Super Bowl 58 Ads: Preston Spire’s three subjectively supercharged on-air reviews
With three of our creative leaders asked to do TV interviews as Big Game ad experts on WCCO, Kare 11 and Fox 9, we gave our take on this year’s batch of ads. CDs, Melissa Tresidder and Charlie Tournat and CCO, Chris Preston used the Preston Spire filter of “Supercharging the Good so brands positively grow,” and had a great time discussing advertising’s biggest night.
Touchdowns
- Paramount+: Was our overall agency survey winner. Just plain hilarious and great use of celebrity and mix of relevant stars. As a brand that supercharged the good, it had all the small 2% details that take something from C- to A+. The Hail Mary or “Hail Arnold?” gag of using a cartoon child as a football, and the Creed cameo took it wonderfully over the top.
- State Farm: Enter A-lister Arnold Schwarzenegger channeling his inner action hero and inimitable Austrian accent, as Agent State Farm. Guaranteed to make you smile and stick the “Like a good neighbaaah” tagline in your head.
- Doritos Dinamita: This product-centric ad throws Latino stereotypes out the window with Jenna Ortega and her two steely-eyed abuelas spicing things up to literally run down the last bag of Dinamita chips taken from the shelf. Unexpectedly funny, and with a 17% Latinx NFL audience, culturally relevant.
- Budweiser: Brings back the iconic Budweiser Clydesdales to rebuild the foundation of the brand after some recent marketing missteps and effectively tap the Super Bowl nostalgia of past glory days for Bud.
- Kawasaki RIDGE: “Business in the front and party in the back” is the classic blue collar description of the somehow “cool again?” mullet and a fun and funny metaphor for the new Kawasaki Ridge four wheeler. This new ride leaves multiple mullet makeovers in its wake and clearly goes fast enough to give you perfect flow.
- DoorDash: As media aware stunts go, this was the Super Bowl winner. Dramatically promising to deliver “All the products advertised during the Super Bowl” to one lucky winner, the combination of audacity and full audience engagement along with the right “we’re making this up as we go along” tone worked like magic.
Fumbles
- M&M’s: This ad relied on tired slapstick humor, Super Bowl and Oscar wanna-bes and felt uninspired and messy. The take away was M&M’s are for losers. Plus, the normally wonderful candy characters barely got any screen time. A missed opportunity.
- Michelob Ultra: Remember when beer ads were funny? This one fell flat with unrealized A-level potential. The best soccer player in the world, a Ted Lasso cameo and NFL royalty, and this was the best they could do?
Overall, Super Bowl 58 served up a number of themes in addition to humor and stars.
- Soccer, oddly enough, was a theme of three spots with Michelob Ultra, Uber Eats and Stok Cold Brew Coffee. Must be a realization that with 115 million viewers, they have a global audience and soccer is the world’s number one sport.
- Octogenarian stars? Anthony Hopkins, Judge Judy, Patrick Stewart, Dina and Mita, and Christopher Walken are all over 80. Glenn Close and Arnold Schwarzenegger are 76 and Mr. T is a relative kid at 71. A Betty White success-inspired reflection of our aging population?
- Audience pre-post engagement: teasers, gags, misdirects, sweepstakes, behind- the-scenes and making-of videos are stretching Super Bowl Sunday to Super Bowl Week.