February 2, 2015
Good game, bad commercials mark Super Bowl XLIX
Last year’s Super Bowl combined a game in which one team ran away from the other with commercials weaker than any in recent memory. This year’s big game was a nail-biter, going down to the last seconds, but the 30-second spots advertisers paid millions to place were even more dreadful than the Seahawk’s play-calling on the team’s last down from scrimmage.
The 2015 version of America’s biggest game involved a number of ads about dads and there was plenty of forced sentimentality. Speaking as a father and someone who has been mocked by family members for tearing up during Disney movies, most of the attempts failed to move me.
![[Image: Budweiser spot]](data:image/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciIHZpZXdCb3g9IjAgMCAxIDEiIHdpZHRoPSIxIiBoZWlnaHQ9IjEiIGRhdGEtdT0iJTJGcHVibGljJTJGaW1hZ2VzJTJGZGlzY3Vzc2lvbnMlMkYxODA1NSUyRmJ1ZC1kb2ctc3RpbGwuanBnIiBkYXRhLXc9IjEiIGRhdGEtaD0iMSIgZGF0YS1iaXA9IiI+PC9zdmc+)
According to USA Today’s Ad Meter (7,000 people rated spots on a scale of one to 10), here are the top spots of Super Bowl XLIX:
- Budweiser "Lost Dog" – 8.1
- Always "Like a Girl" – 7.1
- Fiat "Blue Pill" – 6.9
- Microsoft "Braylon" – 6.7
- Dorito’s "Middle Seat" – 6.7
- Dodge "Wisdom" – 6.64
- Toyota "My Bold Dad" – 6.59
- Coca-Cola "Make It Happy" – 6.50
- Nissan "With Dad" – 6.47
- Doritos "When Pigs Fly" – 6.45
Advertising Age ranked spots on a one- to four-star basis. Those earning the most stars included:
- Always "Like a Girl" – 4 stars
- Budweiser "Brewed the Hard Way" – 4 stars
- Loctite "Positive Feelings" – 4 stars
- NoMore.org "No More" – 4 stars
- Budweiser "Lost Dog" – 3-1/2 stars
- Avocados from Mexico "First Draft Ever" – 3-1/2 stars
- BMW – "Newfangled Idea" – 3-1/2 stars
- Dove Men+Care "Real Strength" – 3-1/2 stars
- McDonald’s "Pay With Lovin’" – 3-1/2 stars
- Snickers "The Brady Bunch" – 3-1/2 stars
- Supercell "Revenge" – 3-1/2 stars
Here’s my personal list of effective spots, stretched to nine:
- Loctite "Positive Feelings"
- Always "Like a Girl"
- Fiat "Blue Pill"
- Snickers "The Brady Bunch"
- NoMore.org "No More" (Hard to call this a favorite, but it is disturbingly memorable)
- Avocados from Mexico "First Draft Ever"
- Supercell "Revenge"
- Dove Men+Care "Real Strength"
- Budweiser "Lost Dog"
BrainTrust
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Discussion Questions
What was your assessment of the overall quality of commercials that ran during this year’s Super Bowl broadcast? Do you think advertisers got their money’s worth? What your most/least favorites and why?
Poll
The spots did not uphold the Super Bowl tradition. They were not very creative or funny and did not tug at the heart strings. While advertisers got a great game that held the audience’s attention until the last seconds, viewers missed many opportunities to get more snacks rather than stay to watch the commercials, because the spots were so bad.
My daughter is a media planner, so we were texting back and forth about the commercials as much as the game itself. (And as Packers fans, let’s just say we were neutral, but what goes around comes around.) At one point I commented about the trend toward feel-good, soft-sell ads that were not as funny or attention-getting as what viewers expect from the Super Bowl. (Doritos, Fiat and Snickers being rare exceptions.) Everybody seems to want to be on the Budweiser horse-wagon.
In a way, it was a welcome relief from some of the crassness of recent years but it would have been nice to see more “household name” brands actually trying to sell something, not just burnishing their image. McDonald’s is a prime example: The “love” campaign over the last several weeks does nothing to address the company’s real problems by taking some kind of new-age approach.
As to the worst ad? Hands down, the most jarring in this context was the Nationwide cautionary ad about household accidents. (Slickly done, as were most of the spots.) Although the company said it had no commercial motive, I did receive this snark-text from another family member: “I guess Nationwide is saying that you should insure your kids because they are going to die.” Too close to home for many families, especially if they are looking for some escapism on Super Bowl Sunday.
