20/20
The Actionists 3rd Annual Big Game Ad Review
Lee:
It’s everyone’s favorite time of the year. No, not the Super Bowl. It’s Lee and Pio’s Annual Big Game Ad Review.
So, Pio, your favorite sport is the Super Bowl, and I know you’re glued to your TV at your home in Spain.
Pio:
Riveted to the point of boredom. Nope - it’s flooding here in Marbella, so my eyes are firmly scouting for any water leaks. Yes, very glamorous life here in the south of Spain!
Lee:
How is it that you moved across the world only to have the same roofing leaks you had in LA?
Roofs and internet service don’t agree with you. I digress. So, what did you think of the commercials? Any favorites?
Pio:
Actually, I thought this year’s showing was uniformly awful across the board–with perhaps one or two exceptions. It seems to get exponentially worse each year for me, Lee. I’m not sure whether that’s because of clients, or agencies, or both, but..ooof.
But I really don't want to get into the best/worst list. The major media outlets already do that quite well. It’d be great for us to bring a different spin on this.
We’ve talked so much about building brands that actually build business, and I think that’d be a really interesting lens to look at this work from. What do you think?
Lee:
Works for me. You go first. I can tell your critical self is raring to go!
Pio:
Well, I just feel (and have felt this for the longest) that today’s brands are just absolutely lost, both in terms of using the Super Bowl as a platform for launching new products in truly culturally exciting ways or tapping into culture to build a relevant POV for their brands (although there are some exceptions for me on this front that we’ll get into).
Lee:
I really think you’re being unnecessarily harsh. I don't know if they're all extremely bad in the sense that they won't deliver results. Yes, some ads are just awful (Svedka - for the love of God, please stop advertising). But while some ads weren’t what you and I consider great, it was effective.
Ads like the Xfinity/Jurassic Park effectively communicate the benefits and were really enjoyable, right? It was a lot of fun to see the actors all return as their digitized, younger selves.
There are ads that go out there and do exactly what they need to do.
Pio:
Fair enough. There certainly were ads that communicated the benefits well but they just didn't get to a Super Bowl status level. The work has really been dumbed down to gags and celebrities..
In my client days, I wouldn't have greenlit any of these really–or at least not without significant adjustments.
Lee:
Yes, I actually heard the greatest Super Bowl ads of all time are the ones on your agency's cutting room floor.
Pio:
Haha. Just hear me out though.
I thought there were probably two buckets of work: brands that are lost and don’t know what to say in order to (re)gain momentum, and then-to a lesser extent–brands that are truly beginning to find a differentiating voice and POV in culture.
Lee:
Let’s start with the lost brand bucket.
Pio:
There were probably two brands that best exemplified this.
Budweiser and Bud Light are the first ones up. You’re the beer drinker, Lee, so do weigh in.
For a company desperately trying to revive their business, the work felt unsurprising and incredibly lazy.
The Budweiser brand, like Coca Cola, is all about Americana–that’s its rightful DNA. It’s about the goodness of America and values of country, family, hard work and friendship. And if ever there was a time to remind people why Budweiser is The King of Beers, it should have been at the Super Bowl during these dystopian times.
Instead, it’s become the ‘I Bought a Zoo’ brand - colts, horses, eagles, good lord–all to win the AdMeter (a horribly corrupt metric, btw).
The work needed to entertain, for sure, but it also desperately needed to reset how consumers view Budweiser–and, especially, how Budweiser could positively halo the badly damaged Bud Light brand. In my opinion it just didn't. Enough with the barnyard animals.
And then Bud Light–attempting to regain their core Middle America male audience through an old gag and three highly paid, but underused, celebrities. It wasn’t even funny. A big miss!
Lee:
Shockingly, I don't agree. I mean I agree they missed–but I don’t think they're being lazy.
Bud got into so much trouble a few years ago, and their market share has tumbled. I understand what they're trying to do strategically. They lost their base and have to get them back. That's a good business objective. But how you do it is just as important as the strategy itself.
They used to be for all of America but now it feels like their positioning is the beer for MAGA.
Just look at the casting for both Budweiser and Bud Light, it's almost all Caucasian. Lynyrd Skynyrd as one of the sound tracks (and I like Free Bird). It's so white, it's like they’re admitting we're going to be the official beer sponsor of MAGA.
And that's what's killing me right now with Budweiser. They were the masters of advertising and stood for all America, so it’s hard to see it going down this route.
Pio:
That's a really interesting point, I wonder if that was the thinking. I can certainly imagine them being very risk averse after the Bud Light fiasco.
