While the on-field play at Super Bowl LIX wasn’t particularly dynamic, with the Philadelphia Eagles steamrolling the Kansas City Chiefs to a 40-22 victory, advertisers deployed a variety of tactics to succeed in a rapt viewing audience Sunday. Some of those approaches felt well-past their expiration date.
At the highest level, more evidence points to the indisputable fact that brands might have to modify things up to maintain fans from tuning out in the longer term. Ad effectiveness was the bottom recorded in five years, in accordance with creative assessment platform Daivid. Seven of the highest 10 spots ranked by the firm had a purpose bent or tackled serious topics in an evening that largely skewed toward absurdity and humor.
“With the overwhelming majority of Super Bowl advertisers attempting to make us laugh this 12 months, it’s interesting that brands that stepped away from the same old Super Bowl celebrity/humor trope have attracted probably the most positivity,” said Ian Forrester, founder and CEO of Daivid, in an announcement. “It shows just how hard it’s to cut-through when so many try the identical approach.”
Campaigns featuring a parade of celebrities blanketed the published, as usual, with some famous faces surfacing multiple times (hello again, Matthew McConaughey). There were a fair proportion of ads hawking the newest in generative artificial intelligence (AI), chatting with the technology of the moment, while the presence of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs similarly leaned right into a headline-grabbing trend.
But Super Bowl LIX also welcomed a sturdy slate of commercials centered on purpose-driven marketing, a tactic that has seen its big game relevance wane amid a crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Inclusivity was one of the vital successful strategies this 12 months, as a raft of ads targeted at women and girls scored high marks, aligning with a diversifying audience for the NFL.
Several efforts attempted to handle the nation’s divide in a broader sense with pleas to place aside differences and reach across the aisle. President Donald Trump attended the sport hosted on the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, a minimum of for a time, however the occasion was overall fairly low on drama barring halftime show performer Kendrick Lamar’s direct camera address to rival rapper Drake. Maybe just a little more drama is strictly what advertisers need.
“It is hard to choose a winner for this 12 months’s game,” said Matt McCain and Michael Boychuk of DNA&Stone in joint emailed comments. “There just was not the quantity of creative freshness and epic fun that all of us hope to experience in watching the Super Bowl.”
Women own the night
Pop star Taylor Swift, who has contributed to a bump in women’s interest within the NFL, had a staid night as her team of selection saw its hopes for a Super Bowl three-peat quickly dashed by the triumphant Eagles. On the promoting front, nevertheless, women got here out on top at Super Bowl LIX. It was a striking comeback moment for Nike, which hasn’t appeared at the massive game in nearly three a long time but is staking a big a part of its turnaround plan on a return to stronger brand-building.
The sportswear giant ran an electrical black-and-white spot with voiceover from rapper Doechii and cameos from athletes such as Jordan Chiles, Caitlin Clark and Sha’Carri Richardson as they defy the entire things sexist stereotypes purport they “can’t” do, such as break records and refill stadiums. “So Win,” developed with Wieden+Kennedy Portland, took home the Super Clio Award, with praise for its storytelling, copy and daring stance.
“Nike understood the moment we’re in, and owned it. In a season when gender equity is under attack, they didn’t tiptoe — they took a stand. This wasn’t just one other sports ad; it was a cultural statement,” said Dara Treseder, CMO of Autodesk, over email.
The NFL itself ran a pair of commercials that attempted to widen the tent for football, with one encouraging the adoption of flag football as an inclusive option for prime school girls. A spirit of subversiveness underpinned several other ads geared toward women and tackling women’s issues.
A spot from Novartis, “Your Attention, Please,” initially registered as leering for its give attention to boobs before leading into an earnest appeal for early breast cancer screenings from comedian Wanda Sykes. Dove also employed the rug pull approach, depicting a 3 12 months old giggling as she races down the road, while “Born to Run” plays within the background, before dropping statistics that show the toddler’s unfettered joy could evaporate by the point she becomes a teen on account of lower body confidence.
