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Remember the days when everyone eagerly tuned in to watch the Super Bowl just to catch all the great ads?
Back in the old days, Super Bowl commercials were all the rage. They were clever, funny, and heartwarming. They were so popular, that on Monday morning, you’d head into the office and gleefully reminisce about your favorite ads with coworkers, right? We all did it, and it was fun, and the commercials were top-notch.
Who can forget the powerful Budweiser ad that played during Super Bowl 2002, just five months after the attacks on 9/11? That ad only aired ONE time, yet, it remains among the most powerful commercials ever made. This ad can still bring you to tears, 21 years later. It’s so moving.
And you can’t talk about brilliant Super Bowl ads without mentioning the impact of Apple’s “1984” spot. It aired during Super Bowl 18 and the “dystopian feel” of that commercial was so powerful, that it still resonates today, mainly because Apple has now become what they once despised: “Big Brother…”
But that’s a whole other story for another time. The Apple ad was a huge success and a breakthrough in advertising. At the time, Apple was this scrappy 8 year old company, fighting for their piece of the pie. So they hired famous director Ridley Scott and made a commercial that was so good, it’s still mind blowing and relevant nearly 4 decades later.
However, not all Super Bowl ads had to be big budget, epic “cinematic ”extravaganzas. They could be simple, low-budget, and still be iconic and remarkable. And no one did that better than E*Trade during the 2008 Super Bowl. Their ad featuring the baby explaining the stock market while burping up milk was pure genius.
The clever ad blended two popular hit movies: “Look Who’s Talking” and “Wall Street,” and was meant to look and sound low budget, with a purposely cruddy low-fi video to add to the “authenticity” of the moment.
Simple perfection and really imaginative:
So, what happened to all of that?
Over the past 20 years there has been a notable decline in the quality and creativity of Super Bowl ads. Consumers have always had very high expectations for Super Bowl commercials. They expect them to be funnier and more entertaining than regular ads, because advertisers are taking such a huge risk with that type of big investment.
Go big or go home, right? In the old days, the Super Bowl was the world stage for companies to shine. And any company who bought a chunk of that pricey ad space put their best and most innovative foot forward.
So, the Super Bowl became the ultimate showcase for companies — and just like the players on the field — they came to play. They came to win. But these days? Meh…
Today’s ads are all garbage despite having much bigger budgets than ever before. Companies have way more money and way less talent and creativity.
A Reddit user who goes by the screen name “Helmet” posted this comment on a Detroit Lions subreddit Sunday night right after the Super Bowl, and what he said really hits home:
I remember when the commercials were as awesome as the game itself. Anyone remember the old Bud Bowl, the crazy Dorito’s commercials? Maybe I am just an old nut job but these commercials have been pretty crappy. Nothing exciting, nothing creative or new. A few movie previews that you can just watch on YouTube.
They gotta step their game up.
Helmet is right.
So, what’s going on and why are Super Bowl ads such utter trash these days?
Well, the “stuffy marketing” answer would be that back in the day, Super Bowl ads were created as “one-off” spots -that’s an ad that exists outside of the company’s “annual advertising” campaign. For the most part companies use “one-offs” for special promotions and events and they’re usually something very special and memorable. One-offs are not the ordinary slop we see everyday.
However, thanks to the internet, one-off’s are becoming the dinosaurs of the ad world.
Before the internet, Super Bowl ads were less about a “global campaign strategy” and more about making people laugh, cry, or blow them away during the big game. Companies wanted you to talk about their amazing commercial around the water cooler on Monday. But now, those “one-off” ads are all but gone.
Today, advertisers are using the Super Bowl as part of their existing annual ad campaigns. This way they can utilize the Super Bowl footage on social media long after the last touchdown dance has ended. And because of this, many of the ads look and feel mundane and uninspired.
Social media engagement is the number one driver of website referral traffic and every company that advertised during the Super Bowl shared their commercial across their social media channels. Toyota-owned Lexus, for example, shared their commercial, “Experience Amazing,” through purchased ad spots on Twitter. Its message: “Lexus: #ExperienceAmazing all over again with our big game spot here.” was repeated throughout the online-sphere, to retarget those who had seen the commercial and promote the new Lexus LC and Lexus L9 to those who did not.
