The Most Impressive Super Bowl Ads? The Ones That Didn’t Run

The Most Impressive Super Bowl Ads? The Ones That Didn’t Run

For the first time in years, I actually watched the entire Super Bowl even though I’m the last person you’d described as a football fan.

In the past whenever I have spent time on this annual spectacle, I’ve been most interested in watching the commercials. This year, with a few exceptions, I was quite disappointed by what Madison Avenue served up. To be fair, it was a tough year in which to know what to do. Funny, goofy ads ran the risk of seeming flippant in a time of so much suffering. It was challenging to produce a cause-centered ad that didn’t descend from being earnest to being dull.

Faced by such creative challenges and with Super Bowl ads reportedly running $5.5 million a pop for 30 seconds, quite a few marketers that have been regulars on the broadcast took the route of announcing to the world that they weren’t going to be on the show and that they would be putting money to work for good that they would have otherwise put toward a commercial.

For the first time in 37 years, Budweiser skipped its iconic in-game Super Bowl airtime (although several of its brands did advertise) and committed to reallocating the media investment to help support recovery through Covid-19 vaccine awareness and education throughout the year.

Budweiser did create a Super Bowl spot, but began to run it digitally in the week leading up to game day. “Bigger Picture,” celebrates the individual acts of resilience that sparked hope during the last year and spotlights a group of first responders who were among the first people to receive a Covid-19 vaccine.

The film, created by DAVID Miami, shows that even in the worst of times, we have seen the best in people, and launches phase one of Budweiser’s commitment to Covid-19 vaccine support and bringing people together once the country reopens – in bars, restaurants and with family and friends. Budweiser will donate a percentage of its advertising airtime in 2021 to the Ad Council and COVID Collaborative’s Vaccine Education Initiative, one of the largest public health communications campaigns in history, with additional campaigns throughout 2021 to continue vaccine adoption efforts.

Lowe’s pledged to contribute to Rebuilding Together for home repairs for frontline workers each time the word “home” was mentioned during a Super Bowl commercial and committed to also donating $100,000 for home improvements in the winning team’s city. Although unfortunately vague in stating exactly how much each utterance of “home” unleashed in donations, the company celebrated that the word had been mentioned 13 times.

Planters, which staged an elaborate campaign in 2020 in which Mr. Peanut died and then was reborn, moved this year to give away $5 million “to recognize and reward acts littles acts of substance across the country,” the snackmaker announced. The first donation will go to the owners of Hook Hall, a Washington, DC bar that gave free meals to and supplies to hospitality workers in spite of its own grave business situation.

And Kia announced that it was breaking an eleven-year streak of Super Bowl advertising. “After a decade of creative and award-winning Super Bowl campaigns, Kia will not be advertising in Super Bowl LV,” Russell Wager, VP of marketing for Kia Motors North America, said in a statement. Although the company did not outline exactly how it would be contributing to fighting the pandemic, it stated that it would be expanding its initiatives in support of America’s youth through its Accelerate The Good program.

I’m not sure how successful any of these campaigns will be in selling beer, nuts, home repair supplies or cars, but I do know that the world is desperately in need of help and I’m glad these brands chose to give back rather than spend $5.5 million+ on a 30-second spot that most likely would have been forgotten before Tom Brady gave his victory speech.

Published at Mon, 08 Feb 2021 15:30:15 +0000