HITS & MISSES
Amazon, Cadillac, Jeep score with Super Bowl ads, others miss the mark
During this year’s Super Bowl, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers reigned supreme on the field. During advertising’s biggest night, there were hits and misses as well. Overall, this year’s crop of Super Bowl ads focused on light humor that strove to entertain and connect. But that made the few ads that took a different approach stand out even more. Amazon’s Michael B. Jordan ad and Cadillac’s Edward Scissorhands updates were hits, while overcomplicated ads like Michelob Ultra Organic Seltzer missed the mark.
AMAZON
Amazon’s commercial shows a woman fantasizing that her new Alexa comes in the form of Michael B. Jordan. He strips his shirt when asked to dim the lights and reads a book to her in a bubble bath, all to the chagrin of her hapless husband. The humorous ad captured the restlessness of being stuck at home during the pandemic and added to the evening’s diversity with two Black leads in the ad.
ANHEUSER-BUSCH
Anheuser-Busch’s corporate brand spot shows typical pre-pandemic scenes of people sharing a beer — kitchen workers, orchestra players, cubicle dwellers, strangers at an airport bar — and reminded people to look forward to that again. “So when we’re back, let’s remember, it’s never just about the beer,” a voiceover states. “It’s about saying that simple human truth, we need each other.” The ad manages to capture the nostalgia people feel about pre-pandemic times without being heavy handed.
BUD LIGHT SELTZER LEMONADE
Bud Light used lemons as a
metaphor for everything that went wrong in 2020 to introduce its new Seltzer Lemonade. In the humorous spot a downpour of literal lemons ruins weddings, cancels flights, disrupts at-home haircuts, destroys baseball stadium cardboard cutouts and causes general chaos. It manages to capture the zeitgeist of the moment with a humorous metaphor that ties directly into the product.
CADILLAC
Timothée Chalamet is pitch perfect as Edgar, the son of Edward Scissorhands, in Cadillac’s ad for its new Lyriq car. Edgar has difficulty with his inherited scissor-hands when he deflates a football and severs a bus’s stop cord. He wistfully plays a virtual reality car simulator. Edgar’s mother, Winona Ryder revisiting her role in the 1990 film, gives him a Cadillac Lyriq. The point? The car’s “hands free super cruise” feature lets you to drive with little hand contact.
DOORDASH
For its first ever Super Bowl ad, DoorDash went hard on nostalgia, enlisting Sesame Street Muppets including Cookie Monster and Big Bird to convey the message that DoorDash can deliver goods from local stores, not just restaurant delivery. “Hamilton” actor Daveed Diggs gave the ad some pizazz, singing a peppy version of the children’s song “People in Your Neighborhood,” that morphs into a rap.
“It’s a nice example of how an ad can blend entertainment for different generations and product messaging effectively,” said Kim Whitler, marketing professor at the University of Virginia.
GM
Light humor was prevalent throughout game-day ads, and GM’s was one of the better executions. When Will Ferrell finds out Norway has more electric vehicles per capita than the U.S., he goes on a madcap journey spanning countries with singer and actress Awkwafina and comedian Kenan Thompson to show that GM’s new battery for electric cars will soon be available for everyone.
JEEP
Even though the point of Jeep’s two-minute ode starring iconic singer Bruce Springsteen is to find common ground, in the current political climate it is bound to be polarizing. But because the majority of advertisers chose to avoid politics and focus on light humor and nostalgia, the lyrical ad stood out as something different.
“The spot is a call for unity and hope, and stood out in a Super Bowl full of funny, light ads,” said Northwestern University marketing professor Tim Calkins.
M&M’S
In contrast with Jeep, M&M’s had a much lighter take on the same “come together” message. A bag of M&M’s is the perfect apology for mansplaining, calling someone a “Karen,” having a gender reveal party accident and other contemporary faux pas. Dan Levy of “Schitt’s Creek” apologizes to the M&M anthropomorphic characters that are Super Bowl mainstays and says he promises not to “eat any more of your friends.”
