The Super Bowl is one of America’s time-honored traditions, viewed by audiences across the nation for one night of unity through football.
For those watching from their TV screens or at home, another tradition has inserted itself into the public eye on this day: the various TV commercials where companies promote their products to the biggest audience possible.
Since these spots traditionally cost around $8 million each for 30 seconds of airtime, most companies try to incorporate an interesting visual gimmick to attract the attention of viewers, adding intrigue and interest each year about what these companies will try next.
This is what I would consider to be four of the best and four of the worst ads from last night’s game.
Best Ads:
Pepsi is a traditional headliner for the Super Bowl, and a familiar face needs to try twice as hard to keep their ads interesting.
Enter their latest entry: "The Choice," a good-natured ad showing the iconic Coca-Cola polar bear blindly trying two drinks, only to discover he likes Pepsi more than Coca-Cola while “I Want to Break Free” by Queen plays.
The ad ends with two of the polar bears drinking Pepsi together at a concert, with some embarrassment when they are displayed on the Jumbotron, a slight poke at the infamous “Coldplay affair” incident that occurred last year.
This ad works on a variety of levels: it takes a jab at their competition, who recently came under fire for their usage of artificial intelligence (AI) in their latest holiday ad, by using their iconic mascot to promote their product over Coca-Cola, and not a single use of AI in sight.
Dunkin’ Donuts: ‘Good Will Dunkin’
One thing most advertisements love to do in the modern age is promote nostalgia—30-50 seconds of reminding you, the viewer, about the things you once loved and experienced as a kid and nowhere is it typically more prominent than during the Super Bowl.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it’s even harsh (remember the year they killed and then replanted Mr. Peanut for a Super Bowl stunt?), but in this case, it absolutely works.
Ben Affleck plays Will Hunting, the iconic character originally played by his longtime friend and creative partner Matt Damon in the classic film “Good Will Hunting.”
In the ad, he walks into a Dunkin’ Donuts and has a hilarious sequence of interactions with classic sitcom characters from “Friends,” “Seinfeld,” “Cheers,” “Family Matters”, “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” and more, with iconic actors from these franchises returning to reprise their roles in de-aged form, like Jennifer Aniston, Jason Alexander, Alfonso Rivera, and Matt LeBlanc.
Outside of this humorous ad, Dunkin’ also offered free coffee of any size with a limited-time promo code, as well as free coffee for a year to the solver of a certain math problem in a limited-time contest. The perfect combination of humorous nostalgia and advertisement.
This was a very pleasant surprise from Squarespace. The company, whose primary purpose is to create, promote, and develop websites for its users, collaborated with Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, an Oscar-nominated director known for his absurdist style, to promote a cinematic display of one of their website's most important functions: claiming a name for a website domain before it’s too late.
Actress Emma Stone, a two-time Oscar winner and a frequent collaborator of Lanthimos’s, stars front and center in this ad as she frantically tries to reclaim the domain name “emmastone.com” from a user who has already claimed it.
This may not be styled in the usual Super Bowl ads format that viewers are accustomed to, but I found this cinematic, absurdist, and dark change of pace to be one of the most visually thrilling and effective advertisements of the night.
Worst Ads:
The Movie Trailers:‘Big Game Spot’
One of the beloved traditions of the Super Bowl for many viewers who may be uninterested in the game is seeing the various "Big Game" spots, which various movie studios use to promote their upcoming projects.
These are usually just short ads urging viewers to watch their (often newly-released) trailers in full length on YouTube—many for the first time. However, with a few exceptions, this year's batch of trailers felt quite lacking.
Films such as Pixar’s “Hoppers”, Illumination’s “Minions & Monsters,” and “The Super Galaxy Movie,” and Amazon MGM’s “Project Hail Mary” were given significantly smaller spots than previous years to promote their films. Lucasfilm’s “Mandalorian & Grogu”—- the first theatrical “Star Wars” in six and a half years—had a 37-second time slot, which they used to promote a short clip and no trailer.
The winners from the movie standpoint were Steven Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day” and David Fincher’s “The Adventures of Cliff Booth,” but overall, this year’s batch of trailers pointed to a lack of both quantity and quality of such limited advertisement time.
Svedka Vodka: ‘Shake Your Bots Off’
A recurring theme throughout advertisements for this year’s game was AI.
Various technology companies were attempting to promote the use and advancement of AI in their newest products, such as Google and Meta. Other companies utilized the revolutionary technology in ways that were less for promotional purposes and more for creative usage.
Enter the creepiest ad of the night: Svedka’s dancing robots promoting their newest line of vodka, completely created using the newest technologies of AI.
Not only does this ad point towards a startling trend in replacing human intelligence in advertising, but it’s also just so off-putting—the first few seconds alone are enough to weird the average viewer out. There are various other ways to promote products without using AI to do it for you.
Amazon: ‘Chris Hemsworth thinks Alexa+ is scary’:
Another AI commercial this year, and yet another letdown.
While this advertisement was not made by AI, it does a very poor job of promoting it the way Amazon likely intended. Chris Hemsworth plays a man petrified of the capabilities of his new Alexa+, fearing it could harm him, all of which is depicted chillingly in Amazon’s newest promotion.
Rather than coming off as satirical, this ad presents itself as showing viewers the various risks and concerns surrounding AI in the home and yet wants them to purchase it anyway. There is no point in this ad, as it addresses any of the concerns presented, and given the current climate surrounding AI, it feels poorly timed and out of place with the image Amazon should be showing around this new technology.
But I’ll give it credit for not using any AI to make it!
Carmine Sortino is a writer for The Setonian’s Opinion section. She can be reached at carmine.sortino@student.shu.edu.
