I hosted a Super Bowl watch party on Sunday. The karaoke machine was on standby for halftime, the queso was perfect, and I had a notepad ready for the ads because I'm exactly that person at parties. By the third quarter, the notepad was mostly blank.
Not because the ads were bad. Bad would have been interesting. Bad would have given me something to write about. The ads this year were aggressively, almost impressively, fine. A sea of celebrities, a flood of nostalgia, and the unmistakable whiff of eight layers of legal review and focus group approval.
Seven million dollars for thirty seconds, and most brands used it to say absolutely nothing memorable.
Let's talk about what happened. We got Harrison Ford being charming for a brand I can't remember. We got approximately forty-seven ads featuring celebrities doing celebrity things. We got CGI animals, we got callbacks to better campaigns from decades past, and we got the distinct feeling that every single creative brief this year said: "Don't be controversial. Don't be weird. Just be... safe."
We got CGI animals, we got callbacks to better campaigns from decades past, and we got the distinct feeling that every single creative brief this year said: "Don't be controversial.
I get it. The political environment is radioactive. The cultural landscape is a minefield. One wrong joke and you're trending for all the wrong reasons. But here's the strategic problem with playing it safe at the Super Bowl: safe is expensive and forgettable. And forgettable at seven million dollars a pop is not safe. It's wasteful.
The Super Bowl used to be where brands took their biggest swings. Apple's 1984. Volkswagen's Darth Vader kid. Old Spice reinventing what a men's grooming ad could be. These worked not because they were safe, but because they were true. They were clear expressions of a brand with a point of view.
This year's standout, to the extent there was one, was probably the Uber Eats spot, which at least committed to a bit and rode it all the way. Commitment reads as confidence. Confidence reads as a brand that knows what it's doing. That's the whole game.
The lesson isn't "be edgy." The lesson is that the absence of a point of view is not a strategy, it's just expensive. If you're going to spend seven million dollars, spend it saying something only you can say. Otherwise you're just buying a celebrity's time and a viewer's fleeting attention.
Next year, I'm keeping the karaoke machine on during the ads. At least Bon Jovi has a point of view.