NEW YORK (AP) – The Super Bowl ads each year offer a snapshot of the American psyche. And this year, it’s a doozy.
After a year of a pandemic of fear and isolation, a tumultuous election culminating in a Capitol riot and periodic uncertainties about whether there would even be a Super Bowl, marketers need to act carefully. The ideal: to promote your brands to a tired audience in search of comfort and escapism without crossing the limits that can arouse the interest of the spectators.
So Will Ferrell is joining GM – and Awkwafina and Kenan Thompson – in a crazy cross country race to promote electric vehicles. Amazon plays with sexual innuendo 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” to friends and coworkers again.
“Comfort is the key,” said Villanova University marketing professor Charles Taylor. “Being nervous will get attention, but you risk leaving your comfort zone at a time when people are confined to their homes and economic times are difficult for many.”
The prize for who gets the balance right? The chance to invade the psyche and talk about (virtual) watercooler of about 100 million viewers who will watch CBS’s Super Bowl LV broadcast on Sunday.
NEW WORLD ORDER
With big names like Coca, Hyundai and Kia lost this year, newbies are coming. This year’s Super Bowl will feature more than 20 first-time advertisers – more than double last year’s 8 if you exclude campaign ads, according to a count by research firm iSpot. Many are full of money thanks to changing consumption habits during the pandemic.
It is a thermometer when a brand can pay the estimated entry cost of $ 5.5 million for a 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl. This year’s class includes companies that brought us our food, allowed us to shop online and helped us work from home. Among them are the delivery services DoorDash and Uber Eats, the job site In fact, the car site Vroom, which recently made headlines Investing app Robinhood, and the computer accessories company Logitech.
Most are adopting tried and tested ad approaches. DoorDash recruits characters from Sesame Street for a dose of nostalgia. Logitech follows the path of celebrities with the endorsement of hip hop artist Little Nas X with the intention of underlining that its products such as keyboards and mice help artists and manufacturers to “defy logic”.
And in what is certainly the first time in the history of the Super Bowl, an announcement from Inspiration4, a fully civil space launch supported by SpaceX, announces a chance for viewers to join the mission. Courtesy of payment processor Shift4 Payments, whose CEO, Jared Isaacman, will lead this mission.
PANDEMIC LIFE
Some marketers aimed to change habits and ways of life during the pandemic. Tide’s ad shows a boy not wanting to wash a clean-looking sweatshirt with the face of “Seinfeld” star Jason Alexander on it. But while the sweatshirt gathers garbage and dog drool, Alexander’s face starts to frown, and only gets excited when Tide saves the day.
By suggesting that you can wear the same clothes more and wash them less, the ad encourages the use of more detergent, said Kim Whitler, professor of marketing at the University of Virginia. “They wouldn’t have served this ad if COVID hadn’t happened,” she said.
Amazon, for its part, knows that people stuck at home all year may be fantasizing about something new. Thus, the new Amazon Alexa for women takes on the voice – and the body – of actor Michael B. Johnson, much to the dismay of her unhappy husband.
Meanwhile, a Cheetos ad shows real-life couple Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher arguing over a package of Cheetos Crunch Pop Mix – to Shaggy’s “It Wasn’t Me”, showing the frayed nerves of a couple who he was stuck inside the house too long.
“This is what happens when you lock Mila and me in a house together for a year,” Kutcher tweeted about the ad.
ELECTION? WHAT ELECTION?
In stark contrast to last year’s Super Bowl, which featured campaign ads from Donald Trump and Michael Bloomberg, politics is out of sight this year. With, that is, the possible exception of the online show market Fiverr, which proved that your ad involves Four Seasons Total Landscaping.
In addition, MIA are any announcements referring to the Black Lives Matter movement, which sparked widespread protests across the country last summer. Advertisers may still be suffering from a disastrous Pepsi ad in 2017 where Kendall Jenner played a Protestant who charms the police with a cold soda. He was widely criticized for minimizing the protests and was eventually withdrawn.
Marketers who want to draw viewers’ emotions this year are offering vaguely hopeful and hopeful messages in the future.
Toyota’s vacancy is geared towards the Olympics and Paralympics, although both face possible postponement as the pandemic drags on. Her ad shows the journey of Paralympic swimmer Jessica Long, from orphan in Siberia to Olympic, ending with the phrase: “We believe there is hope and strength in all of us”.
And Anheuser-Busch’s corporate brand spot shows pre-pandemic scenes typical of people sharing a beer – kitchen workers, orchestra musicians, cubicle dwellers, strangers in an airport bar and reminds people to wait for it again.
“So when we get back, let’s remember, it’s never just about beer,” says a narration. “It is about saying that simple human truth, we need each other.”