I’ve had this story ready to go for years. The ads keep getting worse. This year, I’m finally pulling the trigger because rock bottom has been hit.

So why are the ads crap? I think it’s because each year advertisers want to top what has been done before. They want to do something bigger and more outrageous. But in the end that equates to dumber, cruder and well, dumber. I said it again.

Thirty seconds of airtime cost about $30 million dollars. That’s a lot of cake. Nobody wants to spend that kind of money and not get noticed. So advertisers push the limits of believability, they abandon concept and they focus on trying to get viewer jaws to drop with special effects. Here’s one spot from a great agency that was especially bad.

In contrast, Coca-Cola ran this Super Bowl commercial a few years ago and in my opinion, it’s the last great commercial I’ve seen that warranted 100 million viewers.

This year, there was only one clear winner and that was the commercial that didn’t run in the Super Bowl. The gay dating service Mancrunch.com generated millions in free publicity when CBS rejected the ad.

There was one bright spot in yesterday’s game and that was for Google. They used TV to promote a search engine. They used a love story to promote technology. It was a beautiful juxtaposition. My only nit is that this concept didn’t need to run in the Super Bowl – in fact its understated quality was probably missed by many shitfaced football fans. And that’s too bad. They missed a helluva commercial.

Envy is often seen as a negative emotion. But I think at its root, it’s good. Envy gnaws at us from the inside out. Envy tells us that somebody else has something we want.

When that thing we want is a bigger house or a faster car, envy has no upside. But when that thing we want is to do better work, then envy can motivate us to improve.

I’ve been envious of other people’s work many times. I’ve been envious of ads, books, movies, poems, photographs, art – you name it. I’ve come away wishing that I had created the thing I envy. A bolt of envy knocks me off my feet every time.

Envy makes me want to achieve more, do better, think more creatively, to be less literal, to be more surprising, more unexpected, be smarter, on and on. In the movie “As Good As It Gets,” Jack Nicholson tells Helen Hunt that she makes him “want to be a better man.” I guess in a way, that’s what envy does for me.

I was on a new business pitch yesterday (can’t reveal who here) and the pitch team all had a great time. We made a point to bring the various creative concepts to life in a really fun way. The client seemed to also be engaged and have fun right along with us. At one point, I think I even heard some applause. Laughter filled the room.

Economic times are tough and all, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy ourselves. When you have fun, it brings levity to everyone else. When you have fun, the dark clouds lift.

We spend too much time doing exactly what the client wants and too little time actually listening to the client’s problems. If a client wants something a certain way, your first response should be “why do they want it like that?” Ask questions and find out where their head is. Ask the right questions and you’ll get to the bottom of it. Then and only then can you solve it the right way.

Think about it.

It’s easier for a college to recruit if it has a strong program. There are colleges that are known for business, medicine, art, science and everything in between. The idea of a strong college program is similar to an ad agency’s positioning and point of strength. An ad agency must stand for something if it’s going to attract the attention of prospects.

Colleges also need to overcome many of the same challenges as an ad agency. For example, a college in Springfield, Missouri will have more difficulty attracting students than one in San Francisco, California. And a small, unknown college will have more difficulty attracting students than, say, The University of Texas.

The key to both college and ad agency is to be great at something and the reputation will follow. If we were a college, which one would we be?