What Makes Super Bowl Commercials Good?

I love to watch the Super Bowl to see the two best football teams battling for the ultimate prize the NFL has the offer.  Like many viewers, I am also interested to see what the advertisers have up their sleeves for the infamous Super Bowl commercials.  Being the marketing and advertising geek that I am, I love watching the best advertising agencies in the world battling for Super Bowl commercial dominance (pun intended).

This year’s Super Bowl commercials were outstanding. A few, in my view, rose to the top.  For me, the best commercials were the following:

• Doritos – Ultrasound                                                 https://youtu.be/vH2LsFcWOFY Doritos has consistently had excellent Super Bowl ads, but this one is really clever and funny.  The commercial shows parents viewing their unborn baby’s ultrasound. As the dad waves Doritos chips in front of the screen, the baby’s image moves around wildly, following the chips, until the baby accidentally delivers itself in pursuit of Doritos. It’s especially amusing for me, a father of five children.  Although most of the Super Bowl commercials appealed to millennials, this one appealed to an older audience.  For one who has seen several ultrasounds in my lifetime, I could relate to the Dad-to-be.  The first time you see an ultrasound, it’s surreal and exciting like watching television for the first time.  When the baby moves around during an ultrasound, it’s amazing to watch.  Having the Dad-to-be taking that experience to another level with a bag of Doritos is what made this commercial very funny to me.

• Mountain Dew Kickstart – PuppyMonkeyBaby                       https://youtu.be/ql7uY36-LwA This commercial probably received the largest outcry of “that was weird” of all the 2016 Super Bowl commercials. In my opinion, however, the ad was brilliant. The ad agency combined three cute things – a puppy, a monkey and a baby with three things Mountain Dew wants you to associate and remember – dew, juice and caffeine.  In the commercial, a PuppyMonkeyBaby hybrid walks through a secret door with a bucked of iced Mountain Dew and repeats “puppy” “monkey” “baby” over and over while handing the guys cans of Mountain Dew. After the three guys take their sip of Kickstart, they start dancing and following PuppyMonkeyBaby down the apartment hallway. The ad weirdly but hilariously indicates that combining three things into one – such as PuppyMonkeyBaby or Kickstart’s ingredients of “dew, juice, and caffeine”- is what consumers want.

• Heinz – Weiner Stampede                                                    https://youtu.be/aNN9nL2vppM Heinz’s clever ad featured a bunch of dachshunds in hot dog costumes – little “hot dogs” – running across a field to their owners, who were dressed as Heinz ketchup and mustard bottles, to Harry Nilsson’s song “Without You.”  As the  dogs leapt into their owners’ arms and licked their faces, a background narrator quips “It’s hard to resist great taste.” Catchy and adorable, the ad already has 6 and a half million views on YouTube.

• Honda Ridgeline – A New Truck To Love                        https://youtu.be/kTaCT8ZmdJA Honda recently released a new Ridgeline truck featuring the first ever truck bed audio system. To promote it, the company introduced a commercial where a rancher drops off sheep from his Ridgeline truck while playing Queen’s “Somebody to Love” song. As the truck drives away, one of the sheep begins to sing the song acapella with a whole chorus of the other sheep joining in. The ad resonated with me and fellow baby boomers who grew up with Queen’s music, igniting feelings of nostalgia. Old and young, human and sheep, everyone should enjoy a Ridgeline, according to Honda.

• Wix.com – The Power of Wix (Kung Fu Panda 3)            https://youtu.be/7jIA3eFtSOM This commercial accomplished several things at the same time. It tells the story of what needs to be done to drive more traffic to Li Shan’s restaurant “Ping’s Noodles.”  Po, the panda character from Kung Fu Panda, suggests a big commercial where there are reenactments of successful past Super Bowl commercials via Kung Fu Panda characters. Master Shifu who is Po’s teacher of Kung Fu in the movie comments that commercials are great, but you need a great website first, the Power of Wix.  Wix.com is an online website building tool.  This commercial successfully ties together humor poking fun at Super Bowl commercials while promoting Wix.com and Kung Fu Panda 3.

• Snickers – Marilyn                                                                      https://youtu.be/WhfntLl6xx0 Snickers ads over the past couple of years have cleverly superimposed various irritable characters in different situations, including vintage television shows.  The solution to irritability is to eat a Snickers, because you get cranky when you are hungry.  Who can forget Betty White and Abe Vigoda playing football a few Super Bowls ago?  Or Danny Trejo and Steve Buscemi playing Marcia and Jan Brady from the Brady Bunch?  This year’s Snickers Super Bowl commercial was equally as clever.  A cranky Marilyn Monroe played by Willem Dafoe is getting ready to shoot the infamous subway grate scene from “The Seven Year Itch.” After eating a Snickers bar, Defoe magically transforms into Marilyn Monroe, losing the irritability.  The cameo with Eugene Levy operating the fan under the subway grate had an awesome tag line “This scene will never make the cut.”

What do all of these ads have in common?  Excellent writing, cinematography, special effects, editing, and music working perfectly together.  The commercials are memorable because they are clever and funny.  While some might suggest that PuppyMonkeyBaby was too weird and people didn’t like it, I disagree.  That commercial alone has had over 21.7 million views on YouTube and people are still taking about it.  Successful Super Bowl commercials live much longer than their time on the Super Bowl.  People like me watched the Super Bowl, then went to YouTube to watch the commercials we liked again and shared them with family, friends and colleagues.  Making a commercial go viral is the goal and successful commercials continue to garner views months after their television release. Congratulations to the brands and advertising agencies for another successful year of great commercials.

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