Superbowl + Intertextuality

This past superbowl had OK ads, but there was one that stood out to me…not because I thought it was particularly good, but because it was laced with intertextuality.

Every year, Wieden+Kennedy out of Portland, OR, puts out an ad for Coca-Cola. The past few years they’ve done a great job with ads like “It’s Mine”, and “Happiness Factory”. With these ads generating great buzz in previous years, the bar was set pretty high for this year’s game.

Well, W+K definitely dropped the ball. They produced several ads for this year’s game, but the one that involved vertical intertextuality or, how connections between old and new cultural texts across multiple genres create meaning. W+K’s coke ad this year was directly modeled after “The Simpsons”. Had you not known who The Simpson’s are, you wouldn’t quite understand the ad. With that being said, to me, The Simpson’s are a completely tired concept and show. It’s been around for at least one hundred years- well okay that’s a little exaggerative, but still, way tooooo long.

I’m ashamed of you Wieden + Kennedy, you’ve done such great things in the past and your ad completely blew this year. Oh well, maybe next year.