The only thing more predictable than the pre-game hype over the Super Bowl is the post-game hype about which commercials worked and which didn’t. The winners of this year’s Nobel Prize won’t get a millionth of the ink that GoDaddy.com commercial will. When the Nobel Prize people start advertising on the Super Bowl, it will be worth talking about. Until then, they’re about as newsworthy as Mr. Blackwell’s yearly ten worst-dressed list.

The commercials rated most watchable by some polls were the Budweiser commercials. At $2.6 million a pop, Bud ran five of them. Now, here’s my question. What beverage do you think most people watching the game at home were drinking? Tea? Coffee? Bottled water? White-wine spritzers? Or beer?

So Budweiser just spent $13 million (plus whatever it cost to make the ads) to tell people who were probably already drinking their product to buy their product. Smart. Well, it must have sounded smart after a few six packs. Otherwise, it’s pretty stupid. There’s only so much beer you can drink on any one day. There are 13 million better ways to spend their advertising money.

FedEx spent their $2.6 million explaining that FedEx Ground service sounded slow but really isn’t. Basically they were saying they had a product with a lousy name, as if FedEx had nothing to do with coming up with such a stupid name. So why not name it something that doesn’t sound slow? Like Xtreme Ground or Ground Speed or Terrefirma Blitzkrieg. Whoever came up with the name FedEx Ground owes the company two and a half million dollars. Let me guess: was it your company president?

Another highly rated ad was for Doritos. More advertising to the choir.

“What do you say, dear, that instead of pate and caviar, we try corn chips at the Super Bowl next year? I know it’s a radical idea, but I say tradition be damned, let’s have chips! And maybe guacamole.”