Poll: 3-D Super Bowl Ads Unimpressive

Hollywood might be excited about 3-D technology, but as ballyhooed as the DreamWorks/Pepsi 3-D Super Bowl pod was before the game, advertising creative directors were unimpressed by the prospect of more eye-popping visuals in commercials.

While Pepsi provided 125 million free 3-D glasses produced by Intel -- whose InTru technology powers next month's DreamWorks Animation release Monsters vs. Aliens -- a random sampling of Super Bowl viewers in the advertising business found that few bothered to pick up the glasses, and those who did were not all that impressed with the SoBe Lifewater spot that featured football players and the SoBe lizards doing their version of "Swan Lake."

"I actually know one person who got them, and she was very disappointed," one creative director said.

Most felt that the SoBe commercial, which also cross-promoted DreamWorks' film with the inclusion of movie characters in the dance, was a strong marketing tool for 3-D technology but maybe too early for TV.

"Like 3-D movies, a few people have done it, but it's more like, 'Oh yeah, that was neat,' " said Jason Karley, assistant creative director at DDB in Chicago, who said he watched the game with 75 people and not a single person arrived with the glasses.

Said Peter Nicholson, CCO of Deutsch, New York: "In theory, the idea is pretty good. But unless you make sure everyone has the glasses, it is not going to come off very well. Watching that block without the glasses was very painful."

By Eleftheria Parpis and AdWeek, The Hollywood Reporter