“The simplicity and poignancy was an amazing contrast to the extremely high production of the remaining of the ads,” said Tom Denari, president and CEO of Young & Laramore, in comments across the Dove effort. “Unfortunately, it ran late in the sport, when people likely lost interest or went to bed.”
Celebrity strategy is just all right (all right, all right)
Super Bowl advertisers have increasingly turned to celebrities to deliver their big game messages, with stars in about two-thirds (or more) of all ads since 2020, per iSpot.television data shared with Marketing Dive. That strategy continued this 12 months but is starting to feel lazy and uninspired, especially in ads where celebs’ connections to the brand (or to their co-stars) were absent.
“The real surprise was watching brand after brand fall into the Super Bowl celebrity trap, wrapping all the pieces in a wannabe Saturday Night Live skit to attempt to get the most important laugh of the night,” said Allen Adamson, co-founder of Metaforce, in emailed comments. “It’s as if every creative temporary said, ‘Find a famous face and force a joke.’”
The worst offenders of the “celebrity trap” were MSC Cruises (for the random pairing of Drew Barrymore and Orlando Bloom), Homes.com and advertisers that enlisted stars for multiple outings like Matthew McConaughey, who popped up in a complete of three ads for Salesforce and Uber Eats.
“While [McConaughey] is a robust endorser, the sheer volume of his appearances made each feel just a little less special,” said Carli Jurczynski of Kepler, in emailed comments. “A giant game ad should feel like a moment, and when a well-known face pops up too over and over, it starts to feel overplayed somewhat than impactful.”
Like past years, many advertisers went for quantity over quality when tapping celebrities. But while the fitting pairing can hit the triple point of celebrity, surprise and humor (David Beckham and Matt Damon as long-lost twins for Stella Artois), less intentional ones distract from the message (Catherine O’Hara and Willem Dafoe playing pickleball for Michelob Ultra).
Tongues are out but Seal seals the deal
Advertisers often use the Super Bowl to indicate off their most outlandish humor, but what’s weird and what works should not at all times the identical. Coffee Mate’s Shania Twain-soundtracked cold foam ad was called out as certainly one of the night’s worst offerings by several executives.
“Who thought watching a disgusting CGI tongue gyrate would make people need to put artificial foam of their coffee?” wondered Metaforce’s Adamson.
Despite having certainly one of the sport’s most attention-grabbing ads in 2023 and scoring high marks for its uninterrupted free stream of the Super Bowl, Tubi’s own marketing didn’t land this 12 months. Ads a couple of man with a fleshy, cowboy hat-shaped head were meant to bolster the streamer’s diverse content library but were a swing and a miss.
“In a sea of ads that truly made people feel something or gave them the laugh they were craving, Tubi’s ad didn’t hit the mark — it felt prefer it was trying too hard to be different but ended up being a letdown,” said Autodesk’s Treseder.
Tongues and heads weren’t the one body parts taken for a spin, with mixed results. Eugene Levy’s eyebrows lifted off in Little Caesars’ ad, while facial hair from a handful of celebs took flight for Pringles; the same concept and approach held back each efforts.
Not all of the humor missed the mark: Coors Light continued its “Case of the Mondays” push with anthropomorphic sloths, while Totino’s brought its recent campaign to a dramatic close (RIP Chazmo). But Mountain Dew was the exception that proved the foundations — each around celebrity and bizarre humor — by staying true to its refreshed brand identity and putting singer Seal’s head atop a seal’s body for a branded version of “Kiss from a Rose.”
“The execution was sharp, and the humor was self-aware, which made the weirdness feel intentional somewhat than random,” said Jamie Maunder, chief creative officer at Mādin. “It’s the type of ad that gets people talking, whether or not they find it irresistible or are only baffled by it. But that’s the purpose — it cuts through the noise.”
Dipping toes in choppy political waters
As Donald Trump became the primary sitting U.S. president to attend the Super Bowl, several advertisers tried different approaches for navigating the political minefield of the so-called vibe shift related to the brand new administration.
