Stuart Elliott: What the "L" Happened to Super Bowl 50 Advertising?

It39s rarely a promising sign when the Ad Bowl inside the Super Bowl features prosaic brands such as Advil Dollar Shave Club Persil ProClean detergent Schick Hydro and three count 39em three prescription drugs treating opiodinduced constipation toenail fungus and irritable bowel syndrome with diarrheaamp160Though it39s the biggest feelgood day of the year Madison Avenue tried hard to bring viewers down not only with those commercials but also with spots with strange offputting and downright weird characters and premises Several of them were centered on infants a creature in a commercial for Mountain Dew Kickstart called a Puppymonkeybaby below which Gawker dubbed quota horrorhallucination of brand awarenessquot and a series devoted to the phenomenon of quotSuper Bowl babiesquot kids born nine months after a game to parents who live in the city of the winning teamIf those weren39t sufficiently mindbending how about a commercial for the Toyota Prius that evoked the OJ Simpson Bronco chase as it celebrated four Chicago bank robbers as they made an epic getaway Nothing says good times like a crime spree in a city wracked with violence Toyota was so possessed the plot continued with commercials that ran during the postgame showBudweiser passed this time around on its heartwarming Clydesdales replacing them with a tough assertive paean to Bud39s status as a microbrew The boasting was interspersed with a crack at folks who like their beer with orange slices the words quotNot a fruit cupquot appeared on screen to mock them That was strange because the Bud parent AnheuserBusch InBev also ran a commercial for another beer brand Shock Top with a character that is a talking orange sliceAlso I39m not crazy about anyone who uses the words quotfruitquot quotfruityquot or quotsissyquot in ads for products aimed at men It39s like a dog whistle signaling that the brand is only for the manly not for youknowwho On the other side of that ledger there were two great commercials with LGBT shoutouts for Axe and the labeldefying Mini Cooper Clubman below plus one for Expedia appearing in the New York market rather than nationallyAnother sign that marketers and agencies were pretty much stumped this year in terms of creative approaches was their reliance on two of the most popular tropes of Super Bowl advertising celebrities more than 40 by some estimates if you tally oncamera sightings and voiceover work and animals particularly ones that talked or sang So in demand were stars for Super Bowl 50 that some did double and even triple duty Marilyn Monroe was in spots for Snickers and Jeep Paul Rudd turned up in spots for Bud Light and Coke minicans and Jeff Goldblum appeared in ads for Apartmentscom the movie quotIndependence Day Resurgencequot and again JeepSome of the celeb campaigns scored Two highclass British actors Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren were showcased to fine advantage in respectively a commercial for TurboTax and Budweiser39s efforts to fight drunk driving Other effective performances were turned in by Willem Dafoe for Snickers Drake for TMobile Goldblum warbling new lyrics to the theme song from quotThe Jeffersonsquot in the Apartmentscom spot below and Christopher Walken for KiaAnd quotCommanderquot a warmly emotional commercial for the Audi R8 about a retired American astronaut fearing he39d been put out to pasture was improved immeasurably by the use of the late David Bowie39s song quotStarmanquot on the soundtrackOthers were duds among them a messy spot for Amazon Echo that was stuffed with too many stars and a spot for TMobile in which Steve Harvey joked three times about his mistake in announcing the winner of the Miss Universe pageant We get it Steve we get it and we still aren39t sure you should capitalize on such a boneheaded errorIf for nothing else the Super Bowl 50 ad game may be remembered for its circleoflife opening and closing moments The first commercial for Michelob Ultra showed athletes breathing in and out while the last commercial for SunTrust had the actor Gary Sinese urging viewers to quothold your breathquotOh well better luck next year at Super Bowl LIThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated bloggers

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Stuart Elliott: What the "L" Happened to Super Bowl 50 Advertising?

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