NEW YORK (AP) – Super Bowl ads offer a snapshot of the American psyche every year. And this year, it’s a doozy.
After a year of fear and pandemic isolation, a tumultuous election ended by a Capitol revolt and periodic uncertainties about the existence of a Super Bowl, traders must step carefully. Ideally: promote your brands to a tired audience looking for comfort and escape without crossing lines that could trigger viewers.
So Will Ferrell teams up with GM – and Awkwafina and Kenan Thompson – on a cross country line to promote electric vehicles. Amazon plays with sexual innuendos when a woman is distracted by her new assistant Alexa, who looks like actor Michael B. Jordan. And Anheuser-Busch offers a hopeful look at a time when we can say “let’s have a beer” again to friends and co-workers.
“Comfort is key,” said Charles Taylor, a marketing professor at Villanova University. “Being nervous will attract attention, but it risks getting out of the comfort zone at a time when people have been sheltered in their homes, and economic times are difficult for many.”
The prize for those who get the balance right? The chance to get into the psyche and (virtual) watercooler talk about about 100 million viewers who will watch the CBS show of Super Bowl LV on Sunday.
THE NEW WORLD ORDER
With big names such as Coca-Cola, Hyundai and Kia, this year, newcomers are in a hurry to enter. This year’s Super Bowl will feature more than 20 advertisers for the first time – more than double 8 from last year if you exclude ads from the campaign to an iSpot research firm account. Many are full of money due to changing consumer habits during the pandemic.
It’s a problem when a brand can afford the estimated $ 5.5 million entry fee for a 30-second spot during the Super Bowl. This year’s class includes companies that brought us food, let us shop online, and helped us work from home. These include DoorDash and Uber Eats delivery services, indeed the Vroom car site, the recent title investment application Robinhood and computer accessories company Logitech.
Most take tried and true advertising approaches. DoorDash is recruiting Sesame Street characters for a dose of nostalgia. Logitech is following in the footsteps of celebrities with the support of hip hop artist Little Nas X, meant to emphasize that its products, such as keyboards and mice, help artists and producers “defy logic”.
And in what is certainly a premiere in Super Bowl history, an announcement for Inspiration4, a space launch fully supported by SpaceX, offers a chance for viewers to join the mission. The kindness of the Shift4 Payments payment processor, whose CEO, Jared Isaacman, will command this mission.
PANDEMIC LIFE
Some marketers have aimed to change the habits and ways we live during the pandemic. Tide’s ad depicts a boy who does not want to wash a clean-looking sweatshirt with the face of “Seinfeld” star, Jason Alexander. But as the sweatshirt collects garbage and the dog falls, Alexander’s face begins to frown and rise only when Tide saves the day.
Suggesting that you may wear the same clothes more and wash them less, the ad encourages more use of detergents, said Kim Whitler, a professor of marketing at the University of Virginia. “It would not have aired this announcement if COVID had not happened,” she said
Meanwhile, Amazon knows that people stuck at home all year could fantasize about something new. So, a woman’s new Amazon Alexa takes over the voice – and body – of actor Michael B. Johnson, to the dismay of her unhappy husband.
Meanwhile, an ad from Cheetos shows the real-life married couple, Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher, battling a bag of Cheetos Crunch Pop Mix – in Shaggy’s “It wasn’t me” tone, highlighting the torn nerves of a couple who got stuck inside. too long.
“That’s what happens when you lock Mila and I in a house together for a year,” Kutcher wrote on Twitter about the announcement.
CHOICE? WHAT CHOICE?
In stark contrast to last year’s Super Bowl, which featured campaign ads from both Donald Trump and Michael Bloomberg, the policy is not visible this year. With, that is, the possible exception of the online concert market Fiverr, which teased that its announcement involves the total arrangement of the four seasons..
Also, MIA are any announcements regarding the Black Lives Matter movement, which provoked widespread protests across the country last summer. Advertisers may still think of a disastrous Pepsi ad from 2017 in which Kendall Jenner played a protester who charms the police with a frosty siphon. It took a serious mistake to minimize the protests and it was finally pulled.
Marketers who want to attract the emotions of viewers this year offer vaguely hopeful messages, looking forward to the future.
Toyota is watching the Olympic and Paralympic Games, although both are facing possible postponements again as the pandemic continues. His announcement features Paralympic swimmer Jessica Long’s journey from orphanage in Siberia to Olympia, ending with the line “We believe there is hope and strength in all of us.”
And the Anheuser-Busch spot features typical pre-pandemic scenes of people sharing a beer – kitchen workers, orchestra, cabin dwellers, strangers at an airport bar, and reminds people to wait for that again.
“So, when we come back, let’s remember, it’s never about beer,” says a voiceover. “It’s about saying that the simple human truth is that we need each other.”