NEW YORK (AP) – Super Bowl commercials offer a snapshot of the American psyche each year. And this year it’s a doozy.
After a year of anxiety and isolation from the pandemic, a turbulent election ended by a riot at the Capitol, and periodic uncertainty as to whether there will even be a Super Bowl, marketers must tread carefully. Ideally: market their brands to a weary audience looking for comfort and escape without crossing any lines that could cause viewers.
So Will Ferrell is working with GM – and Awkwafina and Kenan Thompson – on a crazy cross-country race to promote electric vehicles. Amazon toys with sexual insinuations when a woman is distracted by her new Alexa assistant who looks like actor Michael B. Jordan. And Anheuser-Busch offers a hopeful look at a time when we can once again tell friends and colleagues ‘let’s drink’.
“Comfort is the key,” said Charles Taylor, a professor of marketing at Villanova University. “Being eddy is going to attract attention, but it runs the risk of getting out of the comfort zone at a time when people are being raised in their homes and economic times are tough for many.”
The price for those who get the balance right? The chance to break into the psyche and (virtual) water cooler speaks of about 100 million viewers who will watch the CBS broadcast of Super Bowl LV on Sunday.
NEW WORLD ORDER
With big names like Coke, Hyundai and Kia haunting it this year, newcomers are rushing in. This year’s Super Bowl will feature more than twenty top advertisers – more than double last year’s 8 if you do not exclude campaign ads. to a score by the research firm iSpot. Many are full of cash due to changing consumer habits during the pandemic.
It’s a smash hit when a brand can afford the cost of access to $ 5.5 million for a 30-second spot during the Super Bowl. This year’s class includes the companies that brought us food, made us buy online, and helped us work from home. Among them are delivery services DoorDash and Uber Eats, the workshop Indeed, the car site Vroom, the recent headline investment program Robinhood, and the computer accessories company Logitech.
Most follow proven advertising approaches. DoorDash recruits Sesame Street characters for a dose of nostalgia. Logitech follows the fame of celebrities with hip hop artist Little Nas X, which aims to emphasize that products such as keyboards and mice help artists and manufacturers ‘defy logic’.
And in what is certainly a first in Super Bowl history, an advertisement for Inspiration4, an overall spatial launch of SpaceX, offers viewers a chance to take part in the mission. Thanks to payment processor Shift4 Payments, whose CEO, Jared Isaacman, will give the order.
PANDEMIC LIFE
Some marketers were focused on the changing habits and way of life during the pandemic. Tide’s ad shows that a boy does not want to wash a clean sweater with the face of “Seinfeld” star Jason Alexander. But as the sweater gathers garbage and drool from dogs, Alexander’s face begins to shake, and it only pulls up as Tide saves the day.
By suggesting that you may be wearing the same clothes more and being less, the ad encourages more use of cleaning products, said Kim Whitler, a professor of marketing at the University of Virginia. “They would not have offered this ad if COVID had not happened,” she said.
Amazon, meanwhile, knows that people who sit at home all year can fantasize about something new. The new Amazon Alexa of a woman thus takes on the voice – and body – of actor Michael B. Johnson, to the dismay of her unhappy husband.
Meanwhile, a Cheetos ad shows the real couple Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher wrestling over a bag of Cheetos Crunch Pop Mix – to the tune of Shaggy’s “It Wasn’t Me”, which calms the weakened nerves of a couple inside -in stuck, depict. too long.
“This is what happens when you lock Mila and I in a house for a year,” Kutcher tweeted about the ad.
ELECTION? WHICH ELECTION?
In stark contrast to last year’s Super Bowl, which featured campaign ads from both Donald Trump and Michael Bloomberg, politics are out of sight this year. In other words, the possible exception of the online concert market Fiverr, which teased that the ad involved Four Seasons Total Landscaping..
MIA is also advertising referring to the Black Lives Matter movement, which has sparked major protests across the country this past summer. Advertisers can still watch from a disastrous 2017 Pepsi ad in which Kendall Jenner played a protester who charmed the police with an icy soft drink. It needed a serious exfoliation to minimize protest marches and was eventually pulled.
Marketers who want to harness the viewers’ emotions this year offer vaguely hopeful messages with a view to the future.
Toyota’s place looks ahead to the Olympics and Paralympics, although both could face potential delays again as the pandemic continues. The ad shows Paralympic swimmer Jessica Long’s journey from being in Siberia to Olympian, and ends with the line: “We believe there is hope and power in all of us.”
And Anheuser-Busch’s corporate brand spot shows typical pre-pandemic scenes of people sharing a beer – kitchen workers, orchestra players, hockey fans, strangers at an airport bar and reminds people to look forward to it again.
“So let’s remember that it’s never just about the beer when we’re back,” reads a voice story. “It’s about telling the simple human truth, we need each other.”