MICHELOB ULTRA ORGANIC SELTZER
Michelob Ultra’s Organic Seltzer ad was stuffed full of celebrities — all of whom turned out to be lookalikes. Meanwhile a voiceover in a Christopher Walken-like accent turns out not to be Christopher Walken. The message is that the product is authentically organic, but it gets lost in the busyness of the commercial. Michelob was likely hoping to drive people to repeat views online with the celebrity lookalikes, but during the fast-moving Super Bowl the conceit was confusing.
SCOTT’S MIRACLE-GRO
Scott’s Miracle-Gro had a good year as people flocked to their backyards to hang out and work on their gardens as a pandemic hobby. With its first-ever Super Bowl ad, Scott’s was looking to keep that momentum going, but the overstuffed ad ended up being distracting. The ad shows not one but six celebrities in various degrees of recognizability on a backyard set — Martha Stewart, Carl Weathers and John Travolta among them
“The theme is kind of clever, but this is another case of too much going on,” said Charles Taylor, a marketing professor at Villanova University.
They are the annual journeys of late winter and early spring: Factory workers in China heading home for the Lunar New Year; American college students going on road trips and hitting the beach over spring break; Germans and Britons fleeing drab skies for some Mediterranean sun over Easter.
All of it canceled, in doubt or under pressure because of the coronavirus.
Amid fears of new variants of the virus, new restrictions on movement have hit just as people start to look ahead to what is usually a busy time of year for travel.
It means more pain for airlines, hotels, restaurants and tourist destinations that were already struggling more than a year into the pandemic, and a slower recovery for countries where tourism is a big chunk of the economy.
Colleges around the U.S. have been canceling spring break to discourage students from traveling. After Indiana University in Bloomington replaced its usual break with three “wellness days,” student Jacki Sylvester abandoned plans to celebrate her 21st birthday in Las Vegas.
Instead she will mark the milestone closer to home, with a day at the casino in French Lick, Indiana, just 50 miles away.
“I was really looking forward to getting out of here for a whole week. I wanted to be able to get some drinks and have fun — see the casinos and everything — and honestly see another city and just travel a little,” she said.
“At least it’s letting us have a little fun for a day in a condensed version of our original Vegas plans. Like, I’m still going to be able to celebrate. … I’m just forced to do it closer to home.”
Flight cancellations will keep Anthony Hoarty, a teacher from Cranfield in England, from spending Easter with his family at their bungalow on the Greek island of Crete, a trip already postponed from last October. A trip to Mauritius last Easter also fell victim to COVID-19.
“It’s the uncertainty,” he said. “You can’t plan things. It’s not knowing if the government is going to change its mind, if the other countries in Europe are changing their mind about travel.”
They could holiday in Britain but with most people grounded, places may be booked up or expensive: “The chances of us doing anything are pretty remote, actually.”
At bus and train stations in China, there is no sign of the annual Lunar New Year rush. The government has called on the public to avoid travel following new coronavirus outbreaks. Only five of 15 security gates at Beijing’s cavernous central railway station were open; the crowds of travelers who usually camp on the sprawling plaza outside were absent.
The holiday, which starts Feb. 12, is usually the world’s single biggest movement of humanity as hundreds of millions of Chinese leave cities to visit their hometowns or tourist spots or travel abroad. For millions of migrant workers, it usually is the only chance to visit their hometowns during the year. This year, authorities are promising extra pay if they stay put.
The government says people will make 1.7 billion trips during the holiday, but that is down 40% from 2019.
Each news cycle seems to bring new restrictions. U.S. President Joe Biden reinstituted restrictions on travelers from more than two dozen European countries, South Africa and Brazil, while people leaving the U.S. are now required to show a negative test before returning.
Canada barred flights to the Caribbean. Israel closed its main international airport. Travel into the European Union is severely restricted, with entry bans and quarantine requirements for returning citizens.
“I was really looking forward to getting out of here for a whole week. I wanted to be able to get some drinks and have fun — see the casinos and everything — and honestly see another city and just travel a little.”
– JACKI SYLVESTER, AN INDIANA UNIVERSITY STUDENT WHO ABANDONED PLANS TO CELEBRATE HER 21ST BIRTHDAY IN LAS VEGAS