As always the case in early February, Adland has been a-buzz with the perceived awesome successes and major fails of this year’s Super Bowl ads. While emotional ads have been found at Super Bowl spots before, what could arguably be defined as ‘new to Super Bowl’ is the more hard-hitting, emotionally chilling ads that were featured this year.
There has undoubtedly been a move towards the emotive in Super Bowl storytelling of late. Many brands have capitalized on the high emotion of the event itself to achieve cut through in this highly competitive ad break. Budweiser for example have, for the second year in a row, used emotion to tell the story of a man and his beloved dog. But with everyone competing on emotion, it makes it even harder to stand out during the most talked about ‘ad moment’ of the year.
Two ads this year took the emotion brief to a much deeper level. NoMore.org and Grey teamed up to make a seriously effective ad to highlight domestic abuse and the stance to take against it, while US insurance company Nationwide and Ogilvy collaborated on the child safety ad ‘Boy’.
No More – NoMore.org https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTJT3fVv1vU
Boy – Nationwide https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKUy-tfrIHY
Although both achieve a hard-hitting and thought-provoking stance, you do have to wonder if they are well placed during the high-excitement, high-energy, positive and fun event that is the Super Bowl. Many have claimed they are not, with Twitter outrage going into over-drive over the showing of ‘Boy’. ‘No More’ hasn’t received the same outrage, probably due to the perceived connection between the NFL and domestic abuse following the Ray Rice scandal of last year.
Whether you agree or disagree that these ads were Super Bowl party poopers, what you can’t deny is that they created the talk-ability they feel their causes deserve. In the most competitive ad break of the year, against the biggest players and budgets, these ads cut through. And in the setting of the typical Super Bowl high-humour ads, potentially arrested greater attention than they might have otherwise.
