Apple’s presence felt at Super Bowl XLV

For those of us here in New Orleans, last year’s Super Bowl will always be considered the best Super Bowl ever.  Yesterday for Super Bowl XLV, I wasn’t particularly interested in either of the teams playing, so like many others I mostly watched for the ads — which in my opinion were just so-so.  Apple did not purchase an ad yesterday, but it was interesting to see that the iPhone and iPad still had a presence.

As I’m sure that you know, many credit Apple for helping to cement the Super Bowl as the most important venue for running commercials because Apple ran its famous 1984 commercial during Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984.  Many still consider that commercial — the introduction of the Macintosh computer — to be the best commercial ever made.  I’m sure that most of you reading this have seen it before, but here it is again:

Although Apple did not run a commercial yesterday, its presence was felt several times.  First, Motorola ran a commercial called “Empower the People” to promote its upcoming Xoom, an Android 3.0 based tablet computer that will compete with the iPad.  The commercial is an obvious homage to Apple’s famous 1984 commercial, except that the ad tries to portray Apple users as undifferentiated drones.  (It is interesting that Apple’s white earphones are so iconic that simply showing someone with white cords hanging from their ears instantly identifies them as an iPod/iPhone/iPad user.)  I don’t have a direct link to the commercial, but you can see it here on YouTube where Ad Blitz is showing all of the Super Bowl XLV commercials.  Here is the Motorola commercial:

Then there was the new iPad-only newspaper, The Daily, which ran an ad during the Super Bowl.  I don’t think that I’ve ever seen a commercial on TV for an iPhone or iPad app before (except for the Apple ads that promote several apps at a time) and I certainly have never seen an app advertised in the Super Bowl before.  Between the $3 million that The Daily reportedly spent to run this ad and the other money that is behind this app, it is obvious that Rupert Murdoch expects The Daily to be a big deal.  (I have mixed emotions about The Daily myself; the stories don’t have a lot of depth and it is slow to load, but I am holding out hope that it will improve over time.)  Here is The Daily commercial:

Then there was Verizon’s ad for the new Verizon iPhone, in which they brought back their “can you hear me now” guy:

And finally, there was the commercial for the upcoming animated movie Rio.  At first blush, the commercial just seems like a normal ad for a movie.  Here is that ad:

But if you pause the ad at the 28 second mark, you see this for just a fraction of a second:

Look on that wooden box on the right and you see this:

That is a hint telling you to play level 13-12 in the hit iPhone and iPad game Angry Birds — one of the few games that I love so much that I actually reviewed it on iPhone J.D., even though this is certainly not a game review website.  (Level 13-12 is one of several new levels recently added to the game in a free update.)  I did some digging on the Internet and learned that you can unlock a golden egg on Level 13-12 by doing the following.  Your first bird is a yellow bird; do whatever you want with him.  For your second bird, the white bird, pull the slingshot the wrong direction so that he is headed BEHIND the spot where the birds line up:

Then release and just after he passes the other birds, tap your finger to drop an egg:

That will cause Golden Egg to appear which unlocks a new level in the game:

To activate that new level, go to the Golden Egg screen in the game, where you will see a special egg that is shaped like a football instead of the normal egg shape:

Tap the football to play the special level:

Once you beat the level, you will see a globe with an arrow pointing to a Rio icon.  Tap that arrow:

The app then opens up Safari and you are brought to a special webpage on which you can sign up to win a trip to Rio de Janeiro to see the world premiere of the movie:

While the football game itself was nothing special as far as I was concerned, I enjoyed seeing the references in the Super Bowl to Apple products in these four different ads, and I enjoyed playing the new level of Angry Birds on my iPhone.  Having said that, next year, I’d rather just see the Saints in the Super Bowl again.