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In a clip from the Nationwide Super Bowl ad "Life Comes at You Fast," Britney Spears' estranged husband, Kevin Federline, portrays a successful rap star …

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Published Saturday, January 27, 2007
FUNNY BUSINESS

Super Bowl Ads Return to Humorous Roots

By SETH SUTEL
The Associated Press


NEW YORK
There's one place where you can find both FedEx, the overnight package delivery service, and "Fed-Ex," or Kevin Federline, the future ex-husband of pop diva Britney Spears. Both will be making appearances in Super Bowl ads, the highest-profile advertising event of the year.

FedEx Corp. is keeping mum about what its ad will look like, keeping up a tradition of ultra-secrecy that many marketers follow in hopes of building up the maximum amount of surprise during the game, which airs Feb. 4 on CBS Corp.'s CBS network. Advertisers want to get the most out of the huge cost of an ad in the big game, which is running as high as $2.6 million this year, up slightly from $2.5 million last year.

Federline will be poking fun at himself in a humorous spot for the Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. under its "Life Comes At You Fast" campaign. Those spots, which have previously featured the supermodel Fabio and MC Hammer, will show Federline winding up working in a fast-food restaurant.

Humor and attempts to drive viewers to the Web, two themes from past years, are back again with some variations, and this year's Super Bowl commercials add a new twist - viewer participation.

One of the biggest new themes of this year's game is getting amateurs into the act. General Motors Corp.'s Chevrolet division ran a contest for college students to propose an ad that would be made by a team of professionals, and PepsiCo Inc.'s Frito-Lay unit will run an ad made entirely by an amateur contestant.

Meanwhile, Bayer Corp.'s Alka-Seltzer has a spot in the pre-game broadcast featuring the winner of a contest to come up with an updated version of its "plop-plop, fizz-fizz" jingle. The winner was Josh Anderson, a DJ at a radio station in Greensboro, N.C. The NFL also made an ad from an idea generated by a fan contest.

Many of the other spots made available for preview ahead of the big game show a decided shift to lighthearted, sometimes campy humor. That's in contrast with a number of ads last year that highlighted oddball violence, such as a female player in a touch football game getting clobbered with an illegal tackle.