Who’s winning the Super Bowl ad competition?
The 2021 Super Bowl commercials are a mixed bag of high and low concept, old and new stars and ideas just common enough to feel repetitive over the course of a game.
A “Flat Matthew” McConaughey and Jason Alexander printed on a teenager’s well-worn hoodie: They’re essentially the same concept, even if developed at two different pitch meetings at two different ad agencies, inviting a sort of “Who wore it better?” comparison.
Some big players sat out this year. The optics of lavish ad buys amid layoffs and a pandemic didn’t sit well with a few Super Bowl regulars. So there are no offerings from Coca-Cola. Pepsi decided its halftime show with the Weeknd was sufficient, though the parent company sank some money into a new Mountain Dew product. AnheuserBusch announced that it isn’t advertising its Budweiser brand during the Super Bowl; instead, it’s donating the money it would have spent to coronavirus-vaccination-awareness efforts.
One job-related ad directly addressed repercussions of the pandemic. Another nod to the cooped-up feeling of the past year is that people clearly feel the need to shake a leg. Dancing — never extinct in the Super Bowl biosphere — flourished in this year’s ads.
Two of the most hyped ads prior to the game mixed popculture icons and dance routines. The website builder Squarespace created a thoughtful spot about how its services help creative types realize their side hustles after the working day is done. It then flipped Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” to “5 to 9,” with Oscar-winning filmmaker Damien Chazelle directing a brightly colored sort of office space Busby Berkeley dance routine choreographed by Tony Award winner Justin Peck. And if you’re going to meddle with a Parton song, best to let Parton do the meddling: With customary zeal, she flips her song to fit the ad.
John Travolta calls back to “Grease” with a TikTok dance accompanied by his daughter, Ella. Obviously, Scotts MiracleGro is good for your yard, but who knew its advertisements could seed an existential meditation about the passage of time?
Over more than two decades, I still haven’t encountered an ad as bracingly funny and dark as Monster.com’s “When I Grow
Up” from 1999. But among the better conceptual offerings this year is Amazon’s Alexa spot, in which a business executive reimagines her virtual assistant Alexa as actor Michael B. Jordan.
Here’s a roundup of a few ads from this year’s Super Bowl.
Amazon, “Alexa’s Body”: A group of office-casual types gathers around a spherical Alexa unit. “I couldn’t imagine a more beautiful vessel for Alexa to be …” one says as she looks out the window and spies an ad for a film with People’s Sexiest Man Alive, actor Michael B. Jordan. “… inside.” Suddenly, she’s asking Jordan how many tablespoons are in a cup; to operate a sprinkler system; and to voice an audiobook. The pace of the ad is perfect, another 15 seconds would’ve dragged the joke out too far. Grade: A
Indeed, “The Rising”: It can’t all be jokey stuff and star appearances. Job site Indeed goes for maximum sincerity in this affecting ad featuring people seeking employment to the tune of Andra Day’s “Rise Up,” as sung by teen phenom Christian Shelton. Grade: A
Squarespace, “5 to 9”: Sixty seconds of Dolly Parton tapping her nails on a keyboard would be entertaining. But for this spot, she offers a new take on “9 to 5,” testifying to the value of chasing one’s dreams outside the office. A staid cubicle scene explodes to life with dancers representing folks doing dance instruction, art, topiary. It aspires to be joyful rather than edgy. Grade: A
General Motors, “No Way, Norway”: Will Ferrell, Kenan Thompson and Awkwafina appear in this ad that springs into action when
Ferrell learns Norway is outdoing us in electric vehicles per capita. Ferrell punching a globe is funny in just about any context, and the punchline, while amusing, is also a little subversive dig at American self-interest and the deficiencies in geography it creates. Grade: AScotts Miracle-Gro, “Keep Growing”: An entertaining take on the old mismatch/patchwork approach in which various famous people who seem like odd mates are thrown into an ad together. The spot makes a reference to the pandemic — “Ah, the backyard … it’s had quite a year …” — before throwing together Martha Stewart, Carl Weathers, Leslie David Baker (Stanley from “The Office”), Kyle Bush and the Travolta duo into a strange but sweet pastiche of folks engaged in yard doings, from gardening to grilling to short-game golf practice to dancing. Sadly, the writers missed an opportunity to have Weathers coach gardeners on how to use scraps to make a stew. Grade: B+ Michelob Ultra, “All-Star Cast”: Nothing is as it seems in this spot, another mishmash ad that lands a minor laugh when Don Cheadle the actor and Don Cheadle the character in the commercial face each other on the deck of a yacht. This ad feels a little like the banner ad over the actual ad phenomenon. Grade: B+
Turbotax, “Spreading Tax Expertise Across the Land”: The visuals are fine, the jingle is a little dull, but the ad is fairly effective in presenting the actual attributes offered by Turbotax. Isn’t that ultimately the point? Grade: B Bacardi, “Conga”: A slick and stylish plug for rum featuring bright colors, dancing and an update of an old hit (Leslie Grace and Meek Mill updating Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine). Celebratory and inoffensive. Presumably an algorithm could have produced this. Grade: C+
