I write this annual Irreverent Review to challenge the reader to stop evaluating the Super Bowl commercials as a popularity contest based on humor, celebrity power, or entertainment value. Instead, we should evaluate a commercial that costs $10 million for 30 seconds based on its effectiveness to break through the clutter and enhance the brand.
I reviewed over 40 commercials that were shown last night. To make your time more efficient, I have first provided 12 commercials that I believe were brilliant and worth spending $10 million for 30 seconds or $20 million for a minute. The next 13 commercials are worth honorable mention. Then I identified another 5 commercials that might be OK in the right environment, but the Super Bowl of Advertising was not the right environment. Finally, I encourage you to look at the last 18 commercials that probably provides the best insight for developing more effective advertising in the future. (The best learning often comes from past mistakes.)
Please enjoy and share this with others who might be interested in an irreverent perspective. My intention is not to be the final word on any of these commercials but to be provocative enough to stimulate healthy conversation.
Note: You will find that YouTube puts paid advertising in front of some of the videos I was able to capture. Hopefully, you can quickly hit the skip button and move to the right ad.
Brilliant – Not to be Missed
Budweiser Clydesdales – The Clydesdales are back to being effectively leveraged to drive home Budweiser’s Iconic position as America’s Beer. While the complex story of the eaglet might be a stretch, it will still be successful at connecting Budweiser fans emotionally to the brand. Using Free Bird as the soundtrack is stroke of genius.
Universal Orlando Resort – This entertainment park managed to illustrate all the great fun and excitement in 60 seconds while still communicating a wonderful and emotional story line about two brothers. Well done, little man.
Lay’s – One of the most powerful tools in advertising is to effectively connect the customer emotionally with the brand. Very few are successful, but when it happens, and eyes get teary, magic happens. Real potatoes grown by generations of farmers across North America. Editor’s note: Mike worked for Frito-Lay in marketing in the 1970s.
Pepsi Polar Bears – There is nothing more fun than watching the two biggest advertising competitors battle it out for brand supremacy. The Pepsi Challenge in the mid-1970s and early 1980’s was one of those great events. Watching Coke’s spokesbear traumatized for picking Pepsi is classic. Having the Polar Bears caught on a Kiss Cam at a stadium event is brilliant and reflective of the current social media craze. Coke executives should have a meltdown watching this one. Editor’s note: Mike was a marketing executive at Pepsi during the Pepsi Challenge.
Search Party for Ring – This is clearly a game changer for finding lost animals and a compelling message that it is now a free AI application for Ring. This gives Ring customers a chance to be a hero. It also makes the creative teams who developed the application and this commercial heroes too.
Google Gemini SB – There are a lot of potentially scary things about the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI). However, Google has been able to not only defuse the scary, but actually make a positive emotional connection with the user. This might be the most positive demonstration of the power of AI ever.
Amazon Alexa –Chris Hemsworth (Thor) and Elsa Pataky (Fast and Furious) run though five scenarios of how Alexa might try to kill Chris. Alexa tries to recover by offering to order a cinnamon scrub but it is too late. Amazon effectively communicated that AI is scary.
When compared to the Google Gemini commercial above, I was very disappointed with this Alexa commercial. So, while I assume it will be a popular commercial, when compared to Alexa’s competitor, it should be at the bottom of this list.
Novartis – Novartis has a real challenge. Convincing men to get checked for prostate cancer. Normally, I am pretty negative about serious topics trying to break though all the craziness and hype of the Super Bowl environment. But this message is so important to the Super Bowl Audience (Men and the supporting women in their lives) it is effective, especially with the appropriate support of Tight Ends.
Xfinity – This cable company leverages the popularity of Jurassic Park effectively to promote their reliability and Wi-Fi access. Anyone who can get dinosaurs to follow acting commands wins my vote.
Toyota – The child of the 90’s returns the favor 35 years later by putting the Superhero belt on his father. This makes a wonderful emotional connection with the brand and even gives an appropriate nod to the generational importance of wearing a seat belt.
Oakley Meta Vanguard – What a great product demonstration in a Super Bowl commercial. The glasses capabilities are eye-opening and the tag line, “Athletic Intelligence” is brilliant.
Bud Light – Peyton Manning, Post Malone, and Shane Gillis do a great job of dramatizing the importance of a keg of Bud Light at a wedding. However, the biggest impact on this commercial was not the stars rolling down the hill but the selection of Whitney Houston and her song, I Will Always Love you.
Dove – This soap company understands branding and more importantly, its customer base that is primarily women. They continue to deliver brand image commercials that says little about the product and everything about making an emotional connection and creating brand loyalty.
