The Super Bowl is the biggest sporting spectacle of the year, well for Americans anyway, this year sees the New England Patriots and New York Giants face off. Super Bowl also gives brands one of the biggest platforms of the year to flex their muscles. The Super Bowl Ads are as big as the game in many peoples eyes. A 30 second ad at this years Super Bowl will cost brands around $3.5million, so they will do anything to try and make their brand stand out, from being funny, celebrity endorsements, weird or lots of flesh on display.   My favourite ad that won't get much recognition is from Budweiser Canada who give small time hockey players the big game experience, you can see that one here: http://sdxcreative.com/blog/182-budweiser-canada-super-bowl-commercial   This year dogs seem to have got a lot of love and added skills, appearing in VW, Doritos, Bud Light obviously these brands believe everyone loves dogs.   Also social media has played a massive part in campaigns with hashtags, Twitter names and Facebook pages all getting shown on screen.  I haven't seen any Google+ references thought yet. Below is a selection of ads that stood out for me for various reasons.   The most popular ad of this years Super Bowl seems to have been the M & M "I'm sexy and I know it" advert.  The ad has received the most votes over on NFL.com and is also one of my favourites.    Volkswagen have played on the success of their "Darth Vader Kid" advert for their 2012 entry, however this one doesn't work quite as well, and it seems even Darth Vader himself agrees.   Bud Light who normally do some of the best adverts have gone down the social responsibility route and have helped raise the issue of Rescue Dogs.  If all dogs could do like this one then they'd be no problem in getting them adopted, this is also my favourite ad of the night good execution and highlights a good cause..   What could possibly follow a beer fetching dog, how about a killer dog that bribes people with Doritos, another weird but memorable advert.   Samsung have once again gone back to mocking the Apple fanboy culture with their ad for the new Samsung Note.  The ad starts the same as the previous one for the Galaxy S but then goes in a direction I wasn't expecting.   Checerolet have followed Samsung and have taken a pop at their fiercest rivals Ford, and how have they done that?  Playing on the Mayan end of world prediction for 2012 as you do.  Ford apparently sent General Motors and TV stations letters asking them to withdraw this ad on Sunday Morning however neither listened and the ad was shown.   The Bridgestone campaign seems to have got a lot of love on Twitter and Social Media. They've taken the performance of their tyres and applied their technology to new sports equipment.  The football, basketball and puck are already for sale. The Football ad is one of 3.   Even Brand Beckham has made an appearance in the Super Bowl Ads, with an ad for his new range of underwear for H & M. Though judging by his twitter comments Joey Barton won't be buying any. {yotube}eQb_-OY7Z0E{/youtube}   Audi have jumped on another bandwagon and hijacked the current love for all things Vampire.  It's corny but not a bad advert, with some nice effects.   the above are both a mix of good and bad but the Super Bowl also brings out the JaMarcus Russells of adverts.  One that just fail despite an awfult lot of money spent and all their hype and promise so here's some of them to. The Very Bad Super Bowl Ads: Pepsi have rolled out Elton John in fancy dress, well I assume they've dressed him up in that but you can never be sure.  This one is just bad, is it any wonder they struggle to compete with Coca Cola. Someone at MetLife must have seen Muller Youghurts ads from last year and thought that throwing together a load of old cartoon characters would tug on some heart strings.   Cars.com have also made a bad one, not sure what to say about this one.   Did you have a favourite Super Bowl ad if so add it in the comments section below.