So the game was not that interesting – like watching trench warfare – resulting in one of the lowest scoring Super Bowl games on record. Someone said it was like both teams knew the winner was going to have to eat fast food at the White House.
Even the half-time show was a disaster as Maroon 5’s lead singer strutted out in a designer tank top that looked remarkably similar to Target’s throw pillow covers.
Instead, here’s a selection of commentary on the advertisements. At $5 million a pop, it’s the grand showcase of the creative output of our economy so worth paying attention to see what advertisers think will get our attention.
SBNation did a frame-by-frame analysis of the NFL commercial to identify all the players.
If you were paying attention to the Expensify commercial, using the app to take a photo of the receipt in the video would automatically enter you into a contest. Clever!
Verizon underscored that they are often the network of choice for first responders. Here is the backstory behind how LA Chargers coach Anthony Lynn ended up in the emergency room.
AdAge tells the story of how executives at Burger King acquired the rights to the Andy Warhol film of him eating a Whopper and why they didn’t run the entire 15-minute film.
Jason Bateman operates an elevator in a building that stops at all the things we sometimes have to do but would rather not. Middle row seats, root canals and jury duty are unfortunate but unavoidable and Bateman is a modern day Virgil from Dante’s Divine Comedy. But vegans didn’t take to kindly in Hyundai’s dig at their beet salad dinner.
Pringles, TurboTax and Michelob all poked fun at our dystopian future. Who can forget the dark nod to the famous Ronald Regan campaign ad Morning in America by Hulu and The Handmaid’s Tale.
Doritos expressed how adding spice to an original can make things fresh by having Chance the Rapper remix the Backstreet Boys and it was pretty awesome.
Michelob hired Zoe Kravitz to introduce the internet sensation that is ASMR to the Super Bowl crowd and used it to sell beer.
It was five years since Bob Dylan was first used in a Super Bowl ad (for Chrysler) so the use of Blowin in the Wind in a Budweiser commercial didn’t raise too many eyebrows. What was surprising was the backlash from the fossil fuel industry.
Bud Light had several commercials including a weird hybrid one where Bud Light gets killed off by Game of Thrones (?). Budweiser also highlighted that they are one of the few beers to list their ingredients of which corn syrup is not one of them (not like Miller Lite or Coors). The National Corn Growers Association was not pleased.
Amazon hired Harrison Ford and Forrest Whitaker to explain why Alexa-everywhere might not be such a good idea. (regular readers of TWTW will recall Rocco, the Alexa-obsessed parrot) This follows last year’s Alexa spot which featured Cardi B, Gordon Ramsey, Rebel Wilson and Sir Anthony Hopkins.
Cardi B turned down a chance to perform at the halftime (in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick) but she did get to make an entrance in a totally-over-the-top Pepsi commercial.
Google, on the other hand, played down their technology and focused on the human side of what they enable.
Two ads tipped their hat to female football players. The NFL ad featured Samantha Gordon and Toyota featured Toni Harris.
Finally, the male-oriented Dodge Ram pickup truck broke tradition and celebrated the strong women of the future. The other Dodge Ram advert was brilliantly meta.
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