Honorable Mentions
Pringles – Grammy Winner Sabrina Carpenter is the star of this comedic vignette about finding the perfect man. Out of desperation, she creates one out of Pringles chips. When the fans come running and are more interested in eating the Pringles instead of admiring her, it checks all the boxes – focusing on the brand, breaking through the clutter, and generating conversation. While the new boyfriend might be a little salty, he tastes great.
Michelob ULTRA – Kurt Russel (Fast and Furious), Lewis Pullman (Thunderbolts), Chloe Kim (Snowboard 2 time Olympic Gold Medalist), and TJ Oshie (Washington Capitals Hockey Player) star in a commercial that even has a story line to promote the product. Cold, athletic, fun going down. Sounds like the right combination for the brand.
Grub Hub – George Clooney delivers a powerful message in a very dramatic way about a competitive advantage for using Grub Hub. This will get the attention of people who use food delivery companies and make Grub Hub’s competitors choke.
Rocket and Redfin – This team pulled off a very timely image ad with the help of Lady Gaga singing Mr. Rogers theme song. One of the benefits of home ownership is having neighbors.
Nerds Juicy Gummy Clusters– This is about a line extension for Nerds. It is candy and Andy Cohn delivered the message in an appropriately fun, high energy, colorful way. I can only assume that the target audience is adults as most of the 130 million viewers are adults.
Frank’s Red Hot – Ludacris stars in this spot for a hot sauce that a talking goat says “it has the perfect blend of flavor with the right amount of heat.” The use of the GOAT (Greatest Of All Times) is clever and funny. While they cover a lot in 30 seconds including two new flavors, they can pull it off as the top selling hot sauce in the United States.
Skechers – Sofia Vergara (Modern Family) does a wonderful job demonstrating the competitive benefit of Skechers Slip-Ins. Both are very appealing to the audience.
Wix Harmony – Wow, a website promoting more than just their brand name, and actually telling us that a great web site can develop using their AI-powered website building app. They even came up with the appropriate name – Harmony.
WeatherTech – This is a great product demonstration of multiple WeatherTech products. Great to see a straightforward relevant message.
Base44 – This company has taken AI into a new space – App building for personal use. Here is another example of a technology company demonstrating what their service can do for their customer. How novel for the Super Bowl.
Fanatics Sports Book – Kendall Jenner pokes fun at her roster of ex-boyfriends that has given her a leg up on sports betting. This might be just the right match-maker for Fanatics and their target audience.
Hellmann’s – Hellmann’s has delivered some great Super Bowl commercials over the past couple years. The Neil Diamond look-a-like was a clever adaptation of their diner blueprint for their annual Super Bowl commercial. The creative team managed to demonstrate the product and make it sparkle while using Sweet Caroline to bring out the brilliance.
Levi’s – Great product demonstration that also makes denim fashionable and appropriate for everyone and every event.
Ro – Serena Williams helps Ro position their GLP-1 drug as critical to effective weight loss. Serena is the right celebrity that has publicly battled with maintaining her preferred weight and backs it up with a personal 34-pound loss. Great to see a celebrity used so effectively to serve up the product benefit.
Wrong Environment
Hyundai Palisade Hybrid – John Krasinski (The Office) stars in an Epic car chase that features great shots of the Palisade Hybrid, but misses all the features. Viewers will remember this mission, but will they remember the brand?
Ramp – A wonderful commercial that helps overworked office managers do WHAT? To help my readers, Ramp’s website says, “Easy-to-use corporate cards, bill payments, accounting, and a whole lot more. All in one place.” That is a very crowded field, so WHAT is different?
OIKOS – If you want to dramatize your product benefit – packed with complete protein to build strong muscles, have Kathryn Hahn (Parks and Recreation) push a stalled San Francisco Cable Car up a steep hill as Derrick Henry (Baltimore Ravens Running Back) watches in amazement.
Ritz Crackers – Bowen Yang (Wicked) and Jon Hamm (Mad Men) are too salty to attend a beach party on Ritz Island until Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow) rides across the sand on a jet ski. Give them credit that with all the distraction, they did include the product benefit – the salty, buttery flavor.
Toyota -I am a big fan of image advertising for well known brands. Toyota has been a master at making emotional connections. But their navigation system failed on this one.
Learning from Mistakes
Uber Eats – Bradley Cooper (A Star Is Born) , Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club), Parker Posey (Lost in Space) The last 4 seconds are great, but the viewers will be lost in their food long before the last 4 seconds.
Expedia – Ken helps position Expedia as the right place to go to book adventures by bundling flights, stays and cars to save money. I give Expedia a lot of credit for developing the right message. However, with all the hype associated with the Super Bowl, Expedia sent this one to the wrong destination and a year too late.