Third-time advertiser He Gets Us, a marketing platform designed to extend cultural attention around Jesus Christ, threaded the needle with a 30-second ad, set to Johnny Cash’s cover of Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus,” that brought together easy, diverse images of individuals helping people — including someone powerwashing “Go Back” graffiti off of a wall and Pride march attendees embracing.
“It didn’t feel preachy — it just felt human,” said Rick Sellar, vice chairman of creative at Think Shift, in emailed comments. “Even in case you’re not religious, that ad made you are feeling something, which is greater than I can say for loads of the other spots.”
Jeep returned to the Super Bowl after skipping 2024’s game with a 2-minute ad that relied on familiar big game ad tropes — American flags flying, American-made cars racing in the good outdoors — and a heartfelt, direct-to-camera monologue by Harrison Ford that considered freedom, heroes and the American dream. The script appeared to be a political Rorschach test with something for left (“Real heroes are humble — they’re aren’t driven by pride”), right (“Freedom is for everyone however it isn’t free — it’s earned”) and center (“We won’t at all times agree on which solution to go, but our differences might be our strength”).
“The ad walked a really careful line of inclusion and celebrating different sorts of considering, and it used a automotive to exhibit that individuals can still live in the identical country and have different points of view,” said Josh Golden, CMO of Quad, in emailed comments.
The Foundation to Combat Antisemitism was back for a second 12 months at a moment where its efforts are within the highlight amid the aftermath of the war in Gaza and the Nazi salute by Elon Musk. “No Reason to Hate” pitted Snoop Dogg and Tom Brady listing “silly” reasons to hate, however the selection of spokespeople undermined the ad for some executives.
“How on Earth Snoop and Tom Brady, each who’ve supported our current president, were solid in a Foundation to Combat Antisemitism ad truly has my mind blown,” said Kindra Meyer, executive creative director at experiential agency Verb, in emailed comments. “Make it make sense.”
Generative AI’s big moment fails to materialize
Super Bowl LIX was expected to be a breakout occasion for generative AI, echoing the “Crypto Bowl” from 2022, however the playing field ended up feeling fairly sparse and underwhelming in addition.
Promoting its latest Gemini models and Pixel smartphone, Google tried to separate the difference between hyping the tech and getting the waterworks flowing with a industrial, “Dream Job,” that shows a dad preparing for a job interview with the assistance of generative AI. As he mulls easy methods to punch up his talking points, he’s transported back to raising his daughter, a useful life experience akin to a difficult and fulfilling profession role. It marked one other fumble for Google around AI following a barrage of localized ads that were meant to advertise small businesses but got here peppered with the sorts of inaccuracies which have turn out to be an albatross for generative AI platforms.
“The aging father watching his daughter grow up is an overused, heavy-handed attempt at sentimentality, and the actual profession advice the AI provided was little greater than shallow corporate jargon,” said Ted Wahlberg, senior vice chairman and group creative director at Mower, in emailed comments.
OpenAI, fresh off of appointing its first CMO, made its most important consumer-facing push behind ChatGPT yet with an ad from Accenture Song that used a shifting array of black and white dots as an instance major human achievements, AI naturally being the newest. The creative, certainly one of the few commercials that wasn’t released in full prior to the sport, stood out for its visually-led narrative approach.
“It had this perfect mixture of complexity and minimalism. And I’d bet it cost a fraction of what many of the other commercials did, which makes it much more impressive,” said Think Shift’s Sellar.
Others agreed that “The Intelligence Age” impressed with reference to aesthetics, but saw the concept as failing to attach the dots back to humanity. The ad left Sarah Bolton, executive vice chairman of business intelligence at Advertiser Perceptions, emotionally cold, especially because it followed a heartwarming spot from the NFL a couple of program inspiring young athletes.
“For that 90 seconds, humanity was greater than AI,” Bolton said over email.
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