The Best And The Worst Of Super Bowl Ads
Sometimes it's better to leave more to the imagination.
That's the thought I'm left with after watching all of the ads that aired in CBS' Super Bowl broadcast Sunday night.
It may be an accepted truism that the commercials are often more exciting than the game. But this year, viewers watching for the ads sat through an uneven collection of spots — of which many of the best moments had already been revealed days earlier.
In years past, commercials like the Snickers spot inserting Willem Dafoe into Marilyn Monroe's wardrobe malfunction in the Seven Year Itch or the ad with Jeff Goldblum serenading George Washington and Lil' Wayne for Apartments.com would have been standouts.
But these spots had already been featured in televised roundups and online platforms like YouTube days before the game. The media coverage may have spread word about the spots, but they also robbed viewers of the thrill that comes from being surprised by an inventive ad in the moment.
Here's my list of the best and worst commercial moments from the big game:
Best use of animals in a Super Bowl ad: Heinz "Weiner Stampede" and Honda "A New Truck to Love"
My two favorite ads of the evening both featured animals in cool ways. Heinz had dogs dressed like hot dogs romping through a field to lick the faces of people dressed like a "family" of condiment bottles (kudos to whoever came up with using the soft rock hit Without You to ramp up the sentiment). Honda also hit the cute animal chord with a spot featuring sheep singing Queen's hit Somebody to Love; they learned it courtesy of the farmer's Ridgeline truck, which has a sound system in the rear bed blasting the song. Ample proof that '70s rock paired with cute animals equals Super Bowl advertising gold.
Best ad to turn a massive mistake into promotional success: T-Mobile "Drop the Balls"
When Steve Harvey announced the wrong winner in the Miss Universe contest, he was lampooned so mercilessly it looked like a serious setback. But he's rebounded with a Super Bowl commercial that features him "admitting" a different mistake: alleging Verizon used old data to misrepresent T-Mobile. It was the best lemons-to-lemonade transition since, well, Harvey made fun of himself by wishing fans on Instagram a Merry Easter ... on Christmas Day.
Best use of former cast members of The Wire: Toyota Prius "The Longest Chase" and "Hunters"
Toyota already had a winning concept when it aired two Super Bowl ads Sunday showing bank robbers successfully eluding police in a speeding Prius, until the cops gave up and turned a Prius of their own into a patrol car (take that, everyone who thinks hybrid cars are slow and can't manage sharp turns). But eagle-eyed, pop culture-savvy fans could recognize three of the actors playing bank robbers — Chris Bauer, Pablo Schreiber and James Ransone — as the guys who played members of the dock-working Sobotka family in the second season of HBO's classic crime drama The Wire. Which adds an extra dose of TV cool to an already fun commercial.
Best way to introduce a bunch of new car features: Hyundai
The carmaker used different ads strung throughout the Super Bowl to promote different features. For its Genesis sedan, an ad with comic Kevin Hart following his daughter on a date highlighted the "car finder" tracking feature; the Elantra's remote start was featured in a spot with campers chased by bears. Another ad promoting the Elantra's emergency braking system featured women driving through a neighborhood where everyone looked like film hunk Ryan Reynolds. It was an impressive stretch of spots, given that many advertisers couldn't make even one Super Bowl commercial work.
Worst use of an earworm: Mountain Dew "Puppymonkeybaby."
It was a bizarre, unfunny and nonsensical ad promoting a drink that combines Mountain Dew, fruit juice and caffeine called Kickstart. But the worst thing about this ad is the horrific character that stars in the spot; an odd-looking creature that has a dog's face, monkey's tail and baby feet. It leads the guys in the commercial in a conga line set to a bouncing beat while it says the phrase "puppy monkey baby" over and over. Frankly, it's the kind of nightmare you might expect to have after one too many cans of Mountain Dew Kickstart.
Worst reference to bodily functions: Xifaxan, OICisDifferent.com, Jublia
The Super Bowl is known for inspiring lots of eating and lavish spreads of food. So why would advertisers pay millions to air ads focusing on constipation, irritable bowel syndrome and toe fungus? OICisDifferent.com had a commercial on opioid-induced constipation, while the diarrhea relief medication Xifaxan created a spot with a pink intestine made of clay cheering in a stadium. And the toe fungus medication Jublia somehow convinced former NFL greats Howie Long, Deion Sanders and Phil Simms to appear in its ad. There may never be a great time to air ads like this, but to broadcast such spots in an event where viewers are eating stuff like guacamole dip and pizza surely is the worst.
Worst unintentional reference to the housing bubble and Great Recession: Quicken Loans
It's a commercial that makes a powerful point, touting Quicken Loans Rocket Mortgage app as a way to make getting a home mortgage less intimidating and easier. But since the financial meltdown of the late 2000s involved the collapse of a housing market filled with too many questionable mortgages, the spot also has an uncomfortable resonance. And the commercial's vision of a world made better through a rush of consumerism sparked by widespread homebuying was also a little off-putting.
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Transcript
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Well, Super Bowl 50 is over, and what a game it was. The Denver Broncos beat the Carolina Panthers 24 to 10. And the big show really played out like a drama. Not every Super Bowl is like this. But this felt really dramatic. You had Denver's veteran quarterback Peyton Manning outshining the up-and-coming Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton. The Broncos' defense ferocious, and they really helped Manning become the oldest quarterback to win a Super Bowl. NPR TV critic Eric Deggans watched all of it. And he's here to talk about it. Eric, good morning.
ERIC DEGGANS, BYLINE: Good morning.
GREENE: You know, I sort of thought that Peyton Manning would announce his retirement at the end of this game and ride off into the sunset on a bronco maybe - but didn't happen.
DEGGANS: Right, right. Yeah, he sort of - he held back. It was sort of like, you know, you don't make a decision in an emotional moment, and this is very emotional. So who knows what he's going to do? But what was interesting to me is there was so much talk about these quarterbacks leading up to this game. But this was really a story of defense.
GREENE: Yeah.
DEGGANS: And both quarterbacks struggled against, you know, really great defenses. But Denver's defense was a little better. And, you know, here we are. We have this result.
GREENE: Yeah, we're back to a moment where defenses might win Super Bowls, which I just absolutely love.
DEGGANS: Isn't that great?
GREENE: Yeah, no, it's great. Well, let's talk about some of the drama off the field. I mean, I was at a Super Bowl party, and there were a lot of people who weren't really watching the television. They were eating and drinking until halftime and until the commercials a lot more than the sport itself.
DEGGANS: Right.
GREENE: What was the highlight for you?
DEGGANS: I got to say the highlight for me was the halftime show. What we saw was this really well-paced show where it started with Coldplay's kind of moody hits. And then, you know, we saw Bruno Mars get up there with the sharp dance moves on "Uptown Funk." And Beyonce had a cast of thousands of dancers behind her on the field doing her new single, "Formation". And then, you know, we had this dance-off between Beyonce and Bruno Mars. And then everybody came together. To me, it was just the perfect blend of performers, visuals, style all kind of coming together to a really cool halftime show.
GREENE: A halftime show that got pretty political at one moment, when Beyonce decided to sing part of this new song "Formation." I mean, she takes on the police. She takes on Hurricane Katrina, the Black Lives Matter movement. Were you surprised that she sings a song like that at the Super Bowl?
DEGGANS: The song and the video were this collection of images about being unapologetically black, I think. Even when you're wearing designer clothes and, you know, you're a musical star, you still got that bottle of hot sauce in your bag, like she says in one of the lyrics. And she sang that song at the halftime show, but it had a little different tinge to it because it was in such a celebratory situation. So it was a powerful message sort of couched in this sort of party vibe, which was an interesting thing to see.
GREENE: Favorite commercial?
DEGGANS: One of the things that disappointed me is that a lot of these ads got previewed online, so it wasn't as much of a surprise. You know, Jeff Goldblum was in this great ad for apartments.com, where he's playing the piano and singing "The Jeffersons" theme, "Movin' On Up," you know?
GREENE: (Singing) Oh, we're movin' on up.
DEGGANS: Exactly. There was a great Heinz ad where dogs were dressed like hot dogs.
GREENE: Yeah (laughter).
DEGGANS: And they're running through a field. And they run up to this family that's dressed like a bottle of condiments, you know. But we had seen both of those on TV a lot. And Steve Harvey had this great ad. You know the comic made a mistake and identified the wrong winner for the "Miss Universe" contest. So he did a T-Mobile ad where he confessed to making a mistake. And in an odd way, he sort of turned lemons into lemonade that resulted into starring in a Super Bowl ad, which I thought was a great comeback from a mistake that turned him into a laughingstock the world over.
GREENE: NPR TV critic Eric Deggans. Thanks a lot.
DEGGANS: Always fun.
GREENE: Always fun. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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