What makes a good Super Bowl ad? Is it a zany premise? A hard-to-snag cameo?
For Jim Mourey, an Associate Professor of Marketing and Associate Dean of Graduate Programs at DePaul’s Driehaus College of Business, it’s all about the fundamentals.
Your storylines can be as silly as you want — but they have to make sense. Timely references can land – but they can also risk feeling dated. And taking shots at a competitor can work – but only if you make it clear why we should use your product instead.
In advance of Super Bowl LX, Mourey doled out grades to this year’s crop of commercials and teasers.
Humor done right in Manscaped’s “Hair Ballad”
This spot is Hair: The Musical.
… Wait. Let me try that again. This spot is a musical about hair.
Specifically, we get clumps of hair on the sink, on the floor, on the toilet seat, all singing a sad song about how they will miss the part of the body they came from.
We get some text: You won’t miss your hair – but it might miss you.” The closing shot is of the brand’s many products, the brand name (in huge letters), and the tagline, “Manscape your everywhere.”
Grade: A+
Fam, this is Super Bowl ad magic. It’s funny, it’s creative, it’s musical, AND it gets the job done!
This can be an awkward and even embarrassing topic for some people. How do we defuse that bomb? We make it funny and turn a gross pile of hair into cute, anthropomorphic creatures singing about how much they’ll miss being on your body.
It’s funny, it’s attention-getting, and it’s super tight story. Great job, Manscaped. No notes!
A risk (mostly) pays off in Anthropic’s “Keep Thinking”
Anthropic’s Super Bowl ads have two goals: Get more people familiar with Claude. And take a not-so-subtle shot at its biggest competitor, ChatGPT.
We see users asking vulnerable, everyday questions -- about relationships, appearance, business ideas, and more. In turn, they receive overly polite, robotic responses that feel a little too familiar.
Suddenly, those helpful answers pivot into aggressive ads for questionable products. The message lands: ads may be coming to AI… but they’re not coming to Claude.
Grade: A-
This is sharp. Claude never says “ChatGPT,” but it absolutely doesn’t need to. The tone of the responses and the scenarios make the target obvious.
Structurally, the spots are clean and engaging, using dramatic one-word titles and a quick pivot from helpful AI to nightmare ad machine to make the point.
On the other hand – and this is a risk anytime you use this kind of approach – the ad spends more time warning about competitors than it does showing what Claude does better. A clearer call to action wouldn’t have hurt, either.
Still, it’s memorable, timely, and already generating buzz. (When your competitor’s CEO is responding publicly, you’ve clearly struck a nerve!) One of the stronger ads of the year and a bold way to put Claude on more people’s radar.
Celebs abound in Dunkin’s “Golden Cringe” teaser – but where’s the substance?
Ben Affleck is pitching ideas left and right. He’s dropping pop-culture tidbits like 6 7.
Who’s he speaking to? We don’t get to know in the teaser, but it turns out to be Matt LeBlanc, Jennifer Aniston, and Jason Alexander.
We won’t see “Affleck’s” cringe video until the day of the game, but they’ve set it up nicely.
Grade: C
This is how a teaser should work. Playing on “cringe” culture, Dunkin’ is banking on the fact that people will want to see what about this video is so cringe. Points for that.
However, I can’t go higher without having seen the cringe video in question. We’ve got nothing here about the company, its products, or anything new. Sure, we have some celebrity cameos. But beyond that, we’re clueless.
This may all pay off when the cringe video launches, especially if it is designed to be distributed and shared on socials. But for now, we’re going to stick with the middle-of-the-road grade.
Squarespace’s "Unavailable" misplaces its strategy
This spot begins with an artsy-fartsy black-and-white style … and Emma Stone screaming upon learning that emmastone.com is unavailable.
She tosses her laptop in the fire. A servant brings her a new laptop where she promptly checks for emmastone.com again, expecting a different outcome.
No luck. She tosses it, and it lands among other, broken laptops. Another laptop is delivered. She checks again. Still unavailable.
The spot ends with the text, "Get your domain before you lose it. Squarespace."
Grade: C+
This spot isn't terrible. But it feels – how do you say – a bit misplaced?
Don't get me wrong, sometimes contrast is good! A black and white spot will stand out from the hyper-saturated colors of most of the commercials playing during the big game. If you’re a Yorgos Lanthimos stan, you’ll love this.
However, it's also kinda boring. Humor might help here. Like, what would happen if we saw why her site was unavailable? Maybe Emma is someone's pet rock (Emma stone)? Maybe Emma is a singer who only sings one note (Emma's tone)? Maybe Em Mastone is an Italian nonna who bakes cannelloni?
Also, is the real value prop of Squarespace obtaining your domain name – or is it building a website easily? Seems like a very dramatic way to highlight a relatively insignificant feature.
State Farm’s “Halfway There” misses the mark
This spot opens with Danny McBride and Keegan-Michael Key singing a parody of Livin’ on a Prayer to Hailee Steinfeld who is seeking insurance and asking if their service is "just like State Farm.”
We see a montage of McBride and Key singing about how their insurance company doesn’t really cover much, a random cameo by girl group Katseye. Finally, a billboard with the State Farm logo pops up in the background as Hailee says, “I should have gone with State Farm.”
The pre-release ad seems to be a teaser for something else (and hopefully better) to come on game day.
Grade: D
I love “Livin’ on a Prayer,” so I can’t give it an F just for that … but what in the world is this?
Although we hear a lot about what this fictitious insurance company cannot do, we never hear what State Farm *can* do. Sure, it’s implied, “I can’t just go on an app or talk to a representative,” Hailee says, while holding her phone with the State Farm logo displayed on the screen, but what have we learned here?
There may be more info coming in the full spot, but I’m not at all curious to watch it. The teaser has failed in what a teaser should be designed to do: make me want to watch more.
Expedia’s “Going Places with Ken “: AKA, when “I’m just Ken” just isn’t enough
We see Ken – yes, that Ken – standing on a lifeguard tower in need of an adventure. He goes on Expedia to book a trip. We see him traveling the world, having adventures, and doing silly things like driving on the wrong side of the road.
Grade: D-
This spot could have just as easily been for Booking.com, Travelocity, or any number of other travel booking sites. The saving grace here is that we do see the brand name throughout. But the features they mention are hard to understand and the video’s frenetic pacing makes it feel hard to follow.
By the way – who are we targeting by using Ken? This feels a bit dated and removed from the Barbie movie’s time in the spotlight.
Here’s my pitch: I’d include both Ken and Barbie, show them in different destinations, and – most importantly – talk about a feature exclusive to Expedia that they leveraged for each trip.
I might even play around with famous types of Kens/Barbies (Malibu, Skier, even Astronaut) to show that Expedia has options for every type of “you” there is.
The bottom line: let’s engage these characters a little bit more if we’re going to bother paying to use them.