzz around BB10 so that people would pay attention to it. There is a large wave of advertising in print media, at stores, online, television, etc that is doing a better job at showing the phone. All it needed to do was shock the large audience, and by not showing off the phone, it shocked.

[Thunderbuck]

Look, the Super Bowl has developed a significant audience just for its advertising. That's quite the trick, when you think about it, and I'd say we owe that to Apple.

The thing is, Super Bowl advertising has developed a life of its own. It's become an arena both for brands fighting for mindshare and for ad agencies trying to prove their worth. It's reached the point now where many ads are created specifically for the event and are never broadcast again. Another thing with this: the Z10 won't be available in the US for another month; it makes little sense to focus too much on a device that a customer can't just go out and buy now.

Given these two facts, the Z10 ad was decent. It was a little looser and funnier than BB advertising has tended to be, and I think the overall message it sends to a general audience is "we're on our way back with something you haven't seen from us before". If anyone was REALLY interested in the device, there was an address posted to go to the website (tho I'll grant that if they'd thought about it a little more, BB might have included a Shazam link).

As vague as it was about the Z10, there were at least brief glimpses of it in action, unlike the Samsung ad (or many others, for that matter). Wasn't the best ad, but there absolutely were worse ones.