I feel like this was the first Super Bowl where the ad strategy was more defined by Twitter and YouTube than by TV. In other words, either advertisers let haters on YouTube kill ads that might have come across as “controversial” but not in the No More, conversation-starting kind of way, or advertisers censored their own selves to focus more on pulling heartstrings rather than risk the haters by trying to be funny and missing the mark. Everyone wanted the “Awwww” tweet and went to great lengths to avoid the “What were they thinking?” tweet. But you can’t win big if you don’t think big, and that seemed to be what we were missing this year.
I really got a kick out of the Loctite commercial. They were an unexpected advertiser, in my opinion, and their ad was light and airy and unexpectedly funny—really made me laugh. I also thought the Lindsay Lohan commercial was a kick although I honestly can’t remember who the advertiser was.
The rest of the ads made me tear up, which while I get the fact that being able to garner an emotional response such as crying from an audience is considered a real win for marketers, I really don’t want to cry while watching the Super Bowl.
Bottom line, I think this was an attempt at a mea culpa from Roger Goodell and the NFL for a disastrous year of unfortunate player off-the-field actions.
The title of the article says it all. Unlike many recent Super Bowls the game was actually exciting to watch.
Perhaps had the game been a blowout like many recent Super Bowls have been, the commercials would have been more interesting, but I doubt it. Have we found a new theorem? Bad game/good commercials and its companion good game/bad commercials?
I can’t believe that any advertiser got their money’s worth out of these ads. $4.5 million is a huge investment and half of the viewers were getting another beer or depositing their last one when many of these ads ran.
There were, in my opinion, no ads nearly as memorable as many have been in the past. The advertisers are taking some of the suspense out of the game by running the spots early and making it more difficult to do a “first take” evaluation. That may be an attempt to create interest or recoup their investment but all it did for me was water down the impact. I did like the Fiat ad and the BMW ad but even I, who record and then watch my shows without commercials, saw those ads before the game!
On par with recent years with many good ones and a few not-so-good. Considering the 200 million-plus who may have been watching the game, the advertisers got their money’s worth. The game was terrific and only a few boxes paid off during and after the game, but none of them mine. A good game and better event than in years past.
I thought they were good. I somehow felt uncomfortable with the level of Political Correctness on a lot of them. I feel terrible for people who’ve lost their limbs. Exploiting that in commercials is somehow troubling. Especially from companies that have little to nothing to do with rehabilitation.
My favorites were “Like a girl” and the Budweiser lost puppy, although the Fiat ad was definitely epic.
As for getting your money’s worth, I have zero idea how anyone measures that. I mean, sure—when I see a horse with wide hooves I think “Budweiser,” but so what?
Overall—I give the crop a six out of 10.
Favorites: Nissan “With Dad” and Fiat “Blue Pill.”
Both took an approach that fit the venue (action, adventure, humor) and executed it in Super Bowl style.
Least Favorites: Loctite “Positive Feelings” and Snickers “Brady Bunch.”
Personally I thought the Loctite ad was just silly and I don’t remember what the message was. The “Brady Bunch” ad is the result of falling into the trap of kitch nostalgia. I feel for the ad team because I’ve been party to doing the very same thing. (Think Chuck Connors as “Cochise” offering to surrender his band for Doritos. I know, it was just as bad as it sounds—now. But somehow it sounds so brilliant at the time.)
Of all the ratings George cited, I found the Ad Age rankings to be the furthest off base for my taste. Guess it is a little like SAG picking the Oscar winners.
I agree with George. After watching last year and looking forward to yesterday knowing the ads could not be as bad, I was sorely disappointed to find that yes, they can be worse. Maybe the advertisers have reached a crossroads where cost has reached a point where the return is not there. We will not know until they start selling space for next year. As usual this year there was a buildup of better ads leading up to halftime when the viewership is the highest. And a drop in both quality and substance as the game reaches the later stages.
Score: Game, good for a change. Ads, not good and on a string of several consecutive years of decreasing quality.
HOW did the Esurance ad with Heisenberg behind the drugstore pharmaceutical counter not make the top ten?
So what did everyone think of the GoDaddy ad? Apparently they didn’t even have a backup plan when there was backlash against the puppy mill internet sales spot. (HORRIBLE way to get a puppy by the way.)
This year’s commercials once again were at best solid—by advertising standards—but very few stood out in terms of bold, new ideas. Much fewer bold, new ideas that will carry through to be highly relevant to consumers beyond the game.
Surprise & Delights from McDonald’s? Hard to see that scaling or being impactful unless it moves beyond a “sweepstakes” approach to a more consumer-data driven. Budweiser and others pull heart strings, but so much of the other marketing elements to those brands are one-dimensional. Each year, as the price/0:30 goes up, it’s harder and harder to see CMOs generating a tangible ROI.
