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  • Writer's pictureColette Tichenor

Let's Talk About the Super Bowl Ads


(“Last Year’s Lemons” by Bud Light Seltzer, 2021)

Let me get this straight, I do not watch football. Maybe it was fun pre-Covid when we could tailgate at Memorial Stadium and freeze our butts off while eating a hotdog and some popcorn, but now that the fandom intrigue has somewhat come to a halt I have found that football doesn’t suit my tastes as much as basketball or baseball ever has. Despite my disinterest in the sport I have still found myself looking forward to the cultural phenomena that come along football’s largest event of the year, the Super Bowl. I have always watched the Super Bowl for two reasons: the halftime show and the advertisements. And, according to a survey conducted in 2015 by Prosper Insights and Analytics, 43.4 million other viewers watch for the advertisements as well. But no one just sits around and watches commercials in their free-time, right? So what makes these ads different from those you see every day, and why do these bizarre commercials only really emerge during the Super Bowl?

( “No Way Norway” by General Motors, 2021)

Three big characteristics of Super Bowl commercials that I have identified are: celebrities, comedy, trends, and a dash of heartfeltness. Great modern day examples of these would be Bud Light Seltzer Lemonade, No Way Norway by GM, or Wayne’s World & Cardi B’s Shameless Manipulation by UberEats which shamelessly hits on all of the traits I just mentioned. To hit the formula on the head, these companies probably spend almost as much for ad production as they do to get a 30-second spot during the commercial breaks- which average around $4.5 million per slot. Opposed to any other large sporting event, the commercials during the Super Bowl draw the most viewers and brands. If you don’t regularly watch sports, you may have not made this distinction and I do not expect you to, but if we compare the price of the ads during any old Super Bowl to how much 30-second ads were running during the 2016 World Series Game 7 you may see what I mean. One of the most historic baseball games of our time ran commercials at $500,000 per slot, just ten times less than those at a regular Super Bowl. To draw from personal experience, I can also say that I hardly remember that World Series (as a Cubs fan) much less the advertisements, but I can still quote the “pahk the cah in Hahvahd Yahd” from a Super Bowl I don’t think I even watched. As I previously stated, an estimated 43.4 million people of the 183.7 million Super Bowl viewers (17.7%) say that the commercials are the most important during Super Bowl day. It is important to note that the 2016 World Series Game 7 averaged 40 million viewers, which is much lower than the average Super Bowl. Nonetheless, this had me wondering how this spectacle of advertisements that air only during Super Bowl season really came to be. Who woke up one day and decided that they were going to make wacky commercials but for the big game?

(Noxzema Super Bowl VII Ad, 1973)

This person, or company rather, was Noxzema on one fateful day before Super Bowl VII in 1973. Star-studded and full of innuendo, the shaving company Noxzema advertised their product through pro-football player Joe Namath and Farrah Fawcett from Charlie’s Angels. Not only was this advertisement the most notable for being the first stand-out commercial from a Super Bowl but it introduced the “sex sells” narrative into Super Bowl advertising which we all know as a rather worn-out and outdated tactic presently. From then on, there would be one or two outstanding ads every Super Bowl, but they were never as spectacular as Apple in 1984. This was a startlingly apocalyptic ad based on George Orwell’s 1984 in which Apple suggested that its new Macintosh will be a revolution without actually showing its product. We may be used to watching commercials that don’t show the product now, but this was brand new in the 80s and it caused a big stir among those in the advertising business. The 90s and 2000s rode steady with a healthy amount of bizarre “how did someone think of this” content and innuendos for everyone, and by 2007 commercials had reached $2.6 million for a slot. Although, this price is still less than half of the highest price for a slot in 2021.


Many sources attribute the explosion in popularity of Super Bowl commercials between 2007 and 2021 to the growth in internet accessibility and I would agree. The internet and social media make running these ads for ridiculous prices that much more profitable. Well, if these were regular ads maybe not, but as notorious Super Bowl ads they have viewers willing to watch these companies’ commercials on their social media feeds or in YouTube compilations. Being given the title of Super Bowl commercial gives some of these ads astronomical success, enough to be replayed for months or even years. However, not all Super Bowl commercials are destined for success, only the most star-studded, the funniest, or the most meaningful are still remembered today. That’s what makes a Super Bowl ad. Marketing teams have to bring their most innovative ideas to stand out from their competitors, so watching the Super Bowl is like watching a preview of the future of advertising in a way. Like as Noxzema bolstered “sex sells” and Apple brought a bizarre and counterintuitive approach to advertising, we may be able to look forward to more lemons falling from the sky or Will Ferrell driving to Norway in our near future of television and internet ads.


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