The most expensive spot on television. No, not a mega hit TV show. A 30 second commercial – during the Super Bowl. $7 million was the going rate for a 30 second commercial during Super Bowl LVII. With production included, that total gets into the $10 million plus area. Taking that into consideration, who got the most bang for their buck?
Winners: PopCorners, Dunkin’, Tubi
Losers: E*TRADE, Rémy Martin, M&M’S
PopCorners came into the Super Bowl as an advertising underdog, without a well-known branding strategy. But their take on Breaking Bad is an instant classic. Audiences everywhere LOVED seeing Walter and Jesse back in action after the world-famous show ended in 2013. The fact that the actors were willing to get back in character for something silly is simply cool. With numerous iconic references (“We’ve got six signature flavors, yo”), and Jesse trying to get PopCorners on the market, this commercial was perfect.
E*TRADE missed the mark. This is the Super Bowl, you have to go big and be creative. But this commercial could play on any given day and I’d probably ignore it. They brought back the E*TRADE babies for a wedding scene, which seemed lazy overall. Simply put, the humor fell flat.
M&M’S is living with a branding nightmare they can’t seem to get themselves out of. They received mixed signals when they redesigned their “spokescandies” to attempt to fit into a more progressive world. For example, the green M&M traded her heels for sneakers. With the backlash, they got rid of their spokescandies altogether and announced Maya Rudolph as their new spokesperson. Their Super Bowl commercial? Maya Rudolph is out, and the redesigned candies are back in. Ugh. All the back and forth is officially old and cheesy.
Dunkin’ crushed it with their Ben Affleck ad. It was a simple recipe: hilarious photos of Ben Affleck holding Dunkin’ drinks in his hands (while looking completely worn-down) have been circulating the internet as memes for years. Let’s put Ben Affleck in the Dunkin’ drive-thru. Even better – let’s give the guy a much-needed opportunity to be funny and have him do an exaggerated Boston accent, since he’s a Massachusetts native. The cherry on top? J-Lo comes through the line, feeding us some 2000s Bennifer nostalgia.
Was the Rémy Martin commercial even a commercial? Viewers have no idea what’s even being advertised until the last second. Don’t get me wrong, we all love Serena Williams. And her speech was powerful. But it felt out of place for an alcohol commercial. Especially when we don’t see the alcohol component until the end. Overall, it was confusing and didn’t plug Rémy Martin at all.
Lastly, the most polarizing commercial of the Super Bowl was Tubi’s. But all press is good press, right? A lot of people at home hated the prank commercial, as they thought someone had sat on the remote or was changing the channel on them. I think it was genius. While every other advertiser played it safe and tried not to ruffle any feathers, Tubi stepped in and got the world talking. No such thing as bad publicity to Tubi.
