Bi-Weekly-ish newsletter of Marcel A. Wiebenga - Issue #13
Hey readers,
I hope all of you are well and had a great week. This is edition number lucky 13 of the bi-weekly-ish newsletter about music, culture, advertising, more music, business, tech, and even more music by me, myself, and I Marcel Alexander Wiebenga. This edition features the Aftermath (see what I did there) of Super Bowl LVI, more specifically, its Halftime show and its commercials and some ideas on how to make the Olympics better.
Before you enjoy your Friday, don't forget to smash that like button (do I sound like a YouTuber yet) and to forward this to a friend.
1. The Annual Superbowl Advertising Extravaganza.
Being a Euroboy I never really watch the Super Bowl live as it's in the wee small hours of a school night. My own annual Super Bowl tradition starts at 8.00 on a Monday morning with coffee and a freshly posted rerun of the halftime show, followed by an hour and a half of sifting through the Super Bowl commercials.
This year was a good year for Super Bowl commercials. This Chevy one stood out. It's a remake of the Sopranos opening titles, directed by Sopranos showrunner David Chase. Instead of Tony driving a 1999 Chevrolet Suburban, daughter Meadow is driving an electric Chevy Silverado, meeting up with her brother Anthony. If this commercial is to be considered part of the official Sopranos canon, this commercial would mean that both kids weren't assassinated in the last scene of the sopranos series, dismissing many fan theories regarding the show's ending.
In my eyes, the funniest of the commercial pack by a landslide, was this LiquidDeath commercial that shows hard-partying children set to Judas Priests' “Breaking the Law” and the tag line, "Don't be scared, it's just water."
Interesting to see was the surge of crypto-related advertisers taking the field. Coinbase's 30 second floating QR code (at a $7M media buy) showed guts and a thorough understanding of the early adapting crowd of potential investors. The QR code, when scanned, took you to a promotional page that promised 15$ in Bitcoin for creating an account on the platform. The page consequently crashed due to high server demand.
However, the winner of the Super Bowl ad competition is fellow crypto-platform FTX. The spot features Larry David, who never appeared in a commercial before. Larry David is basically playing the character from his HBO show Curb Your Enthusiasm, a contrarian with obnoxious humor and adversity for normalcy. In this one-minute-long commercial, he is shooting down some of history's best ideas, era by era, the fork, the toilet, the Walkman, and even American independence (because "even the stupid ones" will get a chance to influence major political decisions.) Larry also dismisses Cryptocurrency as "Nah, I don't think so,"
If Larry David isn't your humor, there is no need to watch this commercial. If it is, do have a look, and if this is your first introduction to the man and you like this, I highly suggest watching Curb Your Enthusiasm as well. It's Pretty, Pretty, Pretty Good!
2. The Halftime Hip-Hop Bonanza.
As expected, the Super Bowl LVI halftime show was, by all means, a banger. Forty-four Grammys and twenty-two no. 1 Billboard albums, together on one stage and playing for a live audience superseding a 100 million will do that!
While the Super Bowl has featured its fair share of hip-hop artists in the past, they've always played second fiddle to safer, more palatable pop and rock headliners primarily aimed to keep boomers in their seat between the second and third quarter. This edition was aimed at the nostalgia of Gen-Y-ers who, on socials, soon realized that by becoming the target audience meant they finally had gotten old.
Chart data, an American music data insights company, had engaging coverage on their Twitter and asked what the best halftime show in history has been. Even though many people seemed convinced this year's edition was the best, the most mentioned answer was Prince's 2007 performance. Prince played Super Bowl XLI during a down-poor of rain of biblical proportions. The Vimeo below provides an excellent oral history of that day from the show's producer. Go-go let’s go have a look!
3. The Olympics.
Have you guys been enthusiastically watching the Olympics? Yeah, me neither!
Apart from this being in a time zone that also doesn't work for me, these Olympics seem way too close to last year's Tokyo Olympics. Above all, and let's be honest here, the sports seem not too appealing.
I feel the Olympics have been sleeping on a couple of sports. Sports that have been demonstration sports in the past but have never graduated to Olympic status. Take, for example, Synchronized Skating! Synchronized skating is a gender-neutral sport where between eight and sixteen individuals perform together as a team as they move as one flowing unit at high speed over the ice, while completing complicated footwork and elements. Amazing! And whatever happened to Speed Skiing? Skiing downhill in a straight line, going as fast as 200 kilometers an hour, with contestants wearing suits and helmets straight-out of Star Wars movies.
Above all, I'm missing Ski Ballet. As the name suggests, it's ballet on skis, and it was a demonstration sport in 1988 and 1992. If one sport represents the late 80s/early 90s, it's Ski Ballet. Below the master of the sport, Herr Herman Reitberger, during his 1988 Olympic kür, complete with French commentary, to set off your weekend.
That's it!
A little less subjects then normally, but still the same amount of bite sized chunks of pop-culture content. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing this. Please consider forwarding this to a friend, family or your colleagues.
Till next time, happy Friday and have a great weekend.
Marcel