Super Bowl 59 is in the books, and congratulations to the Philadelphia Eagles on an outstanding performance. If you were in the mood for a dominating defensive performance, you had a very good evening. If you were in the mood for great advertising, well…you certainly got a LOT of ads, but not sure if they were all great. Some high points, some low points, and some decidedly weird points. Let’s break it down.

Themes
Like last year, a lot of advertisers turned to the meta approach for their spots. This is when the ad is about making the ad. Dunkin, Homes.com and UberEats all took this approach, and it can be really funny (like the way Homes.com doubled down on the “it’s the best” meme with Morgan Freeman,) or it can get a little obtuse, like the Dunkin’ ad with actor Jeremy Strong trying to get into character by immersing himself in a barrel of coffee beans. (Right?)

Facial hair was another theme in this year’s ads. (There’s a sentence I never thought I’d write.) Both Pringles and Little Caesars decided that their best angle would be to have men’s facial hair – eyebrows and mustaches – fly off for some odd reason. Some of the gags were humorous (the caterpillars chanting “we’re not worthy” to Eugene Levy’s eyebrows made me chuckle,) and I think Pringles did it with a bit more context. After all, there’s a giant mustache on every package.

A surprising few amount of spots this year from car manufacturers. Polestar showed up in the pregame show, but not as an official Super Bowl commercial. Only Jeep and Ram appeared this year, which is odd, given the history of this game and some of the iconic spots that have run. If you’re counting, we had more spots with Matthew McConaughey than with cars.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:
A few ads played it safe, and still managed to deliver decent brand messages. Orlando Bloom and Drew Barrymore did a cute tete-a-tete on European vs American holiday/vacation expressions, and it painted MSC Cruises in a similarly cute light. Homes.com played at the idea of saying they’re “the best” while their legal counsel advised them that they can’t legally say that. Uber Eats continued their “the NFL is trying to sell you food” conspiracy theory with origin stories, and it gets especially funny when Martha Stewart laughs hysterically that the Super Bowl venue is “named after a salad!”

The last couple of years, Jesus has made an appearance at the Super Bowl, but this year’s was a bit more special because he brought along a better soundtrack. Note to aspiring creative directors: having Johnny Cash sing Depeche Mode in your spot is ALWAYS a good idea. Hat tip to Jesus’ creative team. Hailee Steinfeld and Wanda Sykes teamed up for a smart PSA that made me look, er, notice, er, appreciate their, I mean ITS, value. It’s for Novartis, and it’s aimed at getting more women screened for breast cancer. And Dove scores another hit with a female empowerment spot that was punctuated by the line “let’s change the way we talk to our girls.” Nice.

While we’re mentioning some ads, we have to talk about Seal playing a, well, seal in the Mountain Dew spot. If facial hair flying off faces, and tongues flying out of mouths (more on that in a moment,) wasn’t weird enough, a seal with the face of Seal, singing a jingle to the tune of “Kiss From a Rose” was basically a 12 on the weird-o-meter. Fun? Sure. But about 50 million Americans probably had a terrifying dream about that one last night.

GRINS
First off, golf claps to Weather Tech for finally listening to their agency and doing a concept spot instead of their usual “here’s a view of our factory where we prove they’re made in America” pandering. The grannies-go-wild approach offered lots of good laughs, and then quietly made a nice plug for their spill-proof floor mats. Much more memorable than the last few years.

Google Pixel 9 really tugged at the heartstrings with their dad-and-daughter vignette disguised as a “guy turns to Gemini AI for help preparing for his job interview.” The reason this worked so well is that it contextualized the product benefits while letting us in on the backstory. Really well-conceived, and really well-produced. You almost never want to go soft-sell on Super Bowl, but Google almost always has, and almost always wins.

Liquid Death literally made me LOL with its “drinking on the job” spot. Pilots, surgeons, school bus drivers, even the cops are pounding Liquid Death, and to an awesome theme song. The company has disguised their filtered water to look like small-batch beer cans, and this is exactly why: so they can misdirect and manipulate you right into the big reveal. Good stuff. Spots end with bold type: “Don’t be scared. It’s just water.”

It just isn’t Super Bowl without a Budweiser Clydesdale spot, and this one, “a horse walks into a bar,” is by far one of their best ever. It’s great storytelling, with virtually no dialogue. Our hero is faced with a choice, has to overcome difficult challenges along the way, and somehow, some way, prevails. For decades, Budweiser hasn’t even tried to sell beer with their Super Bowl commercials…they sell this version of Americana on which we can (almost) all agree.

