Okay, the game has played.  The Packers won it.  (They did seem to want it more.) And all the spot have played.  I must admit, I missed a couple on the game. But  caught up thanks to YouTube.  So here’s my top 5

1.  VW  “The Force”  Still tops.   And, yes, as I said earlier, the story about this spot only starts with the wonderful execution.  It will be all about VW’s smart strategy of letting the spot enter pop culture and pre-empt the game. (Post game:  clearly, this spot had more emotional impact as a :60.  So releasing it as a :60 before the game, where it played as a :30,  makes even more sense.  Still the stand out great spot of the game.)

2. Chrysler,  Eminem.  This spot grabbed me and had me ready to be snarky and cynical and hate it at the beginning.  But as I watched it, it grabbed me.  And in the end, I loved it.  Eminem spoke for Detroit, and in a sense, for America, and the crap this country is facing.

3.  Doritos.   “House Sitting”  (Previously called: "Grandpa")   Most Doritos spots were sophomoric and stupid. (See also…Bud Light, Pepsi Max, GoDaddy and yes, most other Dorito’s spots.)  But here, a really fun macguffin, with the product at its center.  Love the absurdity of it.

  Played great in the party I was attending.

4.  Chevy.  For good old fashioned greatly conceived, greatly executed advertising, you’re not gonna get better.  Solid. Whmisical. Entertaining.  Smart.  Most all of the spots solid, obviously created by responsible adults.  (Personal favorite:  Camero, "Miss Evelyn."  But most Chevy spots, uncharacteristically solid.)

5. Audi – The spot was great.  But they built a huge story around the entire idea of oppressive luxury.  Love it. Check out the online videos.  The Kenny G version the better of the two.

Close 6’s…

Lipton Brisk,  Etrade (baby),  CarMax Candy Store, NFL American Family,  VW Black Beetle.

As has been said, easy to be a critic, hard to get good work out on the air,  especially during the SuperBowl game.   So I react how I react. I'd be curious to see how this might line up with the USA Today ad ranking.  [Editor’s note:  USAToday ad ranking here.]

-- Reid Holmes, ECD, Campbell Mithun

I was asked by a local TV affiliate FOX 9 to appear Monday morning to talk about my favorite Super Bowl spots.  I originally thought the topic of this post would be just that, my top 5 favorite, and I’d write it after the game.

However, a different narrative has developed and begs attention.  As Sunday progressed and I started catching up on Twitter and Facebook, I was struck by the fact that opinion on most of them is already taking shape in social media.  In fact, many of the spots, or their teasers, were already aggregated for viewing by Saturday on Mashable.  Or by the very brands the spots advertise. 

The entire strategy of keeping a spot under wraps has changed.  Witness VW’s wonderful “The Force”.    As of this writing, over 12 MILLION views.  (My estimation, this spot is getting 300,000 views an hour. Talk about leveraging your investment.) Youtube, having also adopted a football visual with it’s iconic logo, is officially the superbowl advertiser’s best friend. 

So given this, my top 5 spots as of this writing at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, based on what I’ve seen on the interwebs…

1.       VW  “The Force”  The story about this spot only starts with the wonderful execution.  It will be all about VW’s smart strategy of letting the spot enter pop culture and pre-empt the game.

2.       Chevy.  A tie for me between "Miss Evelyn" and "Misunderstanding." As a creative person, they’re inspiring for almost mutually exclusive reasons.

3.  Doritos.  "Grandpa"   A really fun macguffin with the product at its center.  Love the absurdity of it.

4.  E-Trade.  The baby still seems fresh, but I wonder how much longer they’ll be able to pull it off.  Based on the clip I saw, should be another fun spot.

5.  Audi – Their campaign built around the “oppression” of old luxury.  The teaser films look great.  Hope they can make it sing on the game.

I’ll repost later with my final list, after having watched them all on the game.

-- Reid Holmes, ECD

1.  Attention is the new currency. More content has been produced in the last 2 years than in all of recorded history.  Engage. Delight. Intrigue. Inform. Give me utility. If you must interrupt me with an “ad message,” you better reward me.

2.  A new media has never caused the death of an existing one.  PS: Anyone who calls himself a social media “expert” isn’t.  You can’t be an expert in something getting reinvented every day.

3.  Mobile is gonna be huge.  2011 will be “the year of body collision injury” caused by looking at your screen while walking. (“Mobile induced real world attention deficit.” MIRWAD) Virtual worlds, mobile commerce, geo location are today’s AM Radio. Tools will be breathtakingly cool.   People will get rich.

4.  People love stories, the more visual the better.  (He typed as the parrot, perched on his computer monitor, put on a small cowboy hat and sang “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man o’ Mine” while accompanying itself on an 8-inch ukulele.)  That said, it’s less about telling stories and more about building them.

5.  The winner of the social media economy has been announced:  Truth.  Hey companies, fess up to your failures honestly and transparently and in real time, or have a good crisis plan to face the blowback.

6.  What a company does is more important than what a company says.  (See also:  number 5.)  Authenticity rules.

7.  Strategy first. Tactics second.  That will never change.  Yes, there are more shiny toys and tools every day, but if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.

8.  ROI = Risk of Ignoring.

9.  It’s a beta world.   Try. Learn. Repeat.   You have to be willing to fail to achieve more.

10:  Devices that try to predict and fix what I’m typing must stop causing me more work. When I type: “I’m on PTO, I don’t mean “I’m on POT.”

-- Reid Holmes, executive creative director

(Editor’s note: this post first appeared on The Minneapolis Egotist blog, as part of a collection of end-of-the-year thoughts by local creatives.)

Working in a business of ideas, I can attest to how rare it is for something truly original to get made. It's rare in marketing. (Witness: The Old Spice Man Your Man Could Smell Like, Twitter-YouTube internet-takeover tour de force: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38282026/ns/business-small_business) And it's rare in movies, where money is invested in the tried and true, and stories and scripts are dumbed down for broader appeal and less investor risk. (Scripts are even pitched in Hollywood by association. Regarding "Knight and Day" starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz: It's "True Lies" meets "Mr. & Mrs. Smith!" Or "Killers" starring Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl: It's "True Lies" meets "Mr. & Mrs. Smith!")

So I thought I would pause in this space to, as Stephen Colbert would say, tip my hat to Christopher Nolan, the writer and director of this masterpiece called "Inception." What he has achieved in this film is nothing short of true originality. It's a film with no ancestors. An original idea demands of its creators that everything done in service of its execution live up to the original insight. And they've done it here. It is an inspired piece -- a story idea that simply forces invention at every turn: in plot, production, special effects, and overall execution.

"What's the most resilient parasite?" asks Leonardo DiCaprio's character Cobb. "An idea. A single idea from the human mind can transform the world and rewrite the rules." With "Inception," Christopher Nolan has done that for movies.

Anyone in the business of creating ideas should see "Inception." It's a film that pays true allegiance to the beauty of original thought. In content and execution, it's like nothing else.

For those who have seen the movie (spoiler alert!), here's a cool site:
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Inception-Explained-Unraveling-The-Dream-Within-The-Dream-19615.html

Reid Holmes,EVP/Exec. Creative Director