In short, these days, it’s less about making you laugh for a few seconds and more about making them money for the long haul—especially when they’re paying $7 million bucks for a 30 second spot.
That doesn’t mean advertisers don’t hope to create a “hit ad” that goes viral — they do, but it’s very hard to accomplish that when you’re churning out yet another boring, typical ad so it can be recycled over and over for the masses.
Not to mention, most companies are now “prereleasing” their ads in order to get as much “bang” for their buck as possible, and in doing so, that takes away the anticipation and surprise that so many people looked forward to.
We’re seeing a lot more commercials conceived not so much to be memorable as to be shared — blogged, reblogged, Tweeted, Facebooked, pinned, etc. The most reliable route to going viral is the meme mashup: familiar elements of proven popularity, recombined in a way that’s just different enough to qualify as new. That’s why we got another ad where Betty White was the punchline. It’s why we got another Bud Light ad about a dog that brings its owner beers. Most egregiously, it’s why we got a Volkswagen ad that inexplicably segues from a dog acting like a person to a “Star Wars” parody. Viral + viral = viral squared, right? Sure enough, “The Dog Strikes Back” has more than 5 million YouTube views already and it came in No. 2 on the USA Today Ad Meter, which this year incorporated sentiment from Facebook. It might be a success. It’s just not a good ad.
So, that’s the marketing reason Super Bowl ads suck, but is there more to the story? Of course.
This year’s ads were probably among the worst, and that’s saying a lot, because they’ve been really horrible for quite some time, and the main reason they were so bad this year is because of the left-wing woke disease that Corporate America is infested with.
Don Jr. said it best when he referred to the Super Bowl and its ads as a “woketopia.”
Donald Trump Jr. voiced his displeasure at the liberal nature of this year’s Super Bowl ads, complaining after just one commercial they were a ‘woketopia’.
‘One comercial [sic] in and it’s already woketopia,’ he tweeted, along with an eye roll emoji and the hashtag for the game.
It’s unclear which of the dozens of ads Don Jr. was referencing, but Sunday’s event featured a host of celebrity-filled commercials centered on themes of national unity, social consciousness and the coronavirus pandemic.
But it wasn’t just Don Jr. that was disgusted.
Hundreds of other disgruntled viewers appeared to agree with Don Jr., blasting what they perceived to be highly politicized or ‘tame and too woke ads’ that they said should have no place in sport.
‘I would love to watch a sporting event without politics or wokeness being involved! Sports used to be an outlet to get away from this! Now, not so much,’ tweeted Robert Woods.
But it’s not just the “woke” commercials that are the problem.
The real issue is that everybody’s playing it safe. Nobody wants to take a risk or be edgy, for fear of being targeted by the cancel culture mob. That’s the real danger of “wokeness.” It stifles beauty, progress, and imagination.
And speaking of no creativity, remember that amazing E*Trade ad from 2008?
Well, in 2023 they recycled that ad into this unremarkable, boring 30 second piece of crap:
At this point, it’s basically just “gruel” they’re feeding to the peasants, simply because they have to.
What’s really disheartening is that this is what many experts call the “best” ad of the game:
Ghastly.
I can sum the “best” ad in three words: Stale, humorless, and lazy.
If that’s the “best” what did they think was the worst? Buckle up, it’s a doozy…
Lame jokes, and an awkward and rather unappetizing cameo from Pete Davidson… whose now peddling mayo…
But the flops don’t stop there. Doritos has gone from one of the best Super Bowl commercial-creators to this embarrassing mess:
Another “rap culture” commercial… What a predictable snooze-fest.
It’d be more enticing to eat cow chips at this point. At least that would be “interesting.”
Sadly, the bottom line is this: The lack of creativity, wokeness, trashy vibes and reliance on unfunny, annoying celebrities that we keep seeing in Super Bowl ads are a direct reflection of today’s uninspired, vapid “garbage society” who worships degenerates like the Kardashians, Cardi B, and Pete Davidson.
And until that changes, we will continue to be fed gruel.
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