Did Salesforce jump the Super Bowl shark?

Last week I bemoaned the trend towards enterprise Hollywood.

Is it me or are more and more enterprise applications vendors attempting to emulate Hollywood as their marketing modus? And if so, why are they wasting their (your) money in this way?...

...Does Salesforce.com truly believe that ads taken out for Super Bowl are going to drive Chatter adoption? Who among the audience are they trying to reach? Even if that same audience is sucked in won’t they just as quickly wonder about the limitations of the Chatter freebie? But then there is a certain logic to this.

Regular readers will know that for this correspondent, the last Dreamforce was way too heavy on a heady mixture of celebrity and what felt like a revival meeting and far too light on meaningful innovation. In one sense what we are seeing is a continuance of the celebrity driven thinking behind Salesforce.com.

It seems all did not work well for Saleforce in the Super Bowl ad stakes. From the Tweetstream:

mrgrafix: I think salesforce might have got the wrong market with the chatter commercials..

cleasto: RT @bfeld: i'm pretty sure salesforce.com just wasted $3m

bevisible: @salesforce: what is this?> ^KDo

bjacaruso: RT @csakon: Salesforce wasted a lot of money not explaining what chatter is.

SuaadSait: I am a BIG fan of @salesforce.com but that Chatter ad was very weak & a poor tie in to the corporate id of the company #badmarketing #sb45

bhc3: RT @jbrewer: I have edited this tweet 4 times... Salesforce Chatter + Black Eyed Peas = confused CEOs everywhere. #amimissingsomething

TechCrunch was none too impressed either:

To be honest, I find the commercials a little confusing and too quick. And it’s hard to imagine that a technology company would spend millions for two ads that seemed to be average at best.

And Will.i.am is sort of a stretch as an enterprise customer. But as Salesforce opens Chatter to the public, the company has ambitions of making the communications platform more of a mainstream tool.

How much do you want to bet that The Black Eyes Peas have never used Chatter? $3 million?

I'm wondering whether CRM analyst Denis Pombriant is regretting this:

I can’t wait to see what they [Salesforce.com/Black Eye Peas] do for the ads — as I understand it, there will be two sandwiching the halftime show — but one thing is clear.  In keeping with its history of disruptive innovation, Salesforce’s halftime ads might also disrupt bathroom break habits and many people might decide to “hold it” through halftime.  There may even be enough interest in 415, 650 and surrounding area codes to affect water pressure readings during half time.  Someone should get last year’s readings and compare year over year just for fun.

As I implied in my earlier article - that's $3 million of CUSTOMER money flushed down the toilet, but then I've got to acknowledge that plenty of people have watched the ads on YouTube. What do you think? Were the Salesforce.com ads lame or great? Discuss in Talkback.