FOMOAOBLD -- Fear of missing out and of being Larry David

I generally hate the focus on Superbowl commercials. It's a cynical, astro-turfed ploy to up the advertising multiplier, made worse by the fact that most of the ads are generally pretty crappy. Add that to a bad game and you have an unparalleled exercise in pointlessness.

This year we had a good game and the commercials were both not too bad and genuinely interesting (though often not in the way intended). We learned that:

The Soprano kids made it out of the diner (possibly not canon);

Automakers are starting to pour some serious marketing money into EVs;

Elon Musk is moving into safe target range;

The crypto pump and dumps are getting into the big money territory (though we did have some hints in 2021). 

Of the four crypto related ads debuting, the FTX one achieved an impressive purity of FOMO.

While the WTF award goes to the floating QR code which cost its company $14 mil and didn't even work.




Comparisons are being drawn to the dotcom era, but while that was a time of wretched excess and terrible business plans, the underlying industry really was on track to become something huge and hugely important. With crypto, there is no there there other than scams and money-laundering. The sole purpose of these ads is to convince people to put their savings into a gigantic, fraudulent bubble so that the people taking a cut can max out before the crash.

Next year half the Super Bowl ads will be for law firms telling you to call them if you lost money trading crypto.

— Scott Imberman (@imbernomics) February 14, 2022