Like millions of viewers who watch the big game year after year, we at FiveThirtyEight LOVE the Super Bowl commercials. We love them so much, in fact, that we wanted to know everything about them … by analyzing and categorizing them, of course. We investigated the defining characteristics of a Super Bowl ad and then grouped the commercials based on the criteria they shared – and let me say, we found some really strange groups of commercials.
We watched 233 ads for the top 10 brands that showed the most across all 21 Super Bowls this century, according to superbowl-ads.com.1class = “footnote”> While watching, we evaluated the ads using seven specific criteria, marking each location as “yes” or “no” for each:
Is the ad playful, silly, strange or silly? Funny commercials (or those trying to be funny) are a clear “yes” here. Anything serious or dramatic is a “no”.
Can you tell what is being announced in the first 10 seconds of the commercial? If you can see the product or brand on the screen, it counts.
Did the commercial have a patriotic appeal, clear or subtle, or did it include American images? Any glimpse of an American flag or the words “America” or “United States” counted, as did references to the armed forces, manufacturing and agriculture.
If we saw a celebrity that we recognized, we checked this one out.
Have we seen violence, threats of violence, injuries, fights or firearms? Any mention of death or hokey injuries also counts here.
Did an animal – real or computer generated – appear at some point in the ad? Even the appearances of a painting counted.
We count all subtle or open suggestions of sex, sexuality, sex appeal or nudity.
Seeing which commercials matched any of these categories was interesting in itself – like how many Bud Light commercials, especially in the early 2000s, told particularly obscene jokes. But we found some unique, bizarre and even totally disturbing commercials when we looked at ads that appeared in several categories, especially criteria that you would think would not fit in a single ad.
These ads are probably not what you think first when it comes to Super Bowl commercials. They present danger, violence or injury, but not as the joke of a joke. This cluster is home to some real handlestwoclass = “footnote”> and some attempts at inspiring unity.3class = “footnote”>
An ecommerce ad from 2001 stood out in that category for me, though, because it was so odd out of context. This commercial serves as the end of an exciting western – we see a chimpanzee riding through an abandoned ghost town of failed businesses. This tension grows with a sock puppet factory being violently destroyed by a wrecking ball while a discarded doll falls at the feet of our protagonist. The chimpanzee cries with the devastation he just witnessed, and the screen goes black – only the words “invest wisely” remain. E-Trade was making fun of all the dot-coms that went bankrupt during the past year, including Pets.com – there are some clear references to Pets.com’s 2000 Super Bowl commercial, in which your sock puppet mascot sings a karaoke bad version of Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now”.4class = “footnote”> This e-commerce ad was well received at the time, but 20 years later it struck me as deeply sad.
The 12 ads in this group combined patriotic symbolism with celebrity endorsement.5class = “footnote”> There was a very wide range of how openly political these commercials became – from Bob Dylan singing about images of soldiers reuniting with their families to Carlos Mencia teaching immigrants how to attack “American” women in a commercial that reaches levels of insensitivity far beyond uncomfortable.
But the group’s most foolish commercial was a 2001 Pepsi ad that featured former Republican Senator Bob Dole talking about a large bottle of Pepsi as if it were Viagra while walking on the beach, hitting women and taking a somersault back.6class = “footnote”> This commercial was a parody of a 1998 ad campaign that Dole did with Viagra, and still features a small role played by Eric Stonestreet – now an award-winning actor known for his role as Cameron Tucker in “Modern Family . “
This category was really the most disturbing of the group for me, especially considering how many commercials met the criteria. There was a wide range of approaches in Like advertisers combined these categories, although some were more disturbing than others. On the one hand, there are ads that sell sex while an animal is in one of the photos – Bob Dole Pepsi’s ad shows him walking the beach with his dog and a Budweiser ad showing the theft of some crabs 7class = “footnote”> a beer cooler makes a point of sneaking into frames of women in bikinis. These ads sell sex and these ads have animals, but they are not fundamentally interconnected.
At the other end of the spectrum, however, are Bud Light ads that a talking chimpanzee hits a woman and a hawk brings a woman’s bra back to her handler after attacking a city block in search of beer. The only thing more disturbing than watching these bizarre commercials is realizing that an entire boardroom has endorsed these concepts for what would likely be a multimillion dollar ad. The commercials in this cluster really cover the entire spectrum, so watch at your own risk.
These three groupings contained some dramatic, funny and strange Super Bowl commercials. Explore all 243 Super Bowl commercials we’ve seen below and filter to find your own ad groups.