SoBe's 3-D Bowl Ad: A Super Letdown?

PepsiCo is hoping its commercials for SoBe Lifewater will win the annual Super Bowl advertising buzz lottery. Having previewed one of them this morning at a Pepsi press event, my feeling is the 3-D technology that's supposed to make the spots unique is not quite ready for prime time.

Pepsi, with partners Dreamworks and Intel, is distributing some 125 million pairs of special 3D glasses to in hopes that everyone who watches the game will have be able to see the commercials as they're meant to be seen. (Dreamworks is also airing a 3-D spot, for its film Monsters vs. Aliens.) The Wall Street Journal says the glasses cost $7 million -- and that's on top of whatever it cost to shoot the ads in 3-D.

If my experience was anything to go by, it was not money well spent. Jeffrey Katzenberg may be convinced that 3-D is the future, but the SoBe spot was a big letdown. I gather the dancing lizards and NFL stars featured in it were supposed to appear to pop out of the screen. They didn't. It was like a normal video viewed through cheap, distorted colored plastic.

Now, I was sitting pretty far back in the room. Maybe those who were closer to the TV found it more impressive. But another reporter who was seated ahead of me also thought the spot "overhyped and underwhelming." (This reporter thought perhaps the brightly back-lit display of SoBe bottles in the room somehow interfered with the visuals, which seems plausible.)

Below is a 2-D version of what I saw. For a bigger version, you can go here.