Some Super Bowl ads mean more than others
The Short Version
We all know that Super Bowl ads are special. They’d better be. At $5 million a pop for a 30-second ad, those commercials have to deliver a significant return on investment or they company won’t be back next year. A lot of advertisers find that value not by directly emphasizing their product, but by making a statement. This year, eight such ads ran during the big game. They came from It’s A 10 haircare products, AirBnB, Donate Life, FurKids, Audi, 84 Lumber, Budweiser, and Land O’Lakes.
Why Message Ads Work
Super Bowl advertising is so important that some brands have separate creative teams just for that one spot. The production takes thousands of hours over several months. They are tested on focus groups, modified, and then tested again. Everything has to be as close to perfect as possible. Even then, there are no guarantees. Not every ad works.
One of the biggest challenges to creating a Super Bowl ad is making it stand out. Viewers are not always paying attention. By half-time, interest is starting to wane and a fair portion of viewers are intoxicated. If the game’s not close, the second half can be a dead zone (obviously not the case with this year’s game). Getting viewers to stop and pay attention is challenging. A message ad works by interrupting the flow and getting viewers to think for a few seconds.
A significant difference this year, however, was the sensitivity viewers had to ads with a message. Regional ad spots, which don’t factor in national comparisons, tended to be more political than others and every region had them. That put viewers on edge so that their reactions tended to be more extreme whether viewers were for or against the message.
However, any controversy associated with an ad only helps brand recognition. That is why brands are willing to step into that dangerous territory of making a statement. Sometimes stirring the pot is a good thing. Several companies have had success with such ads, so there’s a reasonable precedent for doing something that is not product-centric.
The Video, Please
Going through this year’s ads, we found eight that stand out because of the message they share. Some are funny. Some are serious. All manage to make a point.
It’s A 10
When the ad says we’re in for “four years of awful hair,” we know to whom they’re referring. The ad then goes on to celebrate people whose hair style are … unique.
AirBnB
The company that uses people’s homes as hotel rooms has raised a lot of ire in places where regular hotels worry about losing business and neighbors worry about “undesirables” coming to visit. AirBNB takes on the controversy of the president’s travel ban head on, though, with an ad directed toward a specific audience.
https://youtu.be/5qUTYHnLz2g
Donate Life
I have to admit, when I first saw this ad I really didn’t understand where they were going until the last 15 seconds. This one might have been more effective in a 30-second format. Still, the whole concept that even an asshole can do something good offers everyone a chance for some level of redemption.
https://youtu.be/JPNNi7KKmQs
FurKids
People have a soft spot for animals, especially kittens. Yet, animals shelters across the nation are still overwhelmed with the number of cats and kittens available for adoption. FurKids is a chain of animal shelters and, as such, have some who think they charge too much and question how their animals are treated. I can’t speak to those allegations. However, as an ad that makes a point about the need to adopt these animals, they’re spot on. Again, though, it could have been just as effective in a shorter version.
https://youtu.be/pfJJKUNrY7o
Audi
Wage equality is a significant issue and Audi waded into that topic head-on with an ad titled “Daughter.” While the ad features a father talking about how to explain wage inequality to his daughter, the ad is targeting the politically active group of feminist involved in the issue. The ad is extremely well done and drives its point home with clarity.
https://youtu.be/G6u10YPk_34
84 Lumber
You wouldn’t necessarily think that a lumber company would be into political controversy unless it was maybe about deforestation or some other environmental cause. 84 Lumber took on the entire immigration debate, though, with a poignant and moving ad that has anti-immigrant groups all kinds of upset. Note: this ad is a revision of the first run that actually showed a wall. The NFL nixed that one as being too political. Go figure. So, what we’re showing you here is the full short film, including the part with the wall.