Michelob Ultra, “Happy”: Another Busch tentacle, this one is sort of a mix of sportswear slogans, Hallmark inscriptions and Us Weekly’s old “Stars, they’re just like us!” page. Serena Williams, Anthony Davis and Peyton Manning are shown off their courts and fields doing things that make them smile. Yes, football stars can also enjoy a game of darts and wearing Stetsons. “Are you happy because you win?” the voiceover asks. “Or do you win because you’re happy?” I love that the question is posed to the viewer and not the actual winners. All that said, bonus point for prominent use of A Tribe Called Quest. Grade: C+
Tide, “Jason Alexander Hoodie”: A teen’s mother urges him to wash his hoodie, which bears the
big, bald head of actor Jason Alexander. We’re then treated to the hoodie’s week of dog saliva, food smears, a buggy car wash. It’s a sight gag that just doesn’t feel weird enough to generate much of a payoff. Maybe a Cormac McCarthy hoodie would’ve played funnier? Grade: C
Frito-Lay, “’Twas the Night
Before the Super Bowl”: A ton of fuss went into this variation on the Christmas tale, with Marshawn Lynch narrating mini-skits featuring a gaggle of retired football players including three Mannings, Troy Aikman, Jerry Rice and Joe Montana, Jerome Bettis and Terry Bradshaw. This is another offering from the old binder stuffed with the familiar. A far cheaper alternative would have been a hypnosis swirl with a simple voice over. “Do you like football?” Yes. “Do you like chips?” Yes. “Go buy chips.” Already did. “Enjoy the game.” Grade: C
Stella Artois, “Heartbeat Billionaire”: Science nerds are going to break out the knives for this one in which rocker Lenny Kravitz declares: “We’re all born with 2½ billion heartbeats. That
makes you a billionaire.” For starters, there’s the argument that you don’t die because you run out of heartbeats; rather, you run out of heartbeats because you die. And it feels like some number of our family, friends and neighbors in the past year were shortchanged on heartbeats. This feels like the most old-school “Mad Men” type of spot, an idea that needed more investment at the conceptual level. Grade: C
Uber Eats, “Tonight I’ll Be Eating”: An Uber Eats paper bag at the end is the only indicator as to what is being sold by two characters from a 30-year-old “Saturday Night Live” sketch. At this point, would the Smothers Brothers have been any more dated? Grade: C
Bud Light, “Legends”: When Budweiser dropped out of the Super Bowl, I assumed that meant its Buds did, too. Clearly, I was unaware that the AnheuserBusch tentacles are like those of an octopus, able to operate independent of the creature’s thought center. Designed as a parody of a post-apocalyptic film trailer, this one begins with shocked faces staring into a filling-station
fridge confounded by the absence of Bud Light, which admittedly would be startling to behold. There’s an appearance by a Mandolorian and Post Malone, so it’s another play on the mismatch/patchwork theme, but I’m not quite sure to what end. Send it into the Sarlacc. Grade: C
Cheetos, “It Wasn’t Me”: I suppose there’s something heartening about those who go about their day-to-day unaware that time marches on. Here Ashton Kutcher accuses spouse Mila Kunis of eating all their Cheetos. Her reply, “It wasn’t me.” The ad is soundtracked by a guest appearance by reggae toaster Shaggy, singer of the hit “It Wasn’t
Me.” Remember that one? The song turns 21 this year, so it’s old enough to drink. Imagine future Cheetos offerings: A couple appears lost in the wilds of Sri Lanka, looking anxious. “Are you hungry?” he asks. “Like the wolf,” she replies. Enter Simon Le Bon. Grade: D+
Doritos, “#FlatMatthew”: This one has only been teased so far, but indications suggest a twodimensional representation of actor Matthew McConaughey in various settings. Basically, it looks to be a similar concept as the Jason Alexander hoodie ad. Maybe “Flat Matthew” will get stuck behind the wheel of a Lincoln.
But I doubt it. Grade: Incomplete
Mountain Dew, “Mountain Dew
Major Melon”: So far they’ve only released a tease to the actual Super Bowl ad. Apparently, there’s $1 million on the line for a lucky viewer who can identify how many bottles of Mountain Dew Major Melon appear in a spot featuring wrestler-turnedactor John Cena. It’s an intriguing challenge because the bottles are an easy spot due to the drink’s brightness. I nearly described it a “defense mechanism pink,” but let’s be honest, nature offers nothing that color. It’s a chemical-spill pink or the color of the sun during an apocalyptic event. Grade: Incomplete
Hellman’s, Amy Schumer ad:
The right comedian and the right random food can make for a strange and funny bit (David Letterman and candy corn). That appears to be the model for Amy Schumer’s Hellman’s mayonnaise ad. So far all we have is a teaser in which Schumer — clad in some sort of flight-attendantlike uniform — walks into a refrigerator neatly stocked with Hellman’s. The perspective shifts 180 degrees from the refrigerator looking out to her winged silhouette. So I have no idea where it’s going, but I’m intrigued. Grade: