Super Bowl Ads – A Creative Review

It was Super Bowl season!!! And though we can’t say we are big football fans (sorry) we were all waiting for it like Christmas! Why you might ask? Well because this highly-anticipated annual event brings about its own arena of Advertising that creates a ripple effect throughout the rest of the world. It is so massive now that brands are even releasing teaser ads before the actual ones launch during the game!

With the themes of “empowerment” and “innovation” present at the very core of everyday conversations, these topics have been a huge part of the story telling in this year’s Super Bowl ads. And as always, we have seen agencies coming up with their A game to disrupt the noise and to truly make a difference.

Excited? We are too! Let us take you through our very own selection of Super Bowl ad favourites. And guess what? You’ll find ALL the themes we approached in our article: 2018 – The Shift in Paradigm

1.Women Empowerment:

The celebration of women capabilities was strong this year, after all the #Metoo campaigns of 2018, and hundreds of years of efforts, we are celebrating all the things women CAN do even though they kept hearing they couldn’t – and of course, we LOVE that theme. And when our ambassadors become Serena Williams (for Bumble) and Antoinette “Toni” Harris (for Toyota), well we can only say YES!

2. Celebrating Differences

Acceptance and recognition of everybody, no matter our shape or colour has been a real trend in the ad industry over the last decade, but it has really been booming in the last 2 years. With their Super Bowl ads, Microsoft and Coca-Cola have brought us yet another example of how strong those story lines can be, especially when they are anchored in emotion. To say we haven’t been shedding a tear while watching the Microsoft ad would be a lie – we just love it when brands decide to use their power of communication to shine some light on forgotten issues.

3. We Are All Heroes

Oh! didn’t Kia hit the nail on the head this year? They decided to go against the current. No superstar feature just a story of authenticity in which EVERY consumer can see itself with pride and envy. Aren’t we all these unknown heroes? Working hard? Wanting to be proud of our work and achievements? Sending a piece of ourselves out there in the universe – hoping to be remembered? From the teaser to the ad, the tone, the light, the story – everything makes this an ad to be remembered.

4. Surfing On Trends

Have you heard of ASMR? It stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) which is essentially a tingling brain sensation brought on by sound triggers. If you haven’t you should! This phenomenon generates Youtube videos with over 24 million views and a 122% increase in January this year in the search for such videos in the UK alone according to the Evening Standard (full article here). One thing is for sure, Michelob has heard of it and decided to ride on the trend by bringing us a surprisingly sensorial ad playing on sound and silence – a real breath of fresh air in our overly saturated environment. Do you start to get the fascination for ASMR?

5. Back To The Future

There was a time when Pepsi was trying to fit in the advertising standards established by Coke – and then, for our greatest pleasure, they understood that their message should definitely be that they were DIFFERENT! This was the start of an advertising heaven that has gotten us all completely smitten with Pepsi finding thousands of creative ways to establish their differentiation. This year was no different as they embarked on a war against the popular restaurant answer “I’ll have a coke. – “we only have pepsi, is this okay?” Talk about shifting behaviour, done so elegantly and full of humour – this ad is definitely a winner!

For all the ad junkies like us, it will look familiar from this ad from the Pepsi archives – a masterpiece in terms of communication:

6. Humour When You Have Us!

Great ad making and fabulous marketing is all about the brand’s (and agency’s) ability to identify pain points and have consumers identifying with the situations presented to them. This is exactly what Hyundai did and with SO MUCH humour! Talk about awkward situations! This ad is fabulous, we could watch it on repeat and still laugh about it, yet, it ticks all the boxes of an effective commercial message which is what all ads should aim for. In the end, advertising is the art of creativity with a commercial purpose. Isn’t it?