Hellmann’s went retro with their “When Harry Met Sally” sendup. It features Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan back in Katz’s Deli, and wouldn’t you know it? Meg has another orgasmic experience (this time it’s REAL!) thanks to a shmear of Hellmann’s mayonnaise. Targeted at Gen X? You bet. Wrapped in a bow for Gen Z? Sure, and that’s why you have Sydney Sweeney deliver the punchline. So much better than their last several years of Super Bowl spots, which were big groans for me. Oh, and Hellmann’s signs off with the apt line “It hits the spot.”

Doritos proves that when you crowdsource your advertising (through their thankfully resurrected “Crash the Super Bowl” campaign,) really good things can happen. Here, an alien ship comes to Earth and tries to take a guy’s Doritos away. He fights them off – sort of – and then, by chance, the Doritos destroy the alien ship! The alien survives, and he/she/it (?) and the guy enjoy the chips together. What’s great about Doritos is that they ALWAYS put the brand front and center, and the motivation is consistent: get your hands on some Doritos.

I think my favorite of the night (and this is a bit of a critic’s pick, I’ll admit) was the ChatGPT “dots” ad. Again, no voiceover, just graphics, and magnificent ones at that. All of it based off ChatGPT’s “dot” prompt. So it’s a little “hello world,” and a little “IYKYK.” Anyone who has used ChatGPT will recognize the dot. During the spot, the dots sync up to go and create all kinds of interesting images, symbolizing progress through time, from fire to the wheel to the steam ship, to walking on the moon, to dial up modems to now. And then it delivers the line “all progress has a starting point.” I like this most of all. It says “AI is not the be-all and end-all. We’re just getting going, and let’s see where we might go from here.” A bit of a departure for Super Bowl advertising, but a simple and clear way to illustrate the power and potential of this particular AI engine.

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GROANS

RED BULL: When I saw this spot come on, I immediately recognized the illustration style, and the classic setup. Boy penguin says to his father “I figured out how to fly!” Dad, suspicious, says “oh…really? And how exactly are we going to do that?” The boy responds that all they have to do is drink Red Bull, and they’ll be able to fly because, after all, Red Bull gives you wiiiiings. Up to this moment, this is a typical Red Bull spot. But then, the boy can’t fly, because the Red Bull he attempts to drink is frozen. (They’re penguins and it’s 40 below zero, according to Dad.) So…the product doesn’t work. The benefit is never realized. And we’re all disappointed. They try to make us think they’re in on the joke, because the voiceover says Red Bull gives you wings, “but only if you drink it.” No. No. No. Don’t do that.

SQUARESPACE: Look, I get that it’s hard to sell tech enablement as a Super Bowl spot. Squarespace is a platform that helps do-it-yourself-ers build and maintain their own websites. Last year, they tried aliens…with Martin Scorsese directing and starring in the spot. The year before that, it was an obtuse take on “the singularity” with Adam Driver. In 2022, they actually made a really GOOD spot with Zendaya, who portrayed Sally, who sold (you guessed it,) seashells by the seashore. That spot followed a simple narrative. Sally was not doing well. Then, she built a website with Squarespace, and things really took off! That’s generally how we like to portray our brands in our advertising: as aids in the hero’s cause.

This year, however, we have actor Barry Keoghan (the guy who went full frontal in Saltburn,) riding a mule through the Irish countryside, whipping laptops at people like a sedated and psychotic newspaper delivery boy. But they’re laptops! And they’re dangerous! And one smashes through the window of a pub. (Also, and even stranger, hardly anyone reacts to any of these near-death assaults.) And how, exactly, does this connect me to any understanding of their basic offering? Most Americans could hardly make out the brogue, let alone the value proposition.  

COFFEE MATE: So, let’s give props to Coffee Mate for shelling out the almost $8 million dollars and producing their first-ever Super Bowl ad! (Applause.) Aaaaand…let’s give it up for Shania Twain writing and producing a new song specifically for the commercial. Yay.

However, that song starts with the lyric “let’s go tongues.” And the young man in the ad, who has just had a taste of cold foam after adding it to his cold brew coffee (I guess?) goes into a trance, where his tongue (yes, you heard me right,) does various dances, makes heart shapes, plays the chimes, high-tongues (I just wrote that) the Coffee Mate logo, and then – are you sitting down? Jumps out of his mouth. And spins around in the air while fireworks go off, and then plunges back into the young man’s mouth as he awakes from this fantasy. Just as a reminder, we’re talking about his TONGUE!

Then the young man and his pal start chugging (question mark) the Coffee Mate foam together, as we cut to the closing shot of the line “a little foam a lotta fun” spelled out in, you guessed it, foam! I could have lived a very full life without having seen that. And hopefully, I never will again.

So…what were your favorites? Let me know in the comments.