Are You Ready for Some Super Bowl Commercials?

For some people, the commercial breaks during the Super Bowl are the highlight of the game. That may be especially true this year, as they helped add a little excitement to what some have called the worst Super Bowl ever.

Despite tepid ratings and low viewership, the game was still watched by more than 98 million people. That’s a lot of consumers—and the advertisers came to play.

The leading categories of commercials were Food and Beverage (12 brands), News and Entertainment (11), Alcohol (6), Automobiles (6) and Tech (5). No real surprises there, for a historically male-centric sporting event. But this year’s lineup of commercials did deliver several new plays that show advertisers are finally paying attention to the fact that around half of Super Bowl viewers are women:

Bumble, the dating app where women make the first move, aired this spot starring Serena Williams. Additionally, a predominantly female creative team wrote, produced and directed it.

 

Olay tapped Sara Michelle Gellar for its first-ever Super Bowl ad, in which the scream queen’s “killer skin” is nearly the death of her.

 

Commercials for Toyota and the NFL both featured female football players Sam Gordon and Toni Harris.

 

 

And then there’s Skittles, which disrupted the norm in a different way. Instead of buying airtime for a commercial, they produced a Broadway musical. All proceeds from the single performance of the anti-advertising musical starring Michael C. Hall benefitted Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.

What was your favorite commercial from this year’s game—or games past?

Jason Janoski

Jason Janoski

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