Ok, so Pepsi Max was sadly another one for me.
I did think, coming from Coke myself, that the ad opening was clever and a nice jiu jitsu move - using one of your competitor’s most recognizable equities against them (Coke Polar Bears switching to Pepsi during a blind taste test) but it just went downhill executionally for me from there.
But the bigger issue I have is that it is time for Pepsi to define itself to a younger generation on its own terms, not within the context of their competitor in a category that is struggling.
Lee:
Yeah. Agree. Less about the execution itself, but the strategy. Pepsi stands for _____. I’d love to see Pepsi find itself and its voice again.
Let’s get into brands that had something to say, but did it ineffectively.
Pio:
This comprised the bulk of the Super Bowl work for me–which was essentially taking a product proposition and then randomly slapping a celebrity on the face of it to justify being on the Super Bowl.
The most egregious ones for me were the medical ads, like Ro with Serena Williams , which came across like a filmed brochure from the doctor’s office, or the godawful one with Sofia Vergara and Octavia Spencer for Boehringer and kidney health.
InstaCart was another one–marketing banana freshness (!) with celebs whose ¨freshness¨ is long gone (Ben Stiller). Puzzling strategic choices for the business.
It’s like some product manager’s dream–just take our core selling point and make it palatable with a celeb.
The real trick for me is to take the core product prop and then ladder it into the brand DNA, and hopefully, executionally tap into culture or consumer insight to give the brand relevance.
Lee:
Explain yourself young man. Or maybe not so young.
Pio:
Well, what if Ritz had taken its ¨salty¨ proposition and made it about having a ¨salty¨ attitude in life, then tapped into the right celebrity, cultural, or consumer insight to propel it forward? It’s almost best practice in CPG to do this.
Lee:
Okay, but Pio did you like anything?
Pio:
Well I thought Rocket Mortgage had a great message, and I think its marketing has the right intent–taking a very dry category of mortgages and homes and juxtaposing the category against a very salient cultural issue of alienation from each other today.
ICE and MAGA weren't mentioned, but that’s the lens through which I viewed their message. Very good and the second Super Bowl in a row that they’ve done this – so kudos.
The execution itself was so-so. I hate Lady Gaga, and I felt the work was a bit mawkish, but that’s very subjective.
Lee:
I really liked the Rocket ad, and I thought the execution was effective. Come on, Pio – who hates Lady Gaga? I thought the use of Lady Gaga and the message in the end will probably be very strong. (Hats off to Jonathan Mildenhall, Peter Giorgi and Zach Foster for being brave when many brands have shied away from anything remotely controversial.)
Two other brands that know their voice, know who they are, and are owning it: Dunkin’ and Lay’s. First Dunkin’, which at my Super Bowl party was the fan favorite. It sticks with its New England roots and comedic presence by going all in on 80’s and 90’s nostalgia. I mean, any Gen X child is giddy to see Sam, George, Joey, Rachel, Urkel back – even if it was an old spoof on Good Will Hunting.
Lastly, there is Lay’s, a brand that has really found its voice and has delivered on both a strong product and brand positioning. It’s not easy to weave your way through paying off brand and product, be functional and emotional, rally your consumers and your farmers at the same time, so a big shoutout to the team at Lay’s. Another brand, like Rocket, that for two years at the Super Bowl has known its own voice and, in my humble opinion, won the Super Bowl.
Pio:
Didn't get Dunkin’, I must admit, but have really enjoyed their Super Bowl work. Ben Affleck is a Bostonian and a huge Dunkin’ fan, so at least there’s an authenticity to the work and use of celebrity. I was going to bring up Lay’s too. I loved the flip they did–to show not just the product but the people behind the potatoes making the chips, and giving it that American feel. Executionally, it got a bit mawkish–the music let it down a bit–a fine line between emotional and sentimentality, but I do like where they’re going.
Lee:
You are a tough man to please. Someone needs to go into your chest and find some heartstrings to play.
Pio:
Ha. The bigger point here is while so many advertisers swung and missed at the Super Bowl, Rocket and Lay’s did it right. It’s not easy to do great work, as we saw at the Super Bowl. But if you know why you’re advertising (the business problem to solve), what you stand for (the brand) and what you want to say (the value prop), and then enter a cultural conversation, you can be successful. Not easy, but start with the right equation and you’ll give yourself a good chance for success.
Lee:
Pio, it took an entire blog for you to say something actionable! Thank you to anyone who read through all of that.
And that’s a wrap for this year's Annual Big Game Ad Review.