Budweiser
The self-proclaimed “King of Beers” has produced some memorable Super Bowl ads over the years, especially those involving their trademarked Clydesdales. They didn’t go that direction this year, though. Instead, they went with the presumptive story of the beer’s founder, a German immigrant who suffered the stigma of being an immigrant at another time in our nation’s history when immigrants weren’t cool. The ad was produced and already in the can long before the current immigration issue even came up, but its poignancy can’t be missed. So much so that when the full ad was released last week, the hashtag #BoycottBudweiser came up. There is no indication that the hashtag had any effect on sales, but the commercial certainly has.
Land O’Lakes
Again, a dairy company doesn’t seem like it would be the likely source for a commercial as serious as “The Farmer.” We tend to expect something softer—with cows. However, Land O’Lakes is actually a farmer-owned co-op, so the ability of smaller, independent farmers to survive in an atmosphere where corporations seem about to consume the entire industry is a bit of a big deal. They don’t even mention a specific product, just the brand. Chances are, though, you’ll remember this ad the next time you’re wandering down the dairy aisle at your local grocery. Here’s the full version of the ad. The poem, by the way, is by Amelia E. Barr.
As for the rest …
Sure, there were plenty of ads that were loud and entertaining. A number of lists are ranking the Wix ad with Jason Statham and Gal Gadot as the best of the lot, and it certainly is an exciting 79 seconds. There were a couple of nostalgia pieces as well, with Bud Light bringing back the ghost of Spuds McKenzie and Xerox updating it’s “Miracle” spot with Brother Dominic from 40 years ago. There were plenty of entertaining ads to be had.
Still, these are the eight that carry the most weight and are likely to make the most difference. Who cares what size Big Mac® you get? Sometimes, how we respond to humanity matters more.
Death Of Liberty
In the defiance of checks and balances, we lose every freedom we once claimed
A drastic situation
What we take for granted is easily taken away.
We have long assumed that the freedoms for which men and women have fought and died, once secured, would remain our forever. We would fight any invading force. We would stand in the face of tyranny, rise up together as a mighty throng, and turn back the forces of oppression, bigotry, and injustice. We would not let anyone invade out shores, occupy our hallowed halls, or threaten the precious democracy we hold dear.
And we’ve done that. There have been no invaders. No one has sent their troops to our shores. No one snuck into our country in the dead of night. No bullets were fired. No bombs exploded. They didn’t need to.
Instead, we elected tyranny for ourselves. In thinking that we needed to fight against the status quo we opened the door to an unholy regime of panderers, white supremacists, elitists, and power mongers whose ideals and philosophies are worse than any external foe we could ever face. By choosing a billionaire whose inherited fortunes are buoyed through deception and unethical practices, we did not choose one who would “drain the swamp,” but rather a swamp rat who delights in the mud and the muck and the filth.
In two very short but eventful weeks, we have moved from being a flawed democracy to one that it on the brink of utter collapse and, interestingly enough, there remain millions of people standing by and cheering. They somehow think that by giving up all pretense of freedom that they, themselves, will obtain more power. The foolhardy believe that in the destruction of liberty for all that they will somehow retain liberty for the few. There is no such hope, however, for when liberty is erased for some, it is destroyed for all. There is no such thing as a partial implementation of liberty.
Our country is in grave peril. The lives of many might actually be at stake. We not only need to remove the cancer infecting us, but as with any oncology surgery, we must remove the supporting tissue around it as well. We currently exist in a precarious state of hospice where our very next breath could be our last.
Everyone Sees It But Us
Edel Rodriguez, a Cuban immigrant who came to the US in 1980 to escape the tyranny of his home country, created an interesting cover for the German magazine, Der Spiegel. The image depicts a faceless image of the 45th US president holding a knife in one hand and the bloodied decapitated head of Lady Liberty in the other. Toward the bottom of the image are the words, “America First.”
The cover is alarming and, for many, disconcerting. Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, vice president of the European Parliament, described the cover as “tasteless.”
