It’s no secret that SuperBowl Sunday is full of surprises. Before the game begins, and even as it’s happening, you don’t really know who’s going to win, what the final score will be, or even what to expect out of the halftime show. Will your team be victorious or more of an embarrassment? Will it be a close game or a slaughter fest? Will the halftime show live up to expectations or leave viewers disappointed?
Nevertheless, despite the sea of uncertainty associated with football’s biggest day of the year, there’s one facet of the day, that is much more predictable: the commercials. Because when it comes to Super Bowl ads, you pretty much know what you’re going to get. Some of the worlds biggest brands spend millions of dollars every year to bring you the kind of content you’ve probably grown to expect by now. You’ll see some of your favorite celebrities, get a few good laughs in, and maybe witness a few commercials promoting a cause.
Not convinced? Here are 3 of this year’s Superbowl ads that elicited some of the aforementioned predictable feelings in viewers across America.
1. Pepsi Ads
This year Pepsi brought the celebrities– which is really no surprise given the brand’s long history of celebrity endorsements. From Michael Jackson in the 1980s to Beyonce in the early 2000s to Kendall Jenner, who was dubbed Pepsi’s “24-hour wonder, ” after the release of her controversial Pepsi ad back in 2017, it’s no secret that Pepsi knows how to leverage the power of celebrity to further their brand.
And when it came to this year’s Superbowl, the Fortune 500 food and beverage company stayed true to form. Throughout the course of the game, they ran three ads, all of which featured at least one top tier celebrity. In addition to recruiting Cardi B, Lil Jon and Steve Carell to represent the brand in their Pepsi ad, they also had the Backstreet Boys and Chance the Rapper appear in their Doritos spot, and Michael Buble come on board to represent their new sparkling water brand, Bubly.
2. T-mobile’s “Dad” Ad
Even if you don’t tend to remember the happenings of the game, certain Superbowl ads have a way of living in your mind rent free for years to come. Which ads though, you ask? Well, the particularly comical ones. This year, that was T-Mobile’s “Dad” ad, which centered around a text conversation between a father and daughter. In a nutshell, the father mistakingly treated a text conversation with his daughter as Google– assuming that he could search for recipes via text. If you’ve seen this ad, which has continued to run nationally in the weeks following the Superbowl, you know just how laughably relatable it was.
3. Stella Artois: “Pour it Forward”
When it comes to “the feel-good” commercial of the year, Stella Artois “Pour it Forward” ad may have just taken the cake. In addition to recruiting the lovely Sarah Jessica Parker, and making a witty reference to the show she’s most known for, “Sex and the City,” the commercial also had a meaningful message: Opt for Stella rather than your typical drink to help end the global water crisis. The brand made its long-standing partnership with Water.org central to the commercial. And who can blame them? What a worthy cause.