Mark Vandegrift
Welcome to the Brand Shorthand podcast. I'm your host Mark Vandegrift and this week we pick up on our episode about Super Bowl Ads. Please join me and Scott Edwards as we talk all things Super Bowl Ads and our ratings back from our panelists. Enjoy today's part 2 of Super Bowl Ads!

Well we're not gonna go through every single one on the list, there's 57, but I wanna call highlights to a few, and the next one does happen to be number 11, which is Doritos. I throw out this question to you, Scott, this is fan generated, I don't know if you watched the eight minute video showing some of the finalists that Doritos picked. The winner, one of the producers is actually from central Ohio. So that was kind of a cool connection. But they did the abduction, so this guy that's in his room and the UFO shines in, tries to grab the bag. He holds onto it for a while. He gets thrown all around. Eventually the bag gets sucked into the UFO. It blows apart because it's for the bold and then we end up seeing them, the alien and the guy eating Doritos together at the end and he's teaching the alien how to say the word Doritos. This one rated pretty high by our panelists because it held together real well. But give us your perspective on both fan generated ads like this. The winner got a million dollars by the way. And what you felt about this particular ad versus maybe some of the other ones that you saw if you happened to catch them.

Scott Edwards
The idea of the fan generated spot, if done the right way like this was, is a great public relations coup. So they get a lot of press because of the contest and then people are in the contest and other fans are voting on these spots. So you have that double layer of involvement by my fans and Doritos is a brand that's going to have strong fans, or people who love that product and they will always buy it no matter what. And so the idea of having that contest is very effective. And when you think about, you win no matter what, no matter what one gets picked. Now I happen to think that this was a pretty strong spot because you're hitting people who are interested in the theme of UFOs.

It was done in a comical kind of way. The special effects were very good and the idea of sharing at the end was nice with the alien. So it, you know, it really worked from all those standpoints and public relations on top of it gave them a lot of attention. And that's where it's all about. They're not only getting the attention of the media that I talked about earlier and how expensive it is, but they're getting all this ancillary stuff, which will continue because now you've got the story of the winner and what you're saying is from Ohio and everybody likes to have something that's not in LA or New York or whatever and there's a great value to that.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, I like two things. One is the creative spoke to what they're pushing, which is for the bold, meaning the Doritos is a bold flavor. And even the UFO not being able to handle the chips and blowing apart was a good creative dramatization of that. And then I also like the fact that he's teaching the alien how to say the brand name at the end, which obviously helps with recall. Our panelists put this up in the top few and I really thought it was well done.

The next one that I want to cover, and I only want to cover this for a short time, it's going to seem like I'm still going down the list, which is Jeep. But Harrison Ford, he was his classic Harrison Ford. The line at the end that said, "I love Jeep even though my name's Ford" was brilliant. But overall, creatively, this was one that kind of fell flat for a lot of our panelists. You brought up Harrison Ford near the beginning of our podcast here, and what did you think about this particular effort from him?

Scott Edwards
It's a low-key spot and there isn't really anything that actually happens. There's no plot to it. He's making a point about values and he's doing it in low-key conversational way. His delivery of it is fantastic. You feel that this is a guy just talking to you and that effortless approach I can appreciate as a producer, but for this sort of environment where everything is pushed so much and the game and all the excess that goes with it, it's probably not going to be noticed as much because it is so low-key.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, let's jump down to the Novartis ad. And if I said Novartis ad to most people, they would not recall what this was. But the moment that I say, please give more attention to breasts, they'll now remember which ad it was. And I was texted by one of my friends who said,our party here didn't care for the ad because it was such a... I'm trying to remember the word he used, but he basically said it was a rude way to deal with a serious matter of screening. And I was a little surprised by that because obviously the ad gets your attention and the comedian Wanda...

Scott Edwards
Sykes.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, thank you. She was the one that actually had breast cancer and she delivers a good line there at the end. But what was your thought on this one making probably 90 % of the ad just focused on women's parts?

Scott Edwards
You know, as part of working for an ad agency, we do healthcare advertising frequently. And breast cancer care is one of the categories that we've worked in because it's something where we want to reach out to people and convince them to get screenings. And while we haven't gone in this direction, we have done some things that would be considered not to be standard ways of getting at this.

And my opinion about it was if I have to give you $10 to do it, or if I have to shock you to do it, if I have to do whatever it is to do it, that's fair game. It's the results that matter. And if you look at a lot of women's automobiles and stickers that they have on their back windows, you see that the so-called rude approach of touching on this subject is already out there and it's a lot more explicit than what's in this commercial. If it works, that's great. Whatever it takes.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, I think where it's going to fall down is actually maybe not the fact that it brought attention to breast cancer screening, but I think it'll probably there will be very little connection to Novartis. Nobody could recall after the ad was run who it was at our Super Bowl party. I didn't even need like 10 seconds and someone goes, what was that ad?

