With America Still In Lockdown, Super Bowl Advertisers Bet On Humor

After a year that’s been anything but normal, Super Bowl LV is shaping up to be unlike any big game Americans have ever seen. But the ads, well, they’ll be pretty normal.

Or at least for the most part.

There’s been much speculation about whether the ads appearing during Sunday’s match between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Kansas City Chiefs will have the typical humorous tone or if they’ll be reflective of the crises of the past year. It seems, however, like most brands are giving fans what they want: something to laugh about.

Doritos is turning Matthew McConaughey into a flat version of himself. General Motors is sending Will Ferrell, Kenan Thompson and Awkwafina to Norway in an electric vehicle. Sam Adams is stealing Budweiser’s Clydesdales. Klarna is cloning Maya Rudolph. Amazon is turning Michael B. Jordan into Alexa. Uber Eats is reuniting Wayne and Garth from Wayne’s World. And Cheetos is starting a fight between Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher—until Shaggy steps in.

After a year colored by a pandemic and political unrest, many of the chief marketing officers whose brands will be represented in the big game hope to give viewers a few hours away from the world’s current woes.

“We really think that consumers and fans are looking for a moment of escape, a moment of release, a moment of entertainment