Quick Take: Garmin's Super Bowl Loss?

There's been a lot of buzz about Super Bowl ads this week, since companies spent big bucks to get their ads showcased there. Garmin's (Nasdaq: GRMN  ) ad was panned by some "experts," but I'm not sure I buy their takes on winners and losers.

Personally, I was entertained by Garmin's ad because it featured a GPS superhero who was awfully reminiscent of a Japanese TV show I loved when I was a kid, Ultraman. I didn't see the entire commercial, so I decided to check it out on Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG  ) YouTube. That's where it got interesting.

The ad was posted there by Garmin, as was a full-length music video version. The music video had been viewed about 44,000 times, and it had been favorited 244 times. It had a four-star rating and scores of comments, some of which were negative, but most of which cheered "Garmin Man" in his fight against Maposaurus. (The campaign goes further than that -- Garmin Man also hangs out on News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS  ) MySpace.)

Compare that to Sprint Nextel's (NYSE: S  ) "connectile dysfunction" Super Bowl ad, one that some experts deemed a success. It, too, was posted on YouTube; it had been viewed about 1,300 times, favorited just once, and had no comments.

True, 44,000 is a drop in the bucket compared to Super Bowl viewership, but then again, these are 44,000 people who went out of their way to seek out the video online. Could some combination of kitschy irony -- Ultraman-esque action and '80s hair-band metal tune -- have appeal such experts might not understand? I can't help but wonder whether so-called experts made the wrong call on this one -- and whether Garmin's overall campaign is going to have more power to bring brand recognition to Garmin than some might imagine.

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Alyce Lomax does not own shares of any of the companies mentioned. You can comment on this take here.