Like, who was that for? They remembered breast cancer screening. So maybe you call it a PSA, but there certainly isn't a connection to the brand itself because they didn't spend any time on anything that said Novartis equals breast cancer screening or breast cancer treatment or anything else like that.

Scott Edwards
While that's true, the Super Bowl's now over, they've gotten the splash of it. Even though you don't make a connection necessarily to the name of the brand, it is a difficult brand. These pharmaceutical names are difficult. But you also know that pharmaceuticals are such a highly paid advertising form that you're going to see versions of this now heavily and for a long time. And this started it and they're going to continue to make that connection, so ultimately it will accomplish what it needs to.

Mark Vandegrift
Good. Well, here's one that was interesting to me. And it was because they changed their typical brand personality. And that was WeatherTech. So if I say WeatherTech to most people and say, recall their typical advertising, describe it to me. It's pretty pedestrian. They show the products, they show their effectiveness, they show how they cover everything in the automobile. They also have pet products things like that. Pretty mundane, right? All of a sudden in the Super Bowl and this is to your point right up front Which was this is a frenetic ad. It spends a good portion of the ad with four older ladies Trying to go about town with craziness and we get to the very end of the ad before it's discovered that WeatherTech will hold up to pretty much whatever comes your way. That was the title of the ad.

Making a departure from a brand personality like this, would you call that an effective departure or do you feel it was too far from what they typically do to make the building of the idea in the mind as to what WeatherTech typically stands for?

Scott Edwards
I'm guessing that it was done because they feel that they've reached as many people within that original audience that you're describing have bought into the WeatherTech thing. And what you're describing may have been mundane, but it was effective in demonstrating the effectiveness of the products so that you believe it. And unlike what we might like to think all the time, a commercial doesn't need to be all that exciting in order to be effective all the time. It can be something that demonstrates. Now I think that they felt that they've reached the end of that audience, as many people as they can get it. I've got to reach to a different segment or a broader segment. And in this case, I could see the cause and effect here. And remember, just like with some of these other spots, this is going to be edited for regular use.
15 seconds and 30 seconds and you'll see the connection more directly because you've already seen the long version and the story about these people and their escapades and it's pretty wild and they're using in fact Born to be Wild written by Mars Bonfire think of that name that's a guy who wrote Born to be Wild Mars Bonfire. So that's what we've learned through this podcast is that one thing is people didn't know that Mars Bonfire wrote Born to be Wild. But I think when you see the edited version, you're going to remember the full story. You get just enough of it to make that connection. And then you're to see it more connected to the brand. And I think that'll be more satisfying once that happens.

Mark Vandegrift
So would your guess be that WeatherTech now changes their personality in their advertising or would you guesstimate, and I know you don't have a crystal ball, that they're gonna go back to their typical personality of, eh, this is our product, we don't need to make it something crazy. Would you say that this is a one-time departure or that they're going to change?

Scott Edwards
I don't think it's a one-time departure, but I also believe that they're going to see how this impacts sales. But this is an example of something they want to see an effect from. So you think about Super Bowl advertising is it's its own category of advertising. And we even name it that. These Super Bowl ads or Kyber ads, they're not necessarily looking for results like a regular advertising campaign.

Often they're just going for the ego of being in this top 10 list. This is an example of I think they wanted to have some results from.

Mark Vandegrift
Good. Well, the next two on the list are highly related, even though the brands don't have anything to do with one another. Number 21 was Pringles. Number 22 is Little Caesars. Pringles had everyone's mustaches flying all over the place and Little Caesars had Eugene Levy's eyebrows flying all over the place. So it's kind of ironic they came in back to back on USA Today's ad meter.

Most of our party kind of found it weird and at the same time gross because I think having other people's hair on you or in your food or anything like that just gross folks out. But Pringles, of course, the mustaches are in their logo. Little Caesars, on the other hand, most people forgot what they were even advertising. They were actually bringing attention to a new product that they have. But within 30 seconds, most people forgot what they were even doing in that ad because they were so focused on Eugene Levy's eyebrows. So what's your thought on the fact that we got two ads this year, both closely related to flying around parts of human hair?

Scott Edwards
The chances of that happening in one broadcast even with as many commercials as they are on the Super Bowl has to be astronomical that's the same concept for these two things and I'm betting a lot of people probably thought they were just different versions of the same commercial but the chances are amazing and when you know when they found out that the other one existed it's too late at that point to react

And I'm just thinking, I can't even imagine what the people involved in these two spots thought when they found out about the other one.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, they probably weren't happy. Although most people remembered Pringles from our panel, but they had no clue what Little Caesar's was doing. They couldn't make the connection to Eugene Levy's eyebrows. So that was kind of a fail on that part.

The next one I want to talk about, this was unique. But before I even say what the brand is, did you happen to see the Country Roads by John Denver commercial. And what was interesting is when they came back to the live Super Bowl broadcast, they were actually playing Country Roads within the stadium. And the cameras were all panning to it. So it was an interesting media play in that you ran the ad and then you connected it to what was going on in the stadium.

And I found that as a really, really good media tie-in. The problem is, is the recall and connection to the brand was lost. So what was an otherwise kind of brilliant media move fell flat on the brand recall side of things. Do you recall what that particular brand was?

That was Rocket Mortgage. And this idea of Owning the Dream was the name of it, but they were singing Country Roads, you know, from John Denver. And I don't know that there was any connection to Owning the Dream or Rocket Mortgage or anything else like that. So I don't know, from my standpoint and our panelists standpoint, It was a big thumbs down because the execution just, while it was cool, made no connection to the brain.

Scott Edwards
I think that the idea of having that thing live afterward is a great idea. A similar thing done with the Field Goat Kick thing and that gaming app.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, fan duel with Peyton and Eli Manning.

Scott Edwards
So they wanted to connect the live thing versus the spot. I don't know how effective that was either, I like that song, but it's actually a pointed song and it doesn't really fit on the dream, which is really an upbeat kind of an idea. So it's, if you look at the lyrics, listen to the lyrics of Take Me Home Country Road, it's very sad actually.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, the next one I want to talk about, there was a little different dynamic to it. It didn't rate highly, but this has to go to me. This points to what time during the Super bowl your ad actually runs and the risk that you take of when it runs. Booking.com with the Muppets. The title of the ad was Get Your Stay Ridiculously Right.

And it came in at number 25. But I think the reason it came in lower, this is almost at the middle, right in the middle of all the ratings, is it ran, I think, with two and a half minutes left in the Super Bowl. The outcome of the Super Bowl had been long concluded with the Eagles beat down of the Chiefs. And so I think this speaks to when you're making your upfront buy, you better think about when the ad runs because you risk what happened. Conversely, if the Super Bowl had been close, you run the reward of potentially more people tuning in to see the outcome of the game. So did you happen to see the spot, booking.com with the Muppets?

Scott Edwards
I think that what you're saying is correct as a factor in it being lower down in the list than it would have. It probably would have gone number 12 or something like that. But I think another factor is I don't think it is as good as it could have been because it had too much stuff in it. People already have affinity for the Muppets and they don't have to try that hard, but they were throwing in all this other stuff too. And I think that that weakened the value that I'm getting from the Muppets.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, I think the reason our panelists rated it so highly is they did a really good job of moving from one person's dream vacation to one person's nightmare vacation, and then moving that nightmare into a dream vacation again. And even at the end with the use of the two old Guy Muppets, if you remember that. Waldorf and Statler are their names. They even come on at the end and says, what if I hate everything? And they show how easy it is to cancel it. So this one actually ranked with a perfect score from our panelists, along with the other winners of Doritos, Hellmans, Michelob Ultra. Those are the four that got perfect scores.

And obviously the reason I'm curious as to whether the timing of this was the issue is because the viewers on AdMeter put it down at 25. But I think the recall and connection to booking.com was really well done.

So speaking of one of our winners, it didn't get a perfect score, but it was Reese's and their chocolate lava.

What was your perspective on that connection to the volcano lava? And I will come back with why it got a few points off of the total score.

Scott Edwards
I would give it extra credit from the marketing strength. So this is an example of, so we look at everything from the standpoint of positioning, right? So what's the position of Reese's?

Mark Vandegrift
I mean, chocolate peanut butter is they're like the ultimate chocolate peanut butter candy.

Scott Edwards
That marriage, right, and other snacks and other candies have that combination, but they own that connection. And so that's, you're starting from that, then you look at, all right, what do they do from a product marketing standpoint? What they do for over the last several years is they create these in and out promotional products that only last a small period of time, and they sort of have that excitement at retail. But it's an extension.