This year’s big winner, other than the Patriots: NBC, with a close second going to the agencies and their production companies.
Let me just add that playing all the ads before the super Bowl took away the element of surprise. Doesn’t that mean anything? It does to me.
And that’s my 2 cents
My favorite was the one GoDaddy pulled about the puppy mill because it was too sketchy. The reason I liked it was because GoDaddy knows how to push the right buttons on controversy. GoDaddy is about making web sites and web sites are suppose to direct traffic and get attention. Genius on the part of GoDaddy. Since it was pulled, I’m guessing it was the most cost effective Super Bowl ad ever.
This is not about a company’s moral values, but all about getting attention. GoDaddy got lots of attention. All publicity is good publicity.
I think Connie Kski misses the point of the GoDaddy spot. It was meant to be pulled. They didn’t need a backup plan. Plan A was to have a distasteful commercial that created a lot of social media buzz before the game.
There were good ads, but none that broke the plane that I would consider memorable in the long run. The Fiat and Nissan ads worked, and so did the Budweiser, but I don’t see any of them having a big bang spectacle impact in the long term or big buzz like the Apple 1984 ad, or the Coca Cola Mean Joe Green ad that people would be talking about for a long time. None of the ads are memorable beyond this month probably and certainly nothing moved the needle from a preference or brand awareness. The Nationwide one is memorable but not in a good way.
SuperBowl XLIX should win an Oscar for Best Male Weepie—or at least be a nominee.
What gives? It must be the focus on the Millennial Male, who marketers believe to be more sensitive than previous generations of men. But—the context folks! This isn’t the place for it!
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The spots did not uphold the Super Bowl tradition. They were not very creative or funny and did not tug at the heart strings. While advertisers got a great game that held the audience’s attention until the last seconds, viewers missed many opportunities to get more snacks rather than stay to watch the commercials, because the spots were so bad.
My daughter is a media planner, so we were texting back and forth about the commercials as much as the game itself. (And as Packers fans, let’s just say we were neutral, but what goes around comes around.) At one point I commented about the trend toward feel-good, soft-sell ads that were not as funny or attention-getting as what viewers expect from the Super Bowl. (Doritos, Fiat and Snickers being rare exceptions.) Everybody seems to want to be on the Budweiser horse-wagon.
In a way, it was a welcome relief from some of the crassness of recent years but it would have been nice to see more “household name” brands actually trying to sell something, not just burnishing their image. McDonald’s is a prime example: The “love” campaign over the last several weeks does nothing to address the company’s real problems by taking some kind of new-age approach.
As to the worst ad? Hands down, the most jarring in this context was the Nationwide cautionary ad about household accidents. (Slickly done, as were most of the spots.) Although the company said it had no commercial motive, I did receive this snark-text from another family member: “I guess Nationwide is saying that you should insure your kids because they are going to die.” Too close to home for many families, especially if they are looking for some escapism on Super Bowl Sunday.
I feel like this was the first Super Bowl where the ad strategy was more defined by Twitter and YouTube than by TV. In other words, either advertisers let haters on YouTube kill ads that might have come across as “controversial” but not in the No More, conversation-starting kind of way, or advertisers censored their own selves to focus more on pulling heartstrings rather than risk the haters by trying to be funny and missing the mark. Everyone wanted the “Awwww” tweet and went to great lengths to avoid the “What were they thinking?” tweet. But you can’t win big if you don’t think big, and that seemed to be what we were missing this year.
I really got a kick out of the Loctite commercial. They were an unexpected advertiser, in my opinion, and their ad was light and airy and unexpectedly funny—really made me laugh. I also thought the Lindsay Lohan commercial was a kick although I honestly can’t remember who the advertiser was.
The rest of the ads made me tear up, which while I get the fact that being able to garner an emotional response such as crying from an audience is considered a real win for marketers, I really don’t want to cry while watching the Super Bowl.
Bottom line, I think this was an attempt at a mea culpa from Roger Goodell and the NFL for a disastrous year of unfortunate player off-the-field actions.
The title of the article says it all. Unlike many recent Super Bowls the game was actually exciting to watch.
Perhaps had the game been a blowout like many recent Super Bowls have been, the commercials would have been more interesting, but I doubt it. Have we found a new theorem? Bad game/good commercials and its companion good game/bad commercials?
I can’t believe that any advertiser got their money’s worth out of these ads. $4.5 million is a huge investment and half of the viewers were getting another beer or depositing their last one when many of these ads ran.
There were, in my opinion, no ads nearly as memorable as many have been in the past. The advertisers are taking some of the suspense out of the game by running the spots early and making it more difficult to do a “first take” evaluation. That may be an attempt to create interest or recoup their investment but all it did for me was water down the impact. I did like the Fiat ad and the BMW ad but even I, who record and then watch my shows without commercials, saw those ads before the game!
On par with recent years with many good ones and a few not-so-good. Considering the 200 million-plus who may have been watching the game, the advertisers got their money’s worth. The game was terrific and only a few boxes paid off during and after the game, but none of them mine. A good game and better event than in years past.
I thought they were good. I somehow felt uncomfortable with the level of Political Correctness on a lot of them. I feel terrible for people who’ve lost their limbs. Exploiting that in commercials is somehow troubling. Especially from companies that have little to nothing to do with rehabilitation.
My favorites were “Like a girl” and the Budweiser lost puppy, although the Fiat ad was definitely epic.
As for getting your money’s worth, I have zero idea how anyone measures that. I mean, sure—when I see a horse with wide hooves I think “Budweiser,” but so what?
Overall—I give the crop a six out of 10.
Favorites: Nissan “With Dad” and Fiat “Blue Pill.”
Both took an approach that fit the venue (action, adventure, humor) and executed it in Super Bowl style.
Least Favorites: Loctite “Positive Feelings” and Snickers “Brady Bunch.”
Personally I thought the Loctite ad was just silly and I don’t remember what the message was. The “Brady Bunch” ad is the result of falling into the trap of kitch nostalgia. I feel for the ad team because I’ve been party to doing the very same thing. (Think Chuck Connors as “Cochise” offering to surrender his band for Doritos. I know, it was just as bad as it sounds—now. But somehow it sounds so brilliant at the time.)
Of all the ratings George cited, I found the Ad Age rankings to be the furthest off base for my taste. Guess it is a little like SAG picking the Oscar winners.
I agree with George. After watching last year and looking forward to yesterday knowing the ads could not be as bad, I was sorely disappointed to find that yes, they can be worse. Maybe the advertisers have reached a crossroads where cost has reached a point where the return is not there. We will not know until they start selling space for next year. As usual this year there was a buildup of better ads leading up to halftime when the viewership is the highest. And a drop in both quality and substance as the game reaches the later stages.
Score: Game, good for a change. Ads, not good and on a string of several consecutive years of decreasing quality.
HOW did the Esurance ad with Heisenberg behind the drugstore pharmaceutical counter not make the top ten?
So what did everyone think of the GoDaddy ad? Apparently they didn’t even have a backup plan when there was backlash against the puppy mill internet sales spot. (HORRIBLE way to get a puppy by the way.)
This year’s commercials once again were at best solid—by advertising standards—but very few stood out in terms of bold, new ideas. Much fewer bold, new ideas that will carry through to be highly relevant to consumers beyond the game.
Surprise & Delights from McDonald’s? Hard to see that scaling or being impactful unless it moves beyond a “sweepstakes” approach to a more consumer-data driven. Budweiser and others pull heart strings, but so much of the other marketing elements to those brands are one-dimensional. Each year, as the price/0:30 goes up, it’s harder and harder to see CMOs generating a tangible ROI.
This year’s big winner, other than the Patriots: NBC, with a close second going to the agencies and their production companies.
Let me just add that playing all the ads before the super Bowl took away the element of surprise. Doesn’t that mean anything? It does to me.
And that’s my 2 cents
My favorite was the one GoDaddy pulled about the puppy mill because it was too sketchy. The reason I liked it was because GoDaddy knows how to push the right buttons on controversy. GoDaddy is about making web sites and web sites are suppose to direct traffic and get attention. Genius on the part of GoDaddy. Since it was pulled, I’m guessing it was the most cost effective Super Bowl ad ever.
This is not about a company’s moral values, but all about getting attention. GoDaddy got lots of attention. All publicity is good publicity.
I think Connie Kski misses the point of the GoDaddy spot. It was meant to be pulled. They didn’t need a backup plan. Plan A was to have a distasteful commercial that created a lot of social media buzz before the game.
There were good ads, but none that broke the plane that I would consider memorable in the long run. The Fiat and Nissan ads worked, and so did the Budweiser, but I don’t see any of them having a big bang spectacle impact in the long term or big buzz like the Apple 1984 ad, or the Coca Cola Mean Joe Green ad that people would be talking about for a long time. None of the ads are memorable beyond this month probably and certainly nothing moved the needle from a preference or brand awareness. The Nationwide one is memorable but not in a good way.
SuperBowl XLIX should win an Oscar for Best Male Weepie—or at least be a nominee.
What gives? It must be the focus on the Millennial Male, who marketers believe to be more sensitive than previous generations of men. But—the context folks! This isn’t the place for it!