The Super Bowl is undoubtedly the most-watched television event in the United States. According to media reports, 113 million viewers tuned into the big game this year. 118.7 million watched Rihanna’s Halftime Show, the most-watched since Katy Perry in 2015 and second-most on record. Advertisers spent around $7 million for each 30-sec commercial spot. This is even after the number of viewers per advertising dollar spent hit an all-time low in 2022, according to an inflation-adjusted analysis jointly conducted by Forbes, Nielsen and Kantar Group.
From an advertising point of view, Indian adlanders think most brands during Super Bowl LVII kept their scripts formulaic with a combination of A-list celebrities, light humour, nostalgia, and music. However, Anil Nair, former CEO and managing partner of L&K Saatchi & Saatchi, and founder of ASN Growth Consulting, opines most brands lacked scale. He says, “A lot of brands were trying to leverage the celebrities that they signed on to the max. It was a show of how interestingly they can spin the celebrity narrative rather than make a memorable commercial that lasts beyond Super Bowl. I suspect the clutter-cutting superseded memorability and branding.”
Having said that, Nair, who is a football enthusiast, enjoyed Doritos’ commercial during the big game. Music stars Jack Harlow, Missy Elliott, and Elton John were seen in an ad for Doritos. In the film, Harlow is seen abandoning his rap career to focus on the triangle — a Doritos-shaped musical instrument. Nair says the spot was a good combination of branding and memorable communication.
Humour took the centre-stage
Dakshin Adyanthaya, founder and director of Pixelated Egg Digital Ventures, liked a bunch of ads that appeared during the big game. He says, Bud Light’s ‘Hold’ made an ad on something relatably annoying amusing. He also enjoyed watching Uber Eats’ ‘One Hit For Uber One’ spot featuring Sean P.Diddy and Popcorners ‘Breaking Into Something Good’ featuring Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul, and Raymond Cruz for the humour.
The hyped project
Though crypto brands didn’t go all out at the Super Bowl this year due to recent controversies and scams, Adyanthaya, saw an NFT project called DigiDaigaku grabbing the attention of the Crypto Twitter space. The project hyped itself to be the first NFT project to feature in a Super Bowl commercial. With an intent to onboard thousands of new users, via Limit Break, the project offered free NFTs to anyone who scanned the QR code. “However, little were the viewers aware that they needed to have a crypto wallet on their phones to mint one. Because of this, only a few managed to get their free token while the others were redirected to the Twitter account of the co-founder,” he explained.
“What’s interesting to note was that the NFTs gained were trading in the secondary market for over $750. So what could have created a positive impact, onboard thousands of new users and helped them trade their first transaction, that missed out due to the process of needing a wallet. While they continued to gain visibility, the story could have been different,” observes Adyanthaya.
What was worth it…?
According to Sanket Audhi, creative and founding member of Talented, a lot of Super Bowl ads this year made viewers like him feel warm and fuzzy, along with a wholesome experience, but nothing felt impressive enough to justify that $7 million price tag of a 30-second spot. However, the ad nerd, liked a few brand plays. Some of his favourites this year were ‘Pop Corners: Breaking Bad’, ‘Bud Light: Hold’ and ‘GM x Netflix: Why not an EV?’ for doing justice to nostalgia, irreverence and pop culture. He also liked Pepsi Zero Sugar’s ads with Steve Martin & Ben Stiller, Ben Affleck’s Dunkin Donuts commercial and Ram’s ‘Premature Electrification’ film.
However, streaming site Tubi’s ‘Interface Interruption’ was a stand-out for Audhi. “We have all been there – sitting in our living rooms watching TV, seeing the TV have a mind of its own and finding out that you were sitting on your remote the whole time. Everyone I spoke to about the ad, went through the same rigmarole of trying to locate the remote when the ad took over. In Greg Hahn’s words (Co-founder and CCO at Mischief), ‘Tubi is poised to be the troublemaker of the streaming world’ and boy, did they deliver,” he adds.
A resounding feeling this year among advertising nerds on Twitter was there were a lot of tactless concepts paired with celebrity power. Audhi is one among them. “I’m a big fan of roasts, but the ‘Roast of Mr. Peanut’ didn’t deliver on the laughs at all. Even with the ‘Hellman’s’ spot featuring Jon Hamm, Brie Larson and Pete Davidson, they tried to hype the oldest joke in the book around the celebrity’s names, and it just ended up feeling like an overkill,” he concludes.