Once again, I found myself rooting for my favorite team: commercialism. Here were my favorite ads aired during Super Bowl XLV. If I didn’t include one you thought was particularly good, please let me know in the comments.

THE BEST

I own a Passat, so I felt particularly proud by this lighthearted and well-made commercial. Hip, relatable and sunny; it incorporates family values without being bogged down by sappiness. It almost makes me want a kid to mess with. Almost.

I’m not usually a fan of when one company swipes another with tongue-in-cheek, but Verizon really nailed AT&T at the end of this ad. I don’t think a single person in the room wasn’t laughing (granted we live in San Francisco and pretty much all have iPhones and AT&T).

I actively root for the American car industry to retain its former luster, and, since the bailout, it seems we’re moving in the right direction: fewer extraneous car models with different names under the same companies, an increase in innovation, a sharpened focus on green tech and (most likely what is making me think all this is happening) cleverer marketing. This Chrysler ad is a great example of soulful and almost gothic Americana, with the brilliant tagline, “Imported from Detroit.”

Coke has always been good at evoking a positive emotional response which, from what I’ve learned by watching Inception, is what you need to implant an idea successfully into someone’s mind (basically what an ad is trying to do). If I had to choose one favorite commercial, it would be Coke’s “Border” ad. It’s both uplifting and relevant, and in view of the world’s recent events.

THE WORST

I don’t know what Sony Ericsson was thinking by inserting scenes from what one can only assume came from Saw IV or V into a commercial about a gaming phone. I found the ad so disturbing I didn’t even know what the commercial was for. Instead, it made me wonder how many backdoor surgical procedures were taking place in third-world countries as the commercial aired.

While Groupon’s heartless ad is nowhere as bland as the CarFax and Cars.com commercials, and far from the deplorable nature of pretty much every Go Daddy commercial ever created, I think I just expected more from them.

I suppose we could argue that even bad commercials are successful since we take the time to review and post about them. The fact that I now despise Go Daddy makes me disagree.