Last night’s Super Bowl was another game for the ages. The Steelers and Cardinals showed amazing poise, grit and determination in a game that went down to the wire. It’s too bad only one of them could win.

Unlike the football teams, any number of the advertisers in the annual showcase could have scored victories. But in a triumph of low expectations, the overall performance of the ads in this year’s game was as tepid as the economy.

My company pioneered the first real-time, online commercials rating site, ADBOWL.com. For nine years we’ve had a close-up view of how advertisers win, how they lose, and why some should just stay home. This year many marketing prognosticators predicted a down year for ads in the big game and, unfortunately, most of the advertisers took it to heart.

The one spot that stood out to me was Coca-Cola’s “Avatar“. Unfortunately, it aired midway through the second half of the game when most people had already been numbed by the ads that preceded it. And it didn’t score high in any of the post game polls, including ADBOWL.

I have a theory as to the reason why “Avatar” didn’t fare well. The spot was a metaphor for how technology is depersonalizing us as a society, and how a simple moment over a bottle of Coke (what else) can reconnect people. It was a nice thought, as well timed for the age of the Blackberry as Apple’s “1984″ was at the dawn of the PC era.

The problem with the Coke commercial was, simply, that it required a little thinking to understand. Most older viewers probably don’t understand what avatars represent, and younger viewers to whom avatars are second nature have no frame of reference to grasp the deeper point the spot was making. Both problems could have been overcome with a bit of questioning, reflection and discussion, which was probably just the type of activity Coke was trying to stimulate. Unfortunately, thinking things through is something people just aren’t willing to do these days.

That, as much as anything, describes where we are as a culture at this moment in history. All we have the time (or patience) for is in your face, hit-me-over-the-head messaging. We don’t want to take the trouble to think anything through. That’s why consumers cranked up the debt machine over the last decade, its why many companies were happy to take on their risky debt, and it’s why we think a trillion dollar “stimulus” package is going to help. We simply won’t take time to think consequentially as to how we got here and what the real answers are.

Last night, the biggest stage in the advertising world offered a terrific opportunity for a courageous and forward thinking advertiser to make a bold statement. Coke came the closest of any of them, but its point was largely missed.

Sigh. Maybe next year.