Remember when Super Bowl commercials were simply Super Bowl commercials — i.e. spots that ran during the actual Super Bowl? They're becoming a rather distant memory these days, as more and more brands take to tweeting, teasing, and even previewing their spots well before the big game. I can see how this makes sense from a strategic perspective — you establish a longer engagement period, build some buzz, get yourself a whole bunch of eyeballs before airtime. But seriously. Am I the only person who thinks that all this pregame hype kinda ruins the fun? 

Here's the thing. With everyone downloading, DVR-ing, and watching whatever they want, whenever they want, the Super Bowl is one of those rare events that the population en masse actually prefers to watch live as it unfolds. This makes it one of the few shared real-time experiences we have left as a culture. During the national anthem, you know you are one of millions holding a hand to your heart in a sports bar or a living room. When that coin flips, we take and hold a collective breath. From the dramatic touchdown passes to the thrilling tackles to the game-changing interceptions to the overblown half-time performance....we clap, cheer, shout and stampede for the bathroom as one.

Watching the commercials used to be the same way.

A lot of people assume that it's the size of the budgets (or the boobs) that make Super Bowl commercials so exciting in the first place. It's because these spots have bigger explosions or hotter girls or cuter talking animals or even more interesting story lines that they become such a big deal, right? Wrong. What made Super Bowl spots so exciting was the anticipation. The commercials were like the game itself. Sure we all know who's going to take the field, but none of us can predict what's going to happen. (Remember what happened the last time the Giants and Patriots met on Super Bowl Sunday?) And the thing that made it so so much fun was that we all got to find out together. 

That's what all the pregame advertiser hoopla is taking away from us. The power of a shared moment. And longer engagement period or no longer engagement period, I kinda hate them for it.

Today, Volkwagen is going to premier their follow-up to last year's beloved spot. I'm sure it's going to get a ton of hits on YouTube, and people are going to tweet it, talk about it, and share it like crazy in the days to come. Yet somehow, that feels a lot less exciting to me than watching last year's spot for the first time on Super Bowl Sunday and seeing the #BrandBowl and #SuperBowlads stream explode with comments as we all reacted to it at once. I hope that next year, more brands will opt to bring the suspense back into the commercial game. There's plenty of time in the post season for us to keep talking about it.