Cover of Der Speigel for 4 February 2017
The artist told the Washington Post: “It’s a beheading of democracy, a heading of a sacred symbol.”
Like it or not, this is how most people see the United States now. The president has been widely mocked, often with no small amount of hilarity. Leaders of other countries, including our closest allies, have rebuked his actions.
Yet, it is the Der Spiegel cover that may resonate the most. Germans, and Cubans, understand from experience what it is like to voluntarily put their freedoms into the hands of a tyrant. Both countries have had the sad experience of having done so. Both countries understand what it is like to suffer from their actions. Now, they see the United States heading down the exact same path. They are yelling and screaming at us in an attempt to warn us away from the inevitable outcome of our intentionally ignorant actions.
We are not listening.
Instead, the president and his team of autocrats push all the harder toward absolute authoritarian control and bluster loudly at any attempt to reign them in. Just yesterday, in response to a federal judge blocking the illegal travel ban created by presidential order, the president took to the lowest form of communication possible, Twitter, in an attempt to vilify the judge:
While the tactic the president is using is not a new one, his attitude shows tremendous disdain and a lack of respect for the balance of powers, the checks and balances that make a democracy possible. Remove those checks and balances, remove the judiciary that enforces the letter of the law, and we do not have a democracy. Our liberty is dead. Our freedoms are gone. In their place, we have a totalitarian regime where personal rights and freedoms are non-existent.
A Litany of Wounds
Without considering anything that occurred prior to the president’s January 20 inauguration, the new administration has attacked Lady Liberty repeatedly with actions, orders, and embarrassments that each act like another stab wound to our freedoms. We don’t even have to add the aforementioned immigration ban to the list to be concerned. Here are a few misdeeds, in no particular order.
Reasonable use of time and space prevent me from continuing the list. Over half of the executive orders signed in the past two weeks infringe in some way on the individual freedoms of some or all Americans.
Accessories to murder
To the point we stand by and allow this systematic rape of Liberty while we do not take every conceivable action to stop it, we become accessories to the murder of our freedoms. Some go their willingly. The silence of members of Congress on both sides of the aisle make them complicit in the activities of the president and his administration. The cheering of those who voted the administration into power dooms them for eternity.
But what about those who oppose what is happening to our freedoms? How do we fare in this endless nightmare?
Compare your actions to the person who is sitting in the room as another injects themselves with a lethal dose of heroin. What do you do? Do you call 911? Do you attempt to wrangle the needle from your friend? Or do you just sit there uncomfortably and watch?
My fear is that far too many are willing to sit there and watch. They make no noise that matters. They might say in far too calm a voice, “Hey, don’t do that,” but no one hears them. No one pays any attention because there are no actions behind the words.
If Liberty is going to be saved, if our freedoms are going to be preserved, we have to, at the very least, make sure our voice is heard. Repeatedly. Calling your members of Congress, as we have advocated so frequently the past two weeks, is like making that 911 call. While there’s no guarantee that call will be sufficient to stop the death that seems inevitable, at last you will have made some attempt at preventing the disaster.
More importantly, though, Liberty needs people who are willing to physically take part in the fight, to make deliberate moves to wrestle away the syringe that threatens our very existence. Marches and protests are a start, but we may need to go even further, filing lawsuits and engaging in whatever means of resistance necessary in order to stop the actions of a regime that cares only about their own power and profit.
We have the power. It doesn’t matter that 63 million people voted for this travesty. More than 75 million specifically voted against this president and his administration. The majority of Americans did not ask for this. Yet, the will of that majority is being blatantly and intentionally ignored with malice.
Americans find themselves on the precipice of a decision whether to act against this government more strongly than has ever been necessary or to sit by and let Liberty slip into death. One could get very messy and may ultimately involve uncertain days of turmoil. The other destroys us all and crushes the very foundation upon which the United States of America was founded.
Only you can decide what you’re going to do. You need to make that decision now.
Share this:
Like this: