Nashville ad executive: These are the Super Bowl commercial winners | Opinion
About 100 million people. That’s approximately how many people watch the Super Bowl these days. Give or take 10 million. That’s a lot of eyeballs to watch a game where more often than not, you don’t care about the teams playing. (The obvious exception being the year 2000 when our collective Titan hearts were ripped out of our chest at the 1-yard line.)
Game aside, the Super Bowl has always been about a lot more than football. It’s always been a thinly veiled excuse to throw back some drinks, snoop around your neighbor’s house and cry yourself to sleep about the end of your favorite season. It’s also, for the past 40 years or so, been about the ads.
I’ve been lucky enough to make six Super Bowl ads in the past 25 years. It’s the only time in your career when your Aunt Linda will ask what you work on and the only time college friends will give you their unvarnished opinion on talking lizards. The biggest stage in advertising becomes, for all intents and purposes, the biggest comment section on YouTube.
A 30-second commercial in the first Super Bowl cost brands about $37,500. Brands paid a monocle-popping sum of $7 million for the same opportunity on Sunday night. Why? Because the Super Bowl is the only time people actively seek out advertising. It’s the only time people stare at a screen, watch your ad, discuss if it’s good and get ready for the next one.
The Super Bowl is the greatest teacher and the greatest microscope in the first rule of advertising: make work that gets noticed.
Hopefully, most people love your commercial. But if some hate it, that’s ok too. Being forgettable and ignored is the death sentence a brand doesn’t want. Particularly when it’s dressed up in a $7 million outfit.
Big ideas were few and far between last night but a few brands did exactly what they set out to do.
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Who were the winners?
Tubi
People around the globe were yelling at each other that somebody sat on the remote. That’s a win for a brand trying to become a household name.
Looking forward to seeing how many times Tubi was Googled last night.
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Dogs
The Farmer’s Dog commercial was a nice break from forced celebrity cameos and the typical overly produced “Super Bowl” ad.
More:Puppy siblings and a pinch hitter: The five canines behind The Farmer's Dog's Super Bowl commercial
Made me a little teary.
First time that’s happened since Arnold’s Country Kitchen closed. And Amazon had a nice simple dog story, too.
Google Pixel
This commercial made me want this phone and want this technology.
Erasing background people changes photography forever if it works.
It probably won’t sway me. But it’s the first chop of the tree.
UFOs
The Super Bowl is usually one of the busiest news days of the year and a lot of the chatter online is about aliens and stuff.
I, for one, welcome our new alien overlords. If you get that reference, you’re also one of the night’s big winners.
Tom Hamling is founder and chief creative officer of The Mayor, an advertising agency based in Nashville. His Super Bowl work has been named “Best Spot of the Super Bowl” by Ad Age, Time and The Wall Street Journal.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville ad executive: These are the Super Bowl commercial winners
