What Have We Learned About TV Advertising During the Super Bowl? A Short Look at Some Fumbled Story(s) About Me, My Favorite Spots

The Super Bowl presents a formidable challenge to advertisers, trying to justify the giant price tag for 30-second spots (as much as $7 million each, per Variety, for ads between kickoff and the final gun) by coming up with campaigns that feel as big as the game.

Instead, they were stuck watching commercials that were silly and didn’t make sense, like the ads for Hellmann’s mayonnaise which made big name celebrities feel bad, or the commercials for glass doors which made products look bad. There are products for cosmetics.

When the talent has a connection to the product, it helps and it also helps if they figure into the creative in a way that advances that message. Being cute for its own sake can be fine, but it’s seldom particularly memorable.

Using that logic, bravo to Rakuten, a shopping site, for enlisting Alicia Silverstone to reprise her “Clueless” role as the shopping-obsessed Cher, which she slid into like an old private-school uniform; and thumbs down to a celebrity-studded spot for Michelob Ultra featuring Serena Williams, Brian Cox and a host of others in an odd tribute to “Caddyshack.”

Beer ads: Miles and Keleigh Sperry Teller seem like a cute couple to have a beer with. It was not made a case for that being a Bud Light in the ad. It was great to have Bud connected to the movie, ” Six Degrees of Separation,” but it felt like a bit of a stretch.

The spectacular collapse of FTX was the only good result from this year’s almost no cryptocurrencies ads, as evidenced by their comical Super Bowl ad last year. We also saw lots of nostalgia and more partnerships, including Netflix passing up ads of its own to partner with GM and Anheuser-Busch’s Michelob Ultra.

Where were the other highlights, which were outnumbered (as usual) by the middling or low ones? This is a breakdown of who scored and who fumbled on TV. While this doesn’t include every spot that aired, if an ad featured four or more celebrities, assume it leaned toward the “loser” column.

Movies: The movie business hasn’t rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, but the number of ads for upcoming blockbusters (and hoped-for blockbusters) felt like a collective vote of confidence in theatrical movie-going. Hollywood will likely never completely bounce back in the streaming age, but the studios appeared to serve notice that they’re not giving up without a fight.

Of that roster of titles, give the nod to “The Flash,” which should stoke enormous interest in that Warner Bros. title (like CNN, a unit of Warner Bros. Discovery), and put the focus on the film instead of star Ezra Miller’s off-screen issues. It is worth giving an honorable mention to the two movies, which were included in the sequel’s pre-release spots. The Nike deal was the basis of the movie ” Air”.

The Good, the Bad, the Grassmann, the Google, Disney, and other places celebrities met at a Superbowl: What do they think?

T-Mobile: When Bradley Cooper was told that he has been nominated for some things but has not won anything, his mother was pretty cute. It was better than John Travolta’s tribute to Grease.

The company made a zero-sugar product. Steve Martin and Ben Stiller gave mini-classes on acting. So, do they really drink this stuff? Probably not, but it was fun to watch them pretend, and enhanced by the one-two punch of it.

PopCorners: Even though the snack-food product may not be the ideal vehicle for it, the idea of a “Breaking Bad” reunion gets high marks.

Farmer’s Dog and Amazon: Two winners about our canine companions: Watching a dog’s life unfold, and thinking about losing one, served as one of the few genuine tearjerkers of the day; and on a lighter note, getting a destructive pooch a pal, via Amazon.

Google: Another spot that brought together unlikely celebrities – Amy Schumer, Doja Cat and NBA star Giannis Antetokounmpo – but in a clever demonstration of how its pixel product can “fix” old photos.

Disney: Marking its 100th anniversary, the studio ran a spot to demonstrate the sweeping depth of its content, and its intricate hold on childhood memories.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/12/entertainment/takeaways-super-bowl-commercials-broadcast/index.html

Super Bowl ad for M&M and Netflix: A day in the life of a candy factory: How much did we learn about the gospel?

Kevin Burkhardt and Greg Olsen: After the histrionics of Fox’s pregame show (never mind the issues with the sound being off), the announcers – handling their first Super Bowl – rose to the occasion, with a solid call that identified the problems with the field, debated a “game-altering penalty” at the end; didn’t get in the way of the action and reminded everyone this was, after all, a football game.

General Motors and Netflix: GM teamed with Netflix shows to push its EV cars, with Will Ferrell as the guide through shows like “Bridgerton” and “Stranger Things.” Not great, but at least it felt big and inventive.

HeGetsUs.com. The ads for this evangelical campaign were certainly arresting in reminding people, say, that Jesus was a refugee, and to love everyone. Yet despite being one of the few ads about something that played Sunday, the goal of its message seemed muddled, a perception reinforced by details about the group behind it.

And, after cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase made waves with a QR code embedded in a Super Bowl ad in 2022, it felt like every other advertiser this year found a way to stick them inside their commercials.

Another trend also stuck out: a rise in ads for products normally considered adult vices, including liquor (via the Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl for Crown Royal), sports betting and a wider variety of beers (since Anheuser-Busch gave up its exclusivity, allowing Molson-Coors to come play).

M&M’s cultivated a controversy announcing they would pause use of their animated “spokescandies” — pundits like Tucker Carlson had criticized changes in the characters as being too “woke.” Maya Rudolph had a new ad that changed the name of the candies and put clams in the center of the pellet. After the game, M&M’s aired their spot with the punchline: The candies were coming back for good, with the purple M&M, which Carlson had specifically criticized, saying, “I’m glad to be back, because this is what I was made for.” Well played, candy.

The company, which specializes in fresh dog food, did not use a celebrity to create the most moving ad in the Super Bowl. They traced the story of a woman who promised to love her dog forever, starting when she was a little girl and the dog was a puppy and ending when the owner has a baby of her own and her trusty pet is still there — but with a little gray in his coat. The ad made viewers cry on social media. (I just got a speck of dirt in my eye while watching it. Honest. The buzz proved that strong storytelling and a cute puppy trumps most other advertising gimmicks come Super Bowl time.

It may be a little odd to call an ad centered on characters from a show that ended barely 10 years ago “nostalgic.” The hoary TV fan couldn’t help but feel a lot more excitement after watching the return of Walter White, Jesse Pinkman, and Raymond Cruz’s Tuco and they all looked like they were using drugs. And it’s a pleasure to see a Super Bowl ad used to remind viewers of one of the best TV series ever to hit the small screen.

It’s nice to have Adam Driver in your Super Bowl ad. I don’t blame Squarespace for thinking more drivers would be even cooler. But the ad that resulted, featuring multiple copies of the actor standing in a desert field muttering about the wonder of a “website that makes websites” before getting sucked into a giant glowing ball called The Singularity….? It’s an ad that’s almost nothing about the product, and has a story that looks like it was hatched during a peyote bender. (I liked the “teaser” ad featuring multiple Drivers hanging out backstage much better.)

This film has been plagued with problems, including the public meltdown of star Ezra Miller. But the Super Bowl ad for The Flash is so packed with compelling revelations — from the return of Zod to a new Supergirl — that it seems more understandable why Warner Bros. is committed to getting this movie in theaters. I decided they can have all of my money because of the words Michael Keaton uttered when he first made famous “I’m Batman”.

I would have told them to save their money if someone had told them about the Caddyshack tribute with Serena Williams playing Chevy Chase, Brian Cox as Ted Knight’s character, and Tony Turano doing a Bill Murray impression. I would have been wrong. Because somehow this ad — with an added cameo from original co-star Michael O’Keefe — references just enough of Caddyshack’s absurdly fun spirit to be entertaining, while stacking the cast with faces the Netflix generation might actually know.

Much as I love me some John Travolta, the bald, bearded guy who keeps making uncomfortable appearances in Super Bowl ads — he did the Grease dance with grown daughter Ella in a spot two years ago — is not my favorite. This year he recreated the classic number from Grease, “Summer Nights” with his Scrubs co-stars. Viewers got a multi-generational shot of nostalgia and celebrity, but it mostly just reminded me of how strange Travolta seems these days.

The problem is that they lose a celebrity, like Sean “P.Diddy”Combs, and then put that celebrity in a commercial. In this case, Diddy is asked to write one hit for Uber One, so he turns to a bunch of artists considered one hit wonders for terrible, Uber-centric versions of their old hits. Unfortunately, I don’t think most viewers are going to recognize the current look of artists like Montell Jordan — and the cheesy jingle they make out of Haddaway’s dance classic “What Is Love” just makes Diddy look like the derivative hack his critics have always said he was.

The “teaser” spots that were dropped early to preview the Big Game ad are more entertaining than the actual commercial; it’s a problem that can be found in Super Bowl ads. Steve Martin and Ben Stiller are the stars here, and the teaser featuring them bickering over who is the better actor is way funnier than Martin’s spot, where he’s in various locations daring the audience to guess if he’s acting. Stiller’s Super Bowl spot is more entertaining, in part because he calls back to his Derek Zoolander character — more nostalgia! He is in funnier situations.