First off, congrats to Andy Reid for winning his first NFL championship. Its well-deserved and I am very happy for him (aside: in my opinion, he deserved to be named Coach of the Year). On the flip side, I am feeling sad for my husband who proudly sat through the entire game wearing his 20-year-old 49ers sweatshirt – a diehard fan with hopes that just were not realized. At least this year. No worries, 49ers are a young team with a young coach and a bright future ahead of them!
Full disclosure, this year I did have a handful of guests that joined us for the Super Bowl party. In spite of my constant shushing throughout the commercials, the guests were a bit rowdy so I was unable to hear every spot and had to look up a few this morning to make sure they all got their due review before I chose the one that I thought was this year’s Best Super Bowl Commercial.
Here is what I think: (Feel free to disagree and debate accordingly.)
Game kicked-off with a long “Take it to the House” spot produced by the NFL. If you recall, I gave last year’s NFL spot the best commercial award. So, I was skeptical of watching what seemed to be another attempt to bring in former legends and current players of the NFL with a cute kid running across the country from stadium to stadium. That is until the spot went “live” and Chicago Bears owner Mrs. McCaskey handed a football to the kid who took it and ran into the stadium to present the referee with the game ball. Brilliant!
The first laugh-out-loud moment came with the Rocket Mortgage Jason Mamoa spot. Great use of celebrity - letting his guard down (shedding his muscles and hair!) and hysterically unexpected. I had this spot ranked as my number one until I took another look at all the spots this morning.
The second memorable spot and perhaps the best use of celebrity was the Mountain Dew “As Good as the Original” Shining spoof. Especially liked John Cranston dressed as the twin girls at the end.
Most sentimental/ inspiring for me was the Microsoft Katie Sowers “Be the One” spot. Olay and Secret should take a lesson from Microsoft on how to celebrate women. Their spots were so off base!
Honorable mention goes to Turbo Tax with the “All People are Tax People” song and leg shacking dance commercial - very funny.
Nice to see Snickers and Doritos come back to the Super Bowl with new creative spots. If only we could feed Snickers to fix the world – it would be a beautiful thing! And Lil Nas X dancing dual with Sam Elliot was entertaining even if we are all more than sick of hearing the song “Old Town Road”.
The biggest disappointment was Planters Peanuts. Great job on all the pregame hype – everyone was anticipating the spot. But Mr. Peanut dies so Baby Nut can be born, huh? We were all hoping for a more clever reason for his death. Like maybe Mr. Peanut smashed to the ground and became peanut butter? Now, that would have been interesting.
Google’s Loretta spot got a lot of attention. But in the words of one of my guests – that was just sad. And who wants to be sad during the Super Bowl!
And on that note, I am purposely not going to mention any of the political ads.
The second half spots were a bit lackluster. I did like the NFL Anquan Boldin
“Inspire Change” and Kia spot with Josh Jacobs but again neither spot meets my criteria for BEST commercial.
Toward the end of the game, we saw one of the best spots of the day. Bill Murray reliving his Groundhog Day role with a “different” twist. I liked that Super Bowl Sunday was on Groundhog Day this year. And loved his positive outlook and new adventures with the adorable groundhog. Very funny, great celebrity placement and well-timed – nice job Jeep.
After much discussion and further review, I have to give the BEST Super Bowl Commercial honor’s this year to …. (drumroll…)
Hyundai “Smaht Pahk” spot with John Krasinski, Rachel Dratch, Chris Evans and Boston favorite Big Papi Ortiz. It was overall amusing, with the Boston accents and attitude (wicked smart) and to me, this commercial did the best job of featuring the product (Smart Parking Assist) while making us all laugh-out-loud.
Thanks, NFL, for another great year of football. Supposedly the Groundhog did not see his shadow, so here’s to an early spring!
- Suzanne Gunther – CleverShove Marketing