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As I write, the memory of the biggest advertising festival in the world, Super Bowl XLVIII, is slowly fading. (Or as the spellcheck on my MacBook suggests I rewrite it: "superb owl".)

The Super Bowl is that rare occasion when client and agency unite in a common goal – to be momentous. They want you to remember where you were and what you were doing the first time you saw their ad. Of course, the answer is invariably the same: you were watching the Super Bowl, or possibly YouTube the day after.

It is what we all strive for: work that represents a defining moment in people’s lives when they first see it.

An event, if you like, albeit one of life’s smaller events.

For budget reasons alone, not every piece of creative can be Super Bowl-momentous. Besides, those Apple "1984" scripts don’t grow on trees. But, as a minimum, we should be aiming for event-lite or "eventette". Something that makes folk sit up and take notice on one view. It may not shatter their every preconception about how advertising works. But it should make them smile, nod knowingly or at least raise an eyebrow.

So, five TV spots: three plucked from the food aisle and two from financial services. How many feel like an eventette waiting to happen? Let’s talk money first and save the edibles for later.

First is Scottish Widows. This was a difficult brief – I know because we were asked to pitch for the business. How to modernise the Widow and make her less distant? We’ve all seen enough vignette lifestyle edits to last several lifetimes. But great executional care has been taken over this one. The spine-tingling music lifts it above the ordinary.

Moneysupermarket.com. If I was told we’d got Snoop to appear in an ad, I’d be excited. If it turned out like this, I may feel a tad disappointed. "You’re so Moneysupermarket" is a very smart campaign idea. And there is niceness here, like Phil driving around in a car that isn’t there. But the whole package underwhelms, adding up to less than the parts. Sorry.

Mattessons next, and a second film using its Hank Marvin gag (see what they did there?). But this gender-tweaked variant is a paler shadow (see what I did there?) of the first spot. The visual impact has waned somehow and perhaps thin creative material is being stretched too far.

And now a new campaign from McVitie’s. All three films are super-cute. How could they be anything else, with such doe-eyed animals shuffling their way out of packets of Digestives?

Some may say the pet-biscuit metaphor inevitably conjures up unwanted images of fur on the floor and half-eaten kittens. But this is mere quibbling detail. I have never seen biscuit advertising done like this.

Thank you, McVitie’s, for a charming eventette.

Finally, Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut takes us back to the Middle Ages for the latest instalment of a long-running campaign. The endline asserts that "they tasteth too good", which I suppose is inevitable when something contains that much sugar. It’s well done, although the crunch that ruins the king’s aim would have been funnier had it sounded more furtive. So, not wrong, Kellogg, but, unlike the puppies, no new ground has been broken.

That’s your lot. There is good work here. All of it is solid, some far better than solid. But however unfair the comparison, none of it matches up to superb owl.

I have a long-held view that the bigger the celeb, the smaller the idea.

This view was briefly challenged a few years back when Ann Widdecombe led the campaign for real pasta – but, then again, that work challenged many people’s views about many things in life, advertising being only one of them.

However, by and large, it’s a view that has served me well.

Until perhaps now, that is.

It may be the sniff of spring in the air, it may well be the over-riding mood of new year optimism, but I was more than a little joyed by the crop of work that landed in my inbox this week.

And though it was a celeb-heavy inbox, it would be harsh to call any of the ideas small – getting tired, perhaps, but not small.

Moneysupermarket.com provides the case in point. I know not of a bigger star anywhere in the world today than Snoop. That someone got him to appear in a price-comparison ad is not just a triumph of creativity but one of sheer chutzpah. It’s a fine piece of entertainment, of that I have no doubt. But where to next? Or perhaps "who" to next ? I know it’s classic strategy to capture the emotional high ground but, for high spending, high-frequency brands, the "creative well" can run pretty dry, pretty quickly. I suspect "feeling epic" may be one of them.

I think perhaps the same might be said for Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut. Now, granted, Henry VIII isn’t strictly a celeb, but it says something about the shelf life of the idea when the teams have to turn to a 16th-century monarch to keep it alive and interesting. It has never been the most demanding of brand thoughts at the best of times, but it has been running for many years and been hugely successful. I just hope they move on before someone resorts to The Hoff.

Up next, we have Hank Marvin. Or, more precisely, a group of women and girls "being Hank Marvin" as an expression of their extreme state of hunger – a hunger satisfied by the unique proposition that is Mattessons. It’s the second in a series. The first featured a group of men and boys "being Hank Marvin" as an expression of their extreme state of hunger – a hunger satisfied by the unique proposition that is Mattessons. Call me Mystic Meg if you will, but I think we can consider that idea well and truly done.

Now, Scottish Widows is a tricky one. She’s the brand icon and a personification of the brand beliefs – so you simply have to use her in your ads. However, there’s something inherently dark and depressing about a Scottish Widow, so I understand why the teams would want to make her younger and a fair bit hotter. But when you do that, it just makes me sad that she’s a widow at such a young age. I keep angsting about what might have happened to her husband and so never really get to concentrate on what the ad’s about. A brand icon conundrum if ever there was one. Perhaps they could take a leaf out of the meerkat book and change the subject to Scottish Windows?

I leave the best to last. McVitie’s. Not a celeb in sight. Just a great idea wonderfully executed. Using cute and cuddly animals in ads isn’t a unique idea in itself but, when it’s a metaphor for something you eat – a biscuit – it takes on a whole new life. Charming, fun; just weird enough to be distinctive, but not so weird that it gets in the way.

Sweet.