Kat Gordon covered this year’s ad emphasis on cultural awareness in Adweek’s Super Bowl print edition, and she made some good points. This year was an awful year for NFL publicity with elevator beatings, toddler corporal punishment, rape accusations, etc.  The NFL did need to steer clear of adding to that fire aka frat-bro humor, sex appeal ads, and condescending spots. But my gamewatch group came to the consensus that something is wrong with our country. “What state do people think our country’s in? America’s doing alright” summed my brother.

And I agree, it was too much. One behavioral psychology book, Thinking Fast and Slow, talks about the availability heuristic and how the more a message is available to you, the more you think it’s an issue. Take house earthquakes for example: they spike insurance purchases because they’re newsworthy. But really, the numbers those insurance actuaries play with all day will probably say that natural disasters  hardly happen at all, especially after an  earthquake JUST happened. Similarly, if all these brands keep pushing these current problems down our throat, we’re going to believe our society is in a bad place. Yes, there’s always room for improvement, but geez, all most people really want to do is watch the game and be entertained.

Miscellaneous Thoughts:

1. Katy Perry crushed it.
2. Left shark did not crush it.
3. Pete Carroll did not crush it. Even left shark would have called a running play.
4. Hats off to any 37 year old quarterback who can win the Super Bowl, even if you do play for the Colts’ arch nemesis.
5. Public transit is not fun, because snow: