Strands of Genius: The Ads Between Sports Edition + Valentine's Gifts from Fictitious Men & The AI Dinner Party Guide
brought to you by: our friends at Zappi
WRITING FROM | Atlanta, GA
WORKING ON | helping a team establish their planning process
LOOKING AHEAD
Jan 19-Feb 16 | Atlanta, GA
Feb 16-20 | St. Simon’s Island
Feb 20-26 | Nashville, TN
Feb 26-March 10 | Long Beach and New York, NY
:: WHAT’S NEW & WEEKLY GRATITUDE ::
It’s hard to watch the Super Bowl and live tweet about the ads at the same time. But Sunday night, I did that, so that I could take part in #PlannerBowl, and because yesterday we were discussing some trends and our faves with the folks over at Zappi. They’ve got a ton of data on what consumers thought, and you’ll see links below to their full report, followed by some of my own thoughts on the ads.
And today, it’s Valentine’s Day! Whether you’re flying solo or in a committed relationship, whether you love pink or prefer literally any other color, we are sending love your way!
This week, we’re especially thankful for:
the color pink (because duh), Ali, Dancing Dogs Yoga, walks on the belt line with friends, Rachel&Mike&Chase&Lewis, Alex&Collin, Scott, Aisha, Muchacho, cooking dinner with friends, The Last of Us, the Superb Owl and all the brands that participated, wings, more specifically Buffalo Wild Wings wings & wing sauce (the perfect tangy buffalo sauce with maybe even some mustard vibes?! Idk, but I loved it.), Truff spicy mayo, & YOU.
:: THE LINKS ::
WHICH BRANDS WON THE SUPER BOWL THIS YEAR?
In case you missed it, the Super Bowl was Sunday! So we partnered with Zappi to test every ad that aired during the big game and dissect what consumers thought were the 10 best ads of the night. We’ve known of Zappi for several years and were excited to partner with them in this initiative! (Advertising + effectiveness = our intellectual obsession, ha!)
If you’re not as familiar with them as we are, Zappi is an ad testing platform that works with creators at brands like Pepsi, McDonald’s, and SoFi to improve their creative effectiveness and boost ROI on big brand moments like the Super Bowl.
By the data: Farmer’s Dog’s “Forever” ran away with the top honors, achieving an overall appeal score of 8.3 / 10 for reminding us about the irreplaceable role our pets play in the important moments in our lives. (Though that dog did seem to have an *especially* long life.)
To find out the other ads in the top 10, check out the report: Most loved ads from this year's Super Bowl, and for more about what we think about this year’s best – and worst – ads, you can tune into our live podcast recording. We had a ton of fun, and wished we had even more time for discussion. (Zappi)
A peek behind the curtain on how Farmer’s Dog performed in Zappi’s testing. Full report here.
VALENTINE’S GIFTS FROM FAMOUS FICTITIOUS MEN
Here are your laughs for the day. Runner up: I, Cupid, resign as a mascot of Valentine’s day because I’m a baby and it’s creepy. (McSweeney’s)
THE 3-MINUTE GUIDE TO SLAYING YOUR DINNER CONVO ABOUT AI
Great mini-explainer on artificial intelligence, but with more of a conversational bent. I enjoyed it! (The Neuron)
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:: ROSIE’S SUPER BOWL PREDICTIONS + WHAT WE ACTUALLY SAW ::
Last year, we were in Mexico for the Super Bowl, and while I watched some ads online, I picked based on industry conversation and USA Today’s Admeter. There were no celebrations, no wings, no hangovers. This year, not only were we in the USA, but we were with our very best friends, Rachel and Mike — and Mike is from Kansas City and a huuuuge Chiefs fan. (In fact, we hosted a Super Bowl party with them in Greenville, SC the last time the Chiefs won.) But, knowing we were on the hook to provide commentary on Zappi’s podcast, I wanted to stay relatively sober and take notes as the commercials aired live. (Still, we had wings!)
I didn’t watch any commercials in advance, and just before the game, while our Buffalo Wild Wings were heating up, I tweeted some predictions — so let’s see what happened…
We saw Pizza Hut make the world’s biggest pizza, but then there was a disclaimer at the bottom that said it wasn’t actually the world’s biggest pizza and if you’re doing an ad for the Super Bowl and it’s about a big pizza, wouldn’t you just go ahead and make the world’s biggest pizza?! Then there was also a world in which, where, if Adam and Eve had only known about avocados we would have all been able to live, together, in nudity. Or something.
The BIG ended up being with celebrities. One wasn’t enough! But we’ll come back to that.
And yeah, no ad that was as disruptive as Coinbase, but Tubi’s prank (which made it look like you had exited the game and selected the Tubi app instead) was pretty solid.
Brands back from last year included: Michelob Ultra, Planters, Busch, Uber, Skechers, Uber, Pringles, Bud Light, Avocados from Mexico, Kia, Draft Kings, and Amazon. Maybe more?
AB-InBev / Anheuser-Busch (the parent company for Budweiser, Michelob, Busch etc) gave up exclusivity, so for the first time since 1989 we saw other beer ads. That said, Anheuser-Busch was still a big spender, with 3 minutes national television and another 30-second regional ad. Bud Light, Michelob Ultra and Busch Light were featured nationally, and Budweiser ads aired in a few select markets.)
We also saw Heineken team up with Paul Rudd for a non-alcoholic beer ad. And while Molson Coors may have led you to believe that it was a Blue Moon commercial, let’s be honest - Coors Light and Miller Lite got plenty of air time.
For me, the winner in the beer category was Bud Light — I absolutely loved their commercial ‘Hold’ which was rooted in a consumer / behavioral insight: sometimes you gotta get your groove on to the hold music. Now, I had no idea that either of the people in this ad were famous in any capacity, so when I found out they were famous I thought WHY?! This ad stood on its own and didn’t need celebrity talent. It was a feel good spot and I’m just so thankful we didn’t have to deal with the boring Clydesdale horses.
In the words of Morty, “aw jeez, Rick!” I mean, we expected celebrities… But did we expect that many?! It was utter insanity. 70% of the spots featured celebrities, according to one analysis.
The most ridiculous was when we saw a spot for Michelob Ultra featuring Serena Williams and a spot for Remy also featuring the G.O.A.T. …IN THE SAME AD BREAK! Serena, girl, get that brand money! You are an absolute queen and we love to see you slaying but as for the brands… I’m not sure that $$ was well spent. These celebrities entertain, but what do they do for brand recognition? I was especially confused by the Remy ad.
Pepsi using Steve Martin and Ben Stiller to encourage sampling was smart because it *relied* on using actors, people who are good at, well, lying ;) There was a lot of love for T-Mobile’s spot, I assume because people like Scrubs and people like Grease and they can get over the fact that there are so many benefits loaded into the musical act.
Did everyone see that VMS ad?! It was that weird one about menopause featuring another celebrity I’ve never heard of. I love seeing more people talk about menopause, but I didn’t love the execution of on the street interviews with women pointing out that they didn’t know a technical term I’ve already forgotten. Felt like a missed opportunity, though it was an experiment. I’d say a lot of the gambling/betting ads around placing bets fall into this category. But more generally, there were fewer real-world stunts than I was expecting.
Bass Pro Shop scored highly with this messaging and their ad on Zappi’s report, and Booking.com kinda played in this area, but this wasn’t a big theme of the night.
Welp, I totally missed on this one. I really thought we would see a star-studded night, but Ri Ri performed by herself, albeit with plenty of backup dancers. Damn, that queen can sing!! And, performing at the Super Bowl on a floating platform while pregnant?! She gets a standing ovation from me for sure.
I also saw a hot take from The NY Times:
When I shared it with my friend Alex, she said, “I love that they call her the queen of nonchalance in this - I feel like it’s partially what Rihanna was going for. So it comes down to whether you respect that or not. Which I do 🤷♀️😂💖”
(She also followed up with an Instagram post with some of Rihanna’s Twitter best clap backs which made me love her even more.)
Oreo, I love you, but meh. Not as many digital integrations as I was expecting, but I did think that Avocados from Mexico nailed their response to the Farmer’s Dog commercial:
And more generally, the copywriting was enjoyable on all their responses. I maybe enjoyed that more than their ad itself?
No more crypto, but plenty of betting/gambling apps. The lasting impression of Coinbase lingered though… there were so many ads with QR codes. How have we not made more attractive QR codes? They all looked like an after thought.
I’ll admit. This was disappointing. As Jeanine Poggi wrote, “As Madison Avenue approaches year two in its commitment to create a more diverse and inclusive ad industry, most Super Bowl advertisers are either still struggling to create commercials that depict true representation or don’t appear to be trying at all.”
The hispanic population in the US is 60million+ and I loved the flag football spot with Diana Flores (which even featured some dialog in Spanish) but I was surprised we didn't see more representation here. And while some brands hired celebs that were POCs, it would have been great to see higher diversity in the non-famous actors.
Phew. That was a lot.
And what did I miss in my predictions?
Nostalgia. I mean I should have known. It’s a frequent topic of discussion between Faris and me (and Faris wrote a great piece about toxic nostalgia several years ago.) But the number of throwbacks this year was hard not to notice… My Gen X throwback list includes: Safety Dance, Scrubs, Grease, Human League, Indiana Jones, Clueless, Michael Keaton Batman, Caddyshack, Zoolanders, Cliffhanger, Snoop Dogg, E*Trade talking babies, Dave Grohl.
So many QR codes. I know I referenced it above, but again - hard to miss this year.
Humor. But like weird absurdist humor that could have originated from Tik Tok. To be fair to myself, I actually *did* predict this, in my iPhone notes — I just forgot to tweet it ;) From Tubi’s ‘Down the Rabbit Hole’ to Sam Adam’s ‘Your Cousin in Boston’ to keyboard cat for the new Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV to UberOne’s ‘Diddy don’t do jingles!’ Speaking of…
Music. I woke up and giggled thinking ‘Diddy don’t do jingles.’ Then we also had the T-Mobile musical. And booking.com with Melissa McCarthy. And Busch brought back Sarah McLaughlin’s ad because, ya know, if you like beer, you like the outdoors, you like animals, you’re old enough to remember that ad with her song that was all about saving animals. I assume that was the insight ;)
Trailers. So many trailers. I had forgotten that was such a big part of SB advertising, if it was in the past. Zappi removes trailers from their data for the top 10, which got us discussing: are trailers ads? Because they’re mini-stories about real stories, they have a leg up with consumers. They’re ads for stories rather than ads for products and services as we’d typically think. But on the podcast we discussed: Brands should be aware that when they are competing on this stage, they’re competing with some damn good storytellers for attention during the big game.
Jesus. Who knew he had such a large advertising budget?! The commercials were designed to welcome those who are often ostracized from religion, but people very quickly realized that the campaign was funded by far right extremists. Plus, I’m with AOC on this one. "Something tells me Jesus would *not* spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads to make fascism look benign," she tweeted. According to Fox News, who normally don’t agree with AOC, “the Servant Foundation donated "more than $50 million to the Alliance Defending Freedom, a group that has led fights against abortion and non-discrimination laws, and is designated as an anti-LGBTQ hate group."Additionally, the Alliance Defending Freedom is the conservative legal group that "drafted the Mississippi law at the heart of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe V. Wade," and pointed out that the group is "behind a Texas lawsuit seeking to reverse the FDA’s approval of the abortion pill." Thankfully, plenty of people are calling out the hypocrisy between what the ads are claiming and what the organizations funding them are actually doing.
Speaking of hypocrisy, the ads that most annoyed me were from Turbo Tax and H&R Block. I’ll use every opportunity and every platform I have to remind people that these two organizations spend millions and millions of dollars lobbying to keep your taxes as difficult and confusing as possible. My blood starts to boil when I see a Turbo Tax or H&R Block logo. Brands are a culmination of all their actions — not just the communications they put into the world. It’s not enough to simply utter something nice, consumers are aware of so much more than advertising these days. So before you celebrate a dancing man or some guy tending to his plants, let’s remember:
By my back of the napkin counting, only 4 of 70+ commercials (Farmer’s Dog, Amazon’s Saving Sawyer, and the two Jesus ads) went the serious and touching route. I cried during the Farmer’s Dog ad and I don't even have a dog. Incredible storytelling. And in the Amazon ad, they create some real tension, making you think the dog might be given away or put in a kennel all day… But instead, it’s a new dog in a kennel. (But for the record you still can’t order a dog from Amazon.) With so many brands going for those happy/feel good emotions, those four certainly stood out.
And finally, some (dog)food for thought… the consumer’s favorite ad of the night (Farmer’s Dog) didn’t involve an advertising agency.
So the consumer's favorite ad from the Super Bowl wasn't from an advertising agency, but from an in-house creative team with external production partners. .. very interesting indeed #PlannerBowl@rosieyakob @dani00 Production co was Sanctuary, directed by Goh Iromoto: https://t.co/J89qMfRDhn
Eric Tsytsylin @tsytsyflyWhat trends did we miss? What did you notice?
:: ICYMI ::
Don’t forget you can view Zappi’s full report to dive into which ads performed best!
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