Best Super Bowl Commercials: 2000-2009

6. Pepsi, “Young Jimmy Hendrix”

Maybe I’m just a sucker for musical legends or little black kids (wait, what?) but this commercial always gives me goose bumps.

I think the best part is its historical accuracy. Did you know that young Jimi Hendrix really did take up guitar because of Pepsi? And that, throughout his life, one of his favorite methods of taking LSD was to put it into his cold Pepsi drink? And did you also know that when he died, he was buried in a gigantic Pepsi can somewhere in Seattle? And that, when his widow had his children, one of them was mysteriously born with a Pepsi label tattooed on his head?

No?

Wikipedia it.

5. Cingular, “King Gimp”

The best part about this commercial is that it’s not really a commercial.

It’s not pizzazz or funny jokes, it’s not half-naked girls or people getting hurt — there’s a message here, and it’s not easy to have a powerful message in something that’s a minute long.

More importantly, at least from a marketing perspective, “King Gimp” was one of the most memorable Super Bowl commercials of the last decade. And it does it with the strength of its story, of perseverence, of art — sure, it’s taken from an HBO documentary titled King Gimp, but, who cares? It’s the idea and the framing that matters in this particular business and Cingular had a brilliant idea and made a singular commercial (See? this is why I’m a writer).

Oh, and what happened to King Gimp — real name, Dan Keplinger — you ask? Well, he’s mostly doing Reebok commercials now.