The Super Bowl is known for top-tier commercials including, celebrity appearances, comedy and a huge price tag for businesses. According to the Wall Street Journal, companies looking to advertise during the Superbowl must be willing to shell out roughly $7 million per 30-second advertisement. But to make this hefty cost worth it, viewers must be receptive to the ad.
Top 5 Best:
1 Paramount+ 10/10
This commercial featured a plethora of celebrity and character appearances from shows licensed by Paramount including Peppa Pig, Jeff Probst, Drew Barrymore, Patrick Stewart and many more attempting to climb ‘The Paramount Mountain” that is featured in the Paramount logo. I rated this as the best ad because it was well-timed, used its celebrity appearances well, had a mid-ad musical number, and was very comedic. It was packed with show references and was effective at conveying its message as many viewers may not have realized the range of content offered on Paramount+.
2 CeraVe 10/10
Recognizable to viewers from a number of popular movies and shows, Allen in Barbie, and Micheal Cera teamed up with the skincare brand CeraVe to create a very weird, yet memorable commercial. The plays on his last name, claiming to have created CeraVe and it features clips of him as a masseuse massaging his own back with the lotion as well as moisturizing a mountain. Overall it expertly tapped into Gen Z humor and was very memorable. The brilliant marketing also foreshadowed the ad when last month they had a tik toker “find” Michael Cera signing CeraVe bottles in a grocery store.
3 State Farm 9/10
With both Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito appearing in an under-two-minute ad, this ad was a shoo-in for the top five. The commercial relies on Arnold Schwarzenegger being unable to pronounce the ‘-er’ sound in words, namely the insurance brand’s slogan, “Like a good neighbor State Farm is there.” The humor comes from the repetitiveness of the joke but doesn’t overdo it. In the end, Danny DeVito saves the day with his pronunciation of ‘Neighbor’.
4 Popeyes 8.5/10
Featuring Ken Jeong as a man from the 70’s who was frozen until the arrival of Popeye’s chicken wings. Filled with excitement after tasting the 5 new flavors of wings, he spends the ad intrigued and baffled by modern inventions such as electric scooters, robotic vacuums, massage chairs and more.
5 Reese’s 8.5/10
Simple, short, and slightly creepy, this Reese’s ad is funny in a dumb way. The slapstick humor of people punching walls and smashing dishes over a Reese’s cup may seem unoriginal but ended up playing well because of the timing and accessible humor.
Bottom 5:
(with one being worst)
1 Temu
This animated ad for a controversial online shopping service was just boring. It had no humor and was uninteresting and not remotely creative. For a company that has enough money to advertise at the Super Bowl, they clearly need to invest in better marketing.
2 Fanduel
Despite the nice tribute to Carl Weathers at the end, the part of the advertising Fanduel was incredibly dull. It shows various people betting on a football player making a goal or not and some people won and some people lost. That was the whole ad.
3 Lindt
Using the tagline ‘life is a ball’, Lindt created one of the most generic ads to ever grace Super Bowl watch parties. It shows people eating chocolate and being happy, and their tagline could also apply to any round candy such as their competitor Fiero Roche.
4 Starry
It’s very hard to create a successful ad when it centers around a romantic relationship between a rapper and two cartoon mascots. Overall this was weird and relied on the fact that Sprite is much more popular than Starry.
This ad was a special case where it was incredibly well made and produced but did a poor job at advertising the actual business/product. The UFO concept was innovative and well done but for people previously unfamiliar with Squarespace it may be hard to deduce that they are a platform used to create websites.
