At least 120 million Americans watch the Super Bowl Live and given that the cost of a Super Bowl ad this year was approximately $5 million (for a one-time airing), you can imagine the pressure creative directors were faced with to get their commercial exactly right. This year, the pressure was multiplied as the discussion of the ads teased online wasn’t brimming as previous years due to the string of insane political events that totally overshadowed everything else. However, a few ads still managed to break through the clutter and guarantee a long lasting impression in the audience’s memories, let’s take a look.
1- Audi Chevrolet
Audi’s ad was a statement about the gender pay gap thus adequate to the current social moment. The ad featured a girl, taking part in a kart race and her dad cheering her on while contemplating her upbringing and foreshadowing all the moments of her life where she might be treated differently because of her gender. It started with the father asking a powerful question “what do I tell my daughter?”
2- Budweiser
Budweiser’s ad tackled immigration as a theme, even though it was shot before Trump’s immigration ban. The ad received plenty of buzz as it narrated the story of the brand’s founder Adolphus Busch, who never would have established the brand if it weren’t for being accepted into another country as a welcomed citizen.
3- Mr. Clean
Mr. Clean’s Super Bowl debut was outright tantalizing and funny and it also marked Procter & Gamble’s first time airing an ad at the Super Bowl. We gotta give it up to them for their hilarious remark about how women appreciate men who clean. They also succeeded at making an animated bald man dressed in all-white look hot!
4- Kia Niro Hybrid
Kia’s 60-second spot deserves a round of applause because it offered a round of laughter. It stars Melissa McCarthy who has an uncanny gift for physical comedy and in the ad, it is on full-display. The ad sends a powerful and timely message about the state of the environment, but they chose humor as the way to convey it and they were right. What makes this ad stand out is the fact that humor might not always work when dealing with ecological calamities such as deforestation, but they somehow managed to pull it off.
5- Airbnb
Airbnb’s ad was a clear and not so subtle political message about unity. Through a series of diverse human faces, they celebrated multiculturalism and acceptance, no matter where the person comes from. The best part is that their brand was almost absent from the ad, with the exception of their tiny logo appearing at the end. Their message really was about love and accepting everyone for who they are and not judging them for where they’ve come.
The real purpose of advertising and marketing nowadays has become to reflect the real world in which we live in and not glorify it, and these 5 brands guaranteed brand recall!
