Superbowl ad revenue: Alicia Silverstone, Michelob Ultra and the Warner Bros. Spot for “Caddyshack”
Despite the high cost of a Super Bowl commercial, companies are eager to nab a spot. More than 200 million people tune in to the game every year, and many of them are just interested in the commercials.
This year, the scales tipped heavily toward celebrity talent – in several cases, thrown together in incongruous bunches – in commercials that were loud but frequently didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
It’s helpful when the talent has a logical connection to the product or at least figures into the creative in ways that advance 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.”
The majority of this year’s beer ads were flat, even though Budweiser set a high bar for Super Bowls in the past. The Miller- Coors-Blue Moon spot was fun, but a little confusing.
New product categories brave entering the Super Bowl derby at their own peril by not showcasing Crypto ads that sought to make a splash at Super Bowl LVI.
The other highlights were overshadowed by the low ones. Here is a snap-decision breakdown of who scored and who fumbled. If the ad featured more than one celebrity, you should assume it leaned toward theloser column.
The movie business hasn’t rebounded to pre-Pandemic levels but the number of ads for upcoming blockbusters was a vote of confidence in theatrical movie-going. The studios seem to be giving up without a fight despite the fact that Hollywood will probably never fully bounce back in the streaming age.
Give the Warner Bros. title a mention, and put the focus on the film instead of star Ezra Miller’s issues. Among the sequels, which included pre-release spots for “Creed” and “Indiana Jones”, give an honorable mention to the two. Also featured: “Air,” based on Michael Jordan’s Nike deal.
Where do we stand in terms of food and beverage? A few more examples of memorable moments from superbowl commercials at the T-Mobile and Disney locations
T-Mobile. Bradley Cooper and his mom were adorable when she told him he hasn’t won anything, even though he’s been nominated for stuff. It’s much better than the John Travolta homage.
Zero Sugar is the beverage of choice. Ben Stiller and Steve Martin taught acting. So, do they really drink this stuff? It was fun to watch them pretend and get a boost from the one-two punch.
PopCorners: Just the idea of a “Breaking Bad” reunion gets high marks (plus the line “We don’t eat our own supply”), even if the snack-food product might not have been the ideal vehicle for it.
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: The studio ran a spot to show off its deep content and hold on to childhood memories as it celebrates its 100th anniversary.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/12/entertainment/takeaways-super-bowl-commercials-broadcast/index.html
The Super Bowl Commercial for the Green M&M and How to Become Aware of Jesus: An Empirical Recommender for a Non-Mean-Field Campaign
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.
GeneralMotors.com enlisted Will Ferrell to point out the EV cars on its shows like “Bridgerton” and “StrangerSex.” 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. Even though it was an ad that played on Sunday, the goal of its message seemed to have been confused by details about the group behind it.
The Super Bowl commercial made some viewers wonder if it was the last thing they would see.
In it, actress and comedian Maya Rudolph tosses handfuls of the colorful candies in the air, but instead of M’s, they’re emblazoned with “Ma” and “Ya” and images of Rudolph’s face. Rudolph sings that the candies are now filled with clams. People are in a video that shows them taking bites. Towards the end, eagle-eyed viewers will have seen a distressed looking Yellow M&M, and the Red M&M holding up a sign that says “HELP!”
The shoe swap from heels to sneakers for the brightly- colored M&M characters last year sparked protests from some Green M&M fans, who questioned the appropriateness of a shoe campaign on International Women’s Day. From people who are right-wing.
“Are the M&M’s okay?” One person asked a question. Help me understand the Super Bowl ad, please. Some thought it was dumb, others funny.
Now, the brand assures people in a press release, the spokecandies have returned. In another short spot airing on Sunday, the characters say in a ‘press conference” that they’re glad to be back. The chyron says: “M&M’s characters return.”
How do you get attention? The M&M/GoDaddy Super Bowl Commercials Campaigns Against a Patty Roast of Mr Peanut
North said that anything you run during the Super Bowl will get a lot of attention. “The question is, how do you get attention to you, in particular?”
M&M’s created an elaborate story for its characters. They just teased which celebrities would be featured in their spots. The winner of the dance competition will appear in a Sunday ad. The stakes for watchers of the game were raised by the partnership between DraftKings and Molson Cannabis to allow people to wager on the contents of its ad.
Planters this year aired bits of a roast of Mr Peanut ahead of the game, who infamously “died” in a Super Bowl commercial in 2020 before being reborn as a baby, itself a very involved, and much criticized, campaign.
Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at the Koch School of Management, said that the campaigns take some pressure off the commercial by encouraging people to tune in.
The Super Bowl is designed to get people to think about the brand, and hedging with an online campaign will get people thinking about it.
They can gauge the public’s reaction by releasing ads ahead of time. They are able to make changes if it is negative. After animal rights activists and others criticized an ad that was about a puppy for sale online, GoDaddy replaced it with a different commercial.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/12/business/m-and-ms-super-bowl-commercials-campaigns/index.html
Why does the M&M spokescandies have to go on pause? And when did they fail to respond to a critical comment? The case against Mars
“As soon as something works, everybody copies it, and then it no longer works quite so well.” That’s what was happening “in the run up to the Superbowl,” Calkins said.
Social campaigns have to be effective. M&M’s got a lot of people talking when it said it would put its spokescandies on pause. People weren’t talking about Ma and Ya’s or the search for alternate employment or hobbies.
The campaign failed to address those initial claims of the company that the spokescats were too divisive, which many saw as a capitulation to those accusations of the brand being too meek. M&M’s parent company Mars said it would give more grants to women than it had said it would.
“They failed to engage us in the story, but they have caught our attention based on a crisis,” USC Annenberg’s North said of the candy brand’s social campaign. “I’m not sure if that’s such a positive move.”