It's not anything different from their position. It's a natural extension of it. So that's strong marketing. Then when they do the creative on it, I don't know who came up with the name Lava. Whether it was somebody writing the spot or whether it the person who was demonstrating it at the company saying, and what it does is it flows down like chocolate lava on this thing. It's going to be great. Don't know where that came from, but the name itself is fantastic.

And then you take that and how do you dramatize it? I think from me, another thing that's interesting about this succession is that they didn't have anyone involved that I would call a but head. What I mean by but head is this is a person when you show something, a great idea, there's somebody in there who'll say, I like that, but... and what they'll then proceed to do is kill a great idea. So the person who could have been in there but isn't thankfully would have said, I like that, but when I think of lava, think hot. And I know that now it's really popular to have hot sauces that are extremely hot. And maybe people will think this is ghost pepper lava chocolate. That person did not exist to kill this idea.

And then when you get into the advertising, did you see the teasers? I thought the teasers were actually better because there were really these short little vignettes of people doing this sort of over the top. We got to get out of here, you know? And they're yelling the name of the product, lava. So that was perfect. When we got into the real spot, that was one that was guilty of this doing too much.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, and that's what I was going to tell you. All of our panelists said it was great creative, great idea, but it was overproduced. There was too much going on. They didn't need all that fanaticism as we're picking up the word that that you've been using. And that was the only negative comment that we got on it. But the connection was made and that was what was important. And it does go back to the product name because it was indeed perfectly named. So it's a visual that none of us can really get out of our head.

Scott Edwards
In fact,they warned you against it though. That was one of the things that they were willing to take that risk to say not to eat it.

Mark Vandegrift
So I'm to give you the floor here. You pick out one, two, three more brands and just give us your perspective on either a great ad, not a great ad and any commentary you have on any of these other brands that fill out the top 57.

Scott Edwards
There's one that I wanted to point out. Looking for it here, it was the, it was the story, we're going back to the story aspect of what's been effective this year. And it was the father who was using what I assume to be AI on his phone to rehearse his job interview.

Mark Vandegrift
Google Gemini, I remember that one.

Scott Edwards
It could have been more concise, I think. Played up the guy not being that great. But again, as before, when these things get edited down for real use, then that'll be closer to it. But there's this one fantastic moment in it that's tear inducing. So you see the scene and for those who didn't see the spot, the message is this is a older than middle aged guy who's doing a job interview. So he's already afraid about it.

He's rehearsing the interview with the AI assistant. And when he thinks about what has taught him, and it sounds like he's talking about a job, he says, what has taught him the most? And they show all these parenting scenes to the life of his daughter and his wife. So we've got that background. We get to the point where he's dropping her off at college. He's left in the car and he's sobbing and she comes back to give him big hug. Now this is only possible in film editing. This is the only art form where this is possible to do this kind of juxtaposition for effect. We see consecutive shots of that happening. College age girl, she's wearing a blue sweater, this is important. She embraces the dad. They cut to that same scene when she's a little girl going to school, it's the same composition. It's beautiful. This is only possible in film editing.

So why is this important to me? Because this morning I saw an article and I was scrolling by LA Times. This was the lead, or as normal people would call it, the headline. It said,the TV ad art is dead. This year's Super Bowl proved it.

Now that's very provocative headline and it may be true because a lot of what we're talking about about this excess and things being stuffed in there and the thing I want a buy at length about the Budweiser commercial and how instead of completing the story in a satisfactory way to me, they actually detached me from the emotion. Unlike this particular commercial.

So this was an example of something done strong. It may not have been something that was as highly rated. Because again, the slower kind of thing is difficult within the environment of people at a Super Bowl party and everybody is already in this excited state. So you think about that, is it true? Is the TV ad art dead? Well, it's kind of sick and it might be, you know, getting worse, think about this within our industry. When you look at newsletters and things that you get every day, there are a couple of subjects that jump to the top a lot. And the one that has been said by statistics to be something that's an emphasis within the advertising industry is data. Data is very important to what we do now. Now, if you're thinking about data, are you thinking about creating a great spot? Is that what's on your mind? It's hard to think about those two things. So what used to be the preeminent idea of what an advertising industry did was TV ads. That's what you thought of first. You remember these spots from the Super Bowl in 1984. You could picture the earlier Clydesdale spots. Are any of the spots on this list, no matter how high or low are they? Will they, any of them, be remembered in five years?

Mark Vandegrift
I think maybe one or two. I wouldn't put that, I would not bet my house on that. I probably wouldn't even put $5 down.

Scott Edwards
So when you say the art of the TV spot, perhaps that's what we're witnessing is missing, the art of the TV spot. Are these people, take the Doritos thing. Doritos was made by somebody who's not involved with the Doritos company, independent person. People do production on their own. So they've got A lot of motivation, the motivation to win this thing and get the attention out of it. That's a great motivation. Well, there's also a million dollar prize.

