Is this a Tide ad? Maybe. Read on to find out. Advertisements during the Super Bowl have a reputation for being memorable for various reasons. Whether they make everyone laugh out loud or become overwhelmed with emotion, Super Bowl commercials often epitomize the culture and community of the United States. However, some advertisements miss the mark on delivering good jokes or a powerful message, which can be a costly marketing error, as a 30 second commercial space can cost more than $5 million. Here we’ll explore some of the hits and misses of this year’s Super Bowl ads from the view of students.
The 2018 Super Bowl has been labeled as “a great game surrounded by a bunch of lackluster ads” by Slate writer Justin Peters. There were few standouts during the frequent commercial breaks, but many students thought that some of the best ads were executed by Amazon and Bud Light.
In the ad, Amazon recruited the diverse talents of stars such as Rebel Wilson, Gordon Ramsay, Cardi B and Sir Anthony Hopkins to fill in for the voice assistant Alexa when she “loses her voice,” but they do not perform her job as well as Alexa does. The antics and humor that ensue made sure that the ad was memorable and relevant for lots of students and millennials.
“My favorite was the Amazon Alexa ad where Rebel Wilson and Cardi B take over. It was just so funny and I really liked it,” college student Kendra Metcalfe said.
“I really liked the Alexa commercial because it was really funny and well made,” junior Katie Sokol said.
Bud Light continued their tradition of using a medieval theme and their catchphrase “dilly, dilly,” in their advertisements. They introduced a new character, the “Bud Knight,” a hero who helped save the kingdom with his beer powers. It was certainly a humorous storyline and made an ad for alcoholic beverages memorable even to underage students.
“I thought the best one was the Bud Light ad. I thought it was really cool setting the whole medieval theme and just really inspirational. It made me want to pick up a Bud Light even though I’m not of age yet,” junior Jacob Fyock said.
But despite all of the great ads this year, there were still some lackluster and controversial ones. Jeep, for instance, used cliched methods to try to attract people to buy their cars, using grandiose speeches and “inspiring” imagery. It seemed too reminiscent of the generic car ads and seemed like a half-hearted attempt based on the commercials all around it.
“I really did not enjoy the Jeep commercial where all it was was the red 2019 Jeep Cherokee driving through a stream. It was just so boring and uncool,” Metcalfe said.
The Tide ads, while funny, did not address some of the problems associated with using their products. The Tide pod epidemic has been plaguing the internet with videos of vloggers and daredevils eating the poisonous laundry detergent pods, often leading to serious and dire consequences such as death or extreme sickness.
“[My least favorite] was probably the Tide ads because they were so repetitive and they did nothing to reference the whole ‘kids eating tide pods’ [issue]. I just thought it was a missed opportunity,” Fyock said.
The Ram Truck advertisement featuring a Martin Luther King speech became very controversial after it aired. Many people believed that it was inappropriate for Ram to exploit King’s powerful words to sell their cars, as it seemed the wrong fit for the product. It was not that the message itself had any fault, as it encouraged the viewer to be selfless and use their skills to help others, but that it seemed a sort of cultural appropriation and had no relation to trucks. This was also an issue in some of the Toyota ads, as they utilized the incredible story of a successful Paralympic athlete to try to sell their cars. The stories were not very well linked and it seemed selfish of the companies to use the words of a powerful civil rights leader and a disabled athlete to promote their products.
“My least favorite was the Ram commercial with the Martin Luther King speech… It was a good message but it did not have anything to do with trucks, so I just didn’t get it,” Sokol said.
While there were a multitude of other ads included in the Super Bowl breaks, many simply faded into a blur of overused selling strategies and confusing plot lines. It seems a waste of an opportunity and funds for most of the companies who choose to display their products on one of the most-watched television programs in the United States. In fact, many people watched the Super Bowl this year because they wanted to see the creative and funny ads, not because their favorite teams were playing. Needless to say, the 2018 Super Bowl was underwhelming in terms of the advertisements aired.
