5 Best Super Bowl Ads of 2019 (And What You Can Learn From Them)
Pragadeesh N - July 12, 2019 - Leave your thoughts. 5 min read
The Super Bowl is the single biggest sporting event of the year!
But it’s also the biggest moment in the year for the advertisement industry.
Super Bowl ads are a big part of the Super Bowl experience and are watched closely. In fact, the Super Bowl has been called “The Marketer’s Holiday” in America.
The ads are incredibly expensive. A 30-second ad cost $5.25 million this year. This doesn’t include the cost of producing an ad which is estimated to be around $4.5 to $5.5 million.
For this day alone (the Super Bowl Sunday), the world's top marketers come together and give their best shots at defining their brands and telling their stories to a massive, unsegmented audience.
As marketers, we wondered - how can you take the video marketing strategies in these ad campaigns and apply these strategies to your own video marketing?
In this article, we take a look at the 5 best Super Bowl ads of 2019 and the video marketing lessons you can learn from them.
Budweiser - “Wind Never Felt Better”
In this ad, a Dalmatian is viewed riding atop a wagon pulled by a pack of Clydesdales, as Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan’s song “Blowin’ in the Wind” plays in the background. The song does a great job in lending a quaint, emotional resonance.
Midway through the ad, the camera pans out to reveal the horses pulling the wagon through a wind farm, probably somewhere in rural America. The ad ends with the tagline, “Now Brewed with Wind for a Better Tomorrow”.
The ad clearly conveys the message that Budweiser is committed to renewable energy. This message is a nod to the fact that the company has committed to purchasing 100% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025 for its brewing operations.
Instead of focusing on its target audience’s immediate needs and promoting the product directly, the ad focuses on their customers’ bigger goals that their product can help them achieve. By drinking Budweiser’s beer, you do your part to save the environment! By drinking their beer, you’re drinking to a better tomorrow!
Key Takeaway: Sometimes the best thing you could do to promote your product is to not promote it directly, but to promote a bigger, more significant cause. That way, you’d not just improve the sales of your product(s) but also enhance your brand’s image. A recent research found that 63 percent of Americans were “hopeful businesses will take the lead to drive social and environmental change.”
M&Ms - "Bad Passengers"
This 30-second ad from M&M’s is unexpected and funny. The ad features Christina Applegate on her way home from grocery shopping. Her backseat passengers get loud and start fighting.
When she tries to calm things down, the passengers only get louder.
Fed up with the bickering, Christina snaps at the backseat passengers.
This ad builds up without giving too much away, and until the last shot, the audience is kept in suspense regarding the passengers in the backseat.
The twist at the end is funny, and then the dialogues start making sense.
Key Takeaway:
Who knew advertising a chocolate bar could be funny? Adding an element of suspense and humor to the ad makes it memorable and entertaining.
Pringles: “Sad Device”
This ad for Pringles features two young men stacking different Pringles chips to create unique flavor combinations.
When one guy makes a “spicy nacho stack,” the other wonders out loud about the number of possible Pringle stack combinations.
Immediately, the smart-speaker device on the table responds with an answer and continues speaking, ranting about its existence.
In the midst of the rant, one guy replies something unexpected.
This ad is entertaining because the guys don’t seem to make a big deal out of the fact that the device responded to their question, even if it wasn’t directed at it. Moreover, the nonchalant response to the device’s emotional rant makes it a lot funnier.
Key Takeaway:
The choice of music, witty lines, and camera angles play vital roles in making advertisements entertaining and fun to watch while conveying the ad's tone.
Wix: “The Big Game Ad with Karlie Kloss”
Wix’s 30-second real-time Super Bowl ad stars Karlie Kloss, a supermodel who codes. Kloss is the founder of “Kode with Klossy”, a coding boot camp for young women.
The ad shows Kloss sitting at a desk and showing the target audience how to build a website in a snap using Wix. The ad highlights Wix’s important features such as the Wix Pro Gallery and SEO Wiz.
Unlike other brands that promoted their products indirectly, Wix directly promotes their brand in this ad. Wix’s marketing message is focused on addressing the needs of the end-user.
Key Takeaway: Sometimes you just have to tell it like it is and directly address your customers’ needs and desires. Craft your ads around what your customers actually want and what would interest them the most. Remember, the only person you want to like your ad is someone who will actually buy your product.
Planters: “Mr. Peanut Is Always There In Crunch Time”
In this rip-roaring ad, Mr. Peanut (an animated peanut :) ) is on a mission to deliver his fresh snacks in the “crunch” time, with cameos from Charlie Sheen and Alex Rodriguez.
Mr. Peanut recklessly drives down a street in his NUTmobile. As Charlie Sheen watches this from a bench, he says “And people think I’m Nuts”. In the end, Mr. Peanut successfully manages to deliver his sacred nuts and saves Alex Rodriguez from the fate of eating kale chips.
The next time people think about buying a healthy snack such as kale chips, they’ll probably consider another healthy, but also a tasty alternative that is planters’ nuts.
And, by adding a touch of humor, they’ve made sure the message sticks in the minds of consumers for a very long time. Moreover, the ad is unique and reflective of the company’s brand.
Key Takeaway: Infusing humor into your video marketing and advertising will make your message travel further and make your brand more likable. The key is to find and take a unique angle.
What’s your take on this year’s Super Bowl ads? Which of them did you like the best (and the least)? Did you learn any lessons from them that could be applied to your video marketing? As always, let us know your thoughts in the comment section!
