Hype Bowl 2013: Our Top 3 Favorite Super Bowl Car Ads (Videos)

It is once again time for our annual tradition of over analyzing the automotive ads that are aired during the unofficial American holiday known as “Super Bowl Sunday”.  Again I will give you my top 3 picks as well as my bottom three and you can choose to agree or disagree with me in the comments below.  You may note one small modification from last year.  I have officially changed the name from the “Ad Bowl” to the “Hype Bowl” just to make it a little more personal and also to avoid any confusion as “Ad Bowl” is actually used quite often!  I have also decided to go with regular numerical rankings so its more clear which ad I liked the best.  Anyhow, lets get into it shall we?  Below are my picks for the best three car ads from this year’s Super Bowl.

#3 “Prom” AKA “#BraveryWins” by Audi (7,321,366 YouTube views)

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Last year Audi took a shot at the Twi-heads with their “Vampires” commercial.  This year they went a different route and instead of lampooning a sect of teen culture they celebrated a huge part of it by making “Prom”.  In this spot a young guy is pretty bummed out that he will be heading to his prom solo.  To help lift his spirits, his father lets his son take is brand new Audi S6 to the high school shindig.  His confidence is boosted so much by the German hot rod that the lad feels the courage to go after what he wants.  Watch the commercial to see what I mean.  I like this spot because in a way it brings to life the confidence we all wish we had back in our high school days.  The commercial’s heavy inspiration from John Hughes (“Breakfast Club” and “Sixteen Candles”) combined with a lack of cheesiness puts this spot solidly in the third place spot.

#2 “Team” By Hyundai (5,922,016 YouTube views)

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Audi’s commercial showed the audience what prom may have been like with a bit more confidence.  In Hyundai’s “Team” commercial the audience is taken even further back in their early years to imagine what could have been if we had some of the toughest friends on the planet to help us deal with bullies.  In this spot a young kid has his football taken away from him by a group of  bullies at the park.  When he demands his ball back one of the hooligans challenges him to come back when he “has a team”.  The wronged boy immediately gets to work assembling a team of middle school friends who probably have more bad-assery than the Avengers and the Justice League combined!

#1 “Farmers” By RAM Trucks (329,250 YouTube views)

Once again the Chrysler group has taken the number one spot in the Hype Bowl.  Last year they pulled it off with Clint Eastwood in the “Halftime in America” bit in which they put together a message to help up lift not only Detroit but all of America.  This year to help give some strong identity to the RAM brand the group produced this spot simply called “Farmers”.  In this commercial we hear a recording of Paul Harvey’s “Farmers” poem over a slide show of, well farmers, as well as their “offices” which happen to be the heartlands of America.  Despite its simplicity, this commercial was so eloquently done that even though I was in a room full of raucous football fans everyone, and I mean everyone fell silent while the spot ran.  This commercial makes an attempt to remind the American public about the proud yet humble people who helped to build this country and also continue to keep it going through hard, honest, and necessary work.  The people at RAM were also very careful to not step on their own feet with an overdose of branding.  In fact you only see an image of an actual RAM truck twice in the entire spot.  Despite having the fewest amount of views and being the longest commercial (just over two minutes) out of the top three, RAM’s “Farmers” ad is clearly the winner in my book.  Congrats to Chrysler and RAM for earning the top spot and reminding all of us of the people out there who help to make our country great!

Honorable Mention: Fast And Furious 6 trailer (1,377,109 YouTube views)

I will be the first to admit that I winced along with the rest of the purists when I found out that yet another Fast and Furious movie would be making its way to theaters.  Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the last film but I felt like they could not really top themselves after that and anything else would just be a step down.  Then, I saw this trailer!  There are awesome cars everywhere and everything explodes!  Not in the cheesy way either but in the freakin’ awesome way!  Also, instead of the usual “against the law” storyline, this time “Dom” and his crew are asked to aid law enforcement to help them nab a group of “precision driving” outlaws that might be worse than them.  Sounds interesting right?  If not, who cares!? EVERYTHING BLOWS UP IN MUSHROOM CLOUDS OF AWESOMENESS!  I am definitely getting a ticket to this flick.

Well, there you have it!  Three great car ads and one awesome car-related-ish ad.  If you have a pick that you think should have been in the top three then speak up!  Let me know in the comments and let the debate commence!

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