Now, I'm going to say, you know, I don't want to question you are all and make any prejudgments, but I'm going to guess that if I were to write and produce the best spot in the world on behalf of one of our clients, you will not give me a million dollars.

Mark Vandegrift
No

Scott Edwards
And there you go.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, as far as the losers, the biggest loser was Tubi. And I don't even know what they were thinking. It was the fleshly cowboy hat with the fleshly fantasy head. And this one I was glad to see was at the bottom because everyone in our Super Bowl party looked at each other and said,what in the world was that? That was the grossest thing I've ever seen. And they couldn't connect it to the brand, which was Tubi. So that one got a huge thumbs down by us. And it was rated last on AdMeter's list here, number 57. A couple of the other ones that failed were also on our list of really bad ones.

The Coffee Mate with the tongue, the wild tongue that was going, no one understood that one. Circle with Adam Levine, that one also got a big thumbs down, which our team thought was interesting. And Squarespace, that whole thing with the Irish actor and the donkey and throwing computers through windows, huge fail. What surprised me though, and this is one I'm gonna lift off of here, is T-Mobile. Scott, do you know what they advertised last night? Did you happen to catch that one? was early in, I think the first quarter and they connected it to a new technology. Do you happen to remember what that was?

Scott Edwards
Was that the Buzz Aldrin spot?

Mark Vandegrift
No, that was T-Mobile saying that they are now using Starlink for connectivity. And I actually had a buddy text me and he goes, I haven't been interested in T-Mobile forever, but this really intrigues me. it, and it to me is the arms race to satellite phones versus just, you know, our cell phones. This was number 51 on the list. I think because there was no comedy to it, there was no storytelling. All it basically was was T-Mobile, we're giving you Starlink now so that you can basically make sure that you always have connectivity regardless of where you are. There was one person I think was out on the Grand Canyon, for instance, and another person was in the back woods camping. They made the point that people are in remote areas and losing connectivity is a problem. And they are now partnering with Starlink, which everyone I think knows is Elon Musk's company. And so we had this much higher rated because most people don't pay attention to cell phone company advertising. But again, they won the arms race to this idea of satellite connectivity. Just wondering if you had any thoughts on that one?

Scott Edwards
I wonder if there's an aspect of people might not necessarily know what satellite phone is supposed to mean and that there's maybe too much of a reach in technological knowledge to understand that it is meaningful. It's something that we'll have to gather.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, I guess Starlink is so innate to things that I do and in conversations I have. I didn't even make the connection to the fact that people may not realize what Starlink is or the concept of a satellite phone. So that's a good call. That's a good call. Good.

Scott Edwards
I think when you're talking about technology, there's always so much change, it's really hard to keep up with it.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, that could be. Well, any final thoughts, Scott, on any of the other ads or your overall perspective on this year's batch of Super Bowl commercials?

Scott Edwards
One that was lowly rated and that it bugged me that they did the spot or what I should say is I'm surprised that Meta did not sell their spot to someone else or give it to a PSA or do something different with it because here we have that product that was used as part of that attack that happened in New Orleans. Meta glasses were something that was used by the person that did that terrorist attack. And here it's taking place in New Orleans where the game is, yet they still played this spot as only a couple months ago and they're making fun of the meta glasses. It just didn't seem right to me.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, I don't know if you heard, but State Farm pulled out of Super Bowl advertising. They were going to do something again, and they pulled out because of the negative press they've been receiving with the LA fires and such. So that would have been appropriate. That ad did not hit anybody well with our panelists. They were trying to make the connection with the celebrities that were being used. I think it was Chris Pratt and I forget the other guy that was in there with him. It was just such an obtuse kind of connection to the creative that no one walked away with good feeling about that particular one.

Scott Edwards
And I can't get around the fact that I consider that a really creepy product to begin with. I don't think anybody uses it for legitimate purposes.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, and you, you know, we remember the days probably going on 10 years ago now where Google glasses came out and that product quickly went away.It failed pretty substantially. now are there still Google glasses? Yeah. But they didn't go anywhere near the product sales that they had anticipated. So it was rather interesting that they, as you said, they decided to keep that spot last night was maybe almost classified as inappropriate.

Anyhow, well good, we're gonna close up shop today. And for those that are watching, thank you. If you have not liked or shared or subscribed to the Brand Shorthand Podcast, please do And as Lorraine likes to say, subscribe, subscribe, subscribe. And until next time, have an amazing day.