This year's ads were some of the most impressive yet, with many companies utilizing humor and celebrity endorsements to draw in viewers. But we wanted to take a closer look at three ads that we felt were top attention grabbers.
3 Super Bowl Ads That Stood Out to Our Media Buyer in Denver
With spots this year costing up to $7 million for just 30 seconds of airtime, brands had to bring their A-game. Some lived up to the hype, others fell flat, and some ads left us scratching our heads. We felt these 3 ads encapsulated the good, the bad, and the downright weird of Super Bowl LVII.
The Good
Hands down, one of the best spots of Super Bowl 2023 goes to Google for their Pixel 7 commercial. The commercial highlights the phone's camera abilities and highlights the ability to erase unwanted parts of photos. The spot starts with a slideshow of sentimental snaps of happy couples and vacationing families, then shifts when users realize they can use the phone to edit out background elements like photobombers or exes they'd rather forget about. The ad even features tried and true celebrity endorsements like Amy Schumer, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Doja Cat.
While the ad campaign is simple overall, Google seems to have struck a chord with this spot. In fact, the 2023 Kellogg School Super Bowl Advertising Review named it the biggest winner this year, and we have to agree. The spot effectively communicates the value of the product and gets a strong message across that resonates with everyone in our age of social media.
The Bad
For every winner, there needs to be a loser, and for all the great ads this year, there also were a few duds. Unfortunately, one such Super Bowl spot came from the Mars’ candy product: M&M's. Last month, we looked at their pivot to Maya Rudolph as their spokesperson as the company had announced they were retiring their long-popular candy characters (also called spokescandies). As an experienced media buyer in Denver, we were eager to see where this new direction would take them, however, the ad that aired during the Super Bowl was not encouraging.
We understand that the spokesperson shake-up was just a PR move to capitalize on the recent controversy surrounding their brand changes. In a way, it’s very clever because the initial character design changes were minimal and barely noticeable, yet some news outlets decided to make it a bigger deal than it actually was, and M&M’s is doing the same thing here. However, we think this move falls a little flat because it emulates past spokesperson shake-ups that were intriguing in the moment, yet quickly fell out of mainstream discussions. For instance, think back to the death (and rebirth) of the Planter’s Peanuts mascot, Mr. Peanut, which also aired during the 2020 Super Bowl.
From our perspective, M&M's "Candy-Coated Claim Bites" ad failed to connect with viewers.
The Weird
Sometimes companies need to take a big risk to stand out from the stiff competition of other Super Bowl ads, and the weirdest ad this year goes to Tubi. The streaming platform's spot evokes an ominous feeling at the beginning with human-sized bunnies kidnapping people to throw down a "rabbit hole" of media content. It's a quick and clever concept that didn't hit with everyone, though it did manage to grab attention and effectively communicate the value of Tubi: it’s an endless source of unique pieces of content. The “Rabbit Holes” ad from Tubi even won a marketing award as the game's best ad at the Clio awards.
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