Super Bowl advertisers pushed entertainment and inspiration on Sunday night, reflecting marketers’ calculation that the game’s viewers mostly just want to feel good or do good. Many ads featured callbacks to stars’ past roles.
Facebook and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, meanwhile, aimed to polish their images amid scrutiny of big technology companies, The Wall Street Journal reports.
This year’s ads featured comedian Bill Murray reprising his role from the 1993 movie “Groundhog Day” to promote Jeep; country rapper Lil Nas X and actor Sam Elliott waging an Old West dance-off for Cool Ranch Doritos; Buzz Lightyear, Flash Gordon and other favorite sci-fi characters collecting curbside pickup orders from Walmart; and Boston-affiliated celebrities Rachel Dratch, Chris Evans, John Krasinski and David Ortiz marveling at the “smaht pahk” automatic-parking feature on the new Sonata from Hyundai Motor Co.
Advertisers had a lot on the line. The Super Bowl still regularly draws an audience surpassing 100 million people as traditional ad-supported TV is suffering a steady erosion in ratings as alternatives, including ad-free streaming services, proliferate.
Fox Corp. charged as much as $5.6 million for 30 seconds in this year’s game pitting the San Francisco 49ers against the Kansas City Chiefs.
Bill Murray’s 60-second “Groundhog Day” Jeep commercial finished first in USA Today’s Ad Meter, which ranks Super Bowl ads by consumer rating. The Boston themed Hyundai ad was second, with Google’s “Loretta,” in which the 85-year-old grandfather of a real Google employee uses the company’s technology to remember his late wife, coming in third. Lil Nas X and Sam Elliott dancing for Doritos followed, with Rocket Mortgage’s ad starring Jason Momoa rounding out the top five.
See USA Today’s look into how the Jeep “Goundhog Day” came to be, and the full Ad Meter results (with links to the commercials) here. To read about and see the pro-life ad Fox officials declined to broadcast, click here.
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