Kellogg’s Raisin Bran – The good news about this commercial is that Kellogg’s was smart enough to provide an explanation of the commercial in advance in case you missed it. It is a playful parody with Will Shatner (Star Trek) introducing himself “with the punny line” as Will Shat, the Bran Ambassador, and delivering one liners along the way. If you need to provide an instruction manual to understand a $20 million commercial, you are in deep Shat. I would not give this one “two scoops.” Editor’s note: the commercial and the instruction manual are included in this link.
Anthropic – This is an AI company behind the Claude chatbot. In the pre-game promotion for their commercial , Anthropic is trying to differentiate itself from other AI companies. I am afraid that the only people who will understand this message are the employees at Anthropic. An e-mail message might have been more effective than the $10 million expenditure
Bosch – Guy Fieri stars in a number of creative vignettes for kitchen appliances and power tools, but I am not sure they communicate the great quality products Bosch makes. The only thing they have in common is the Brand Name. And who thought kitchen appliances and power tool were the same audience. They appropriately named the commercial, “Just a Guy,” but maybe they should have had a Gal as part of the approval process.
Hims and Hers – This commercial attempts to bridge the gap in healthcare between the rich and everyone else. Hims and Hers offer the same quality healthcare for people who are not rich. However, the portrayal of healthcare for the rich is so offensive, who would want it and who would believe it. More surgery is required for this one to survive.
Instacart – All too often, the creative or the humor robs the commercial from any brand recognition. This one effectively does both and that is just bananas.
Manscaped – Men’s grooming products. What can be said about this one other than it is a real hair ball.
Squarespace – Emma Stone (Bugonia) effectively demonstrates the frustration of having your ideal domain name taken. But the solution – “Get your domain before you lose it.” is not competitive or compelling.
Svedka – Fembot and BroBot enjoy Svedka Vodka while dancing at a nightclub. Artificial Intelligence (AI) developed this commercial, and it highlights the void in AI – common sense. Since it addresses many fears people have with AI, the team behind this one will need to drink a lot of Svedka to recover.
Amazon Alexa –Chris Hemsworth (Thor) and Elsa Pataky (Fast and Furious) run though five scenarios of how Alexa might try to kill Chris. Alexa tries to recover by offering to order a cinnamon scrub but it is too late. Amazon effectively communicated that AI is scary.
When compared to the Google Gemini commercial above, I was very disappointed with this Alexa commercial. So, while I assume it will be a popular commercial, when compared to Alexa’s competitor, it should be at the bottom of this list.
State Farm – What were they thinking? This is an insurance company with one of the best reputations in the insurance industry. I just don’t see the value of making fun of a terrible exaggeration of a competitor. It does not reflect the brand of a market leader and the claims are lost or not credible.
Totino’s Pizza Rolls – Totino’s came out with a sequel to their last year’s Super Bowl commercial that I rated as a disaster because they killed Chazmo, the star. This year’s commercial makes fun of a marketing person who did not know Chazmo was just a mascot. Is this a classic case of the creative team entertaining themselves in public at the expense of the client? Since I believe that less than 5% of the audience would remember that commercial and get the connection, I am providing last year’s Totino’s commercial below so maybe you can understand how this rolls.
Last year’s Totino’s Pizza Rolls – Totino’s tried to leverage the equity of one of the most famous characters in the movies (ET) and rename him Chazmo. Then they killed him in front of adoring young fans, and made the fathers out to be insensitive and unsympathetic. Does anyone really expect see many people running to the store to buy pizza rolls? Message to the creative team – “Go Home.”
TurboTax – Adrien Brody (The Brutalist) effectively communicates that doing taxes is a painful experience with plenty of drama. But it is so “dark” that the viewer will miss that TurboTax is the solution.
Codex Open AI – They just proved that AI could build 25 different unrelated scenes into a 60 second commercial. AI could easily calculate that cost at $800,000 per scene to communicate what?
Liquid Death – With a name like Liquid Death, how can anyone get serious about any health benefits other than an energy boost from caffeine. Focusing on one of the big concerns about too much caffeine is mind blowing.
Liquid I.V. As an endurance athlete, I understand the challenges of dehydration. However, if Liquid I.V. is attempting to appeal to a wider audience, this might piss some people off.
After spending 28 years in senior marketing roles at Frito-Lay, Pepsi, CitiBank, Omni Hotels and Deloitte, Mike left the Corporate World to teach Marketing and Franchising at Georgia State University. Eight years ago, Mike semi-retired, moved to Boulder, Colorado to spend more time skiing, training for upcoming marathons and triathlons and spending time with his 4 grandchildren. Mike still works with a few clients on marketing strategy or providing keynote speeches to companies on gaining a competitive advantage or a “Specific Edge.”
Mike Wien
The Specific Edge Institute
Boulder, Colorado