Did you watch the Super Bowl? Of course you did. You sat pleasantly with your extended family checking your watch as the game dragged on, because it’s a school night after all and little Trevor is not exactly killing it in reading comprehension and you can not have that discussion again at Parents Night. But lighten up, he’s only in 2nd grade and college ain’t for everyone.
The point is, while you were knocking back an Old English 40 and a Cheesy Gordita® some of us were working.
Yours truly heroically fought through his own bedtime and watched every commercial in last night’s Super Bowl broadcast in order to complete this required blog post. For that alone, you owe me at the very least to read some of it. What follows is a list of the top and bottom 5 Super Bowl commercials according to me (and Todd who texted me his surprisingly coherent thoughts as well).
Life is good when you have an unlimited budget and your client’s SVP of Communications keeps his yap closed.
The commercial uses celebrities to step in for Alexa, who’s lost her voice and that’s a cute idea, but the actors used and the inclusion of Jeff Bezos makes this spot memorable and ties it solidly to the product.
I can’t imagine eating and drinking these two colorful food items but they made a great commercial pairing. Peter Dinklage lip synced the hell out of Busta Rhymes and Morgan Freeman did just as well with Missy Elliott. Extra points for the nod to Fire and Ice/Game of Thrones.
The opening shot of the baby being lifted here was enough to grab my attention and set the tone. As somber as the opening visual is, the atmosphere changes quickly to hope as we realize this is a Paralympics spot. By the end all that’s left is hope, athletes, America, possibly the Rocky theme and me sniffling like a New England fan this morning (sorry).
Stacking Pringles is big in my family, but I’d never thought to stack different flavors. I also didn’t know there were different flavors. Also, Bill Hader is always funny.
Another well produced emotional spot. It’s simply a minute-long thank you to first responders using real people. Everyone is in tears here. The cat threw up. Verizon taking some credit at the end seems a little weird to me but technically they were involved, I suppose.
I understand that these tear-jerking commercials are taking the top spots but this was a pretty weak year for comedy (Tom Brady’s attempted catch notwithstanding), so here we are. The Hyundai spot hits you like a punch. The moment the woman on screen informs us that she had pediatric cancer stops you in your tracks. Hyundai smartly follows that initial hit with their donation of funds to childhood cancer research with every car sold program. The testimonials continue and by the end I’m forgetting that my old Hyundai literally caught on fire.
Spending this much money on such a small return feels like a marriage that lasted shorter than your Mercury Sable lease. Swing and a miss tough guy, but you’ll be back.
Family isn’t a verb. How dare you.
I thought this was going to end up being a Tide commercial. Iggy Azalea?
Why is a nursery school version of Nirvana’s All Apologies playing in the background? The overbearing voiceover builds to almost scolding us by the end. I have no memory of what the point of this was.
A skinny, awkward millennial that dances like my brother will not convince anyone to drink Twisted Mango (seriously?) Diet Coke.
You can’t put these two things together. Stop doing this.
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