Super Bowl 50 and the Future of Advertising

Super Bowl 50 will likely be remembered as the year in which a spectacular Denver defense carried aging titan Peyton Manning to the championship. It will be remembered as the year in which the halftime show—Coldplay, featuring Beyoncé and Bruno Mars—was for once actually quite good.

It will not be remembered for its commercials. But there’s something worth saying about them nonetheless. This year, expensive products that represent major investments for their consumers—cars, for instance—were advertised well, while inexpensive products were generally advertised badly.

While that seems reasonable enough, it’s in fact quite a break with the past. Here are some big names in TV advertising over the past decade: Budweiser. Coca-Cola. Michelob Ultra. Bud Light. These businesses are built on selling an enormous number of drinks, usually in competition with nearly identical beverage brands—which means that branding is incredibly important and that these companies pour fortunes into advertising.

In the past, that time and money showed. Budweiser’s Clydesdale ads from 2013, 2014, and 2015 are masterpieces of silent acting, music editing, and finely tuned emotional resonance. They’re better than most films. I cried while watching them.

This year, Budweiser ran two ads. One featured Helen Mirren telling off drunk drivers. The other was a melodramatic proclamation that drinking Budweiser meant taking a stand against the insidious forces of…craft beer? The only context in which anyone will ever link to those ads again is as part of a course in poor brand management.

Year after year, Coca-Cola produced incredibly creative ads, imagining up 30-second worlds revolving around their now-iconic product. This year? Marvel’s Ant-Man tries to steal a Coke from Marvel’s Hulk. There’s no twist. The Hulk just catches him and takes it back.

Michelob Ultra put out one ad, which consisted of people grunting. Bud Light put out one ad, in which Amy Schumer and Seth Rogen somehow became tiresome within only 30 seconds. These are companies that had been producing elaborate, long-running ad campaigns. What happened?

Then look at cars, a field in which brand management matters almost as much. This Super Bowl Hyundai, Audi, Buick, Acura, Toyota, Jeep, and Kia all bought ads. Not one of those companies stumbled last night.

Some did better than others, of course. Audi released a fortuitously timed ad about a retired astronaut featuring David Bowie’s “Starman.” Toyota put out a funny and self-aware two-parter about a gang of bank robbers, forced to drive a Prius as their getaway car, who manage to elude police with their surprisingly effective vehicle. Jeep released a catchy song of their own, “4x4ever,” along with an unexpectedly moving set of reminiscences about their 75-year history. All of these ads work to create some kind of impression on the audience, whether it’s the wistfulness of the Audi ad, the joking familiarity of the Prius, or the forceful nostalgia of the Jeep. And no car ad raised the question that every beverage ad did: Why was the company willing to pay the five million dollar Super Bowl price for this terrible ad?

It’s not just about drinks and cars. Other high-investment products were also advertised well. T-Mobile produced two clever anti-Verizon ads, one featuring Steve Harvey and the other featuring Drake. Lots of other low-investment products were advertised badly, but why list those? No one will remember them.

One Super Bowl isn’t quite enough evidence to declare a new epoch in advertising. But in the meantime, some advice to Budweiser, Coca-Cola, and every other company unwilling to pay more for better ads. There’s no dumber purchase than a 5 million dollar picture frame with no painting to put inside it.