Super Bowl Ads: Hits & Misses

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By: Chris Copacino

For those fringe football fans who say that the advertising is the best part of the Super Bowl, looking back at this year’s big game, they were 100% right. This year’s Super Bowl made a Bill Belichick press conference seem downright exciting. Although the game was pretty much a snooze fest and the Patriots won, again, advertising took its annual place at center stage—you know, when Adam Levine wasn’t occupying it shirtless.

The verdict on this year’s ads? Well, depends on who you ask, which is perfect for the beautiful subjectivity that pervades our industry. However, the prevailing opinion was that this year’s ads were kind akin to the game itself—at worst snore-inducing and at best just a mediocre year. That said, there were certainly some bright spots where advertisers made the most of their $5.2MM+ per :30 of air time.

This summary reflects the thoughts of the annual AAF Seattle (aka Ad Club) Chalk Talk panel discussion on Feb. 7, consisting of panelists Chris Donaldson (Hand Crank Films), Lisa Zakroff (Mekanism Seattle), Maria Alonso-Henaine (Fortune 206) and Randy Woloshin (CMD Agency Seattle), and emceed by yours truly. Here’s a run-down of some of the best ads we saw and some that flat missed the mark:

Hits:

Advertiser: NFL; Spot—“The 100-Year Game”: Just a plain fun, spectacle of a spot perfect for football fans. The attention to detail, the choreography of the story and the sheer amount of all-time great players featured in the ad made it wildly entertaining. This spot definitely stood out from the crowd and was a top performer in both formal and straw polls looking back at this year’s game. Bravo.
Advertiser: Google—Spot: 100 Billion Words: A beautiful story told with a brand benefit driving the entire thing. Poignant and endearing, this spot was authentic for Google and made the viewer truly feel something. You can have my personal data, take it all, just keep making heart-tinging great ads and we’ll call it even.
Advertiser: Hyundai—Spot: The Elevator: What a Super Bowl spot should be. A fun joke, hammered home with good comedy throughout and a likable celebrity to carry it in Jason Bateman. And the spot culminated with a clear value proposition about a new way to car shop. I liked every minute of it and thought it probably won the “best comedy” award for this year’s Super Bowl.
Honorable mentions: Bubly (featuring Michael Bublé), Microsoft (“We all Win”), Bud Light/HBO (Lord of the Rings partnership for pure ingenuity) and The Washington Post (because it needed to be said).

Swings and Misses:

 Advertiser: Pepsi—Spot: More Than OK: This spot was less than OK. First off, not sure the strategic premise of basically ceding the fact that Pepsi is second fiddle to Coke was smart—seems like it put Coke on a pedestal. And creatively, given the star power of Steve Carrell, Cardi B and Lil John, you’d hope for some magic. But, nothing really happened that was all that captivating. It wasn’t a Kendall Jenner train wreck, but more just like a minor derailment.

Advertiser: Olay—Spot: Killer Skin: Sarah Michelle Gellar of mid-2000s fame appeared in a horror movie send-up that just didn’t work. I wasn’t a fan of the predatory male chasing a woman, and the back-half of the spot was a convoluted mess, with a smart phone facial-recognition gag, contrived dialogue and “#Killer Skin” payoff that just left the viewer underwhelmed.

Advertiser: Burger King—Spot: Eat Like Andy: This spot ran late in the game and has been probably the most talked about ad of the game. And not because it was a masterpiece or even that successful. Featuring Andy Warhol in found footage eating Burger King, the spot smacked of being “too inside,” and Burger King convincing itself that just because it had the footage, it would be compelling advertising. It wasn’t. Outside of the fact that the core fast-food audience of Millennial Males likely has little-to-no familiarity with Andy Warhol, there was no product benefit or value proposition even hinted at. It was a fail in my book, and I understood why the spot ranked dead last on the respected USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter.

In summary, I think it was a lackluster Super Bowl year for both football and advertising. Here’s to hoping it was just an off year and we’ll be tuned in come early February of 2020 to hopefully see a rebound.

Chris Copacino is a senior account director at Copacino+Fujikado and repeat emcee of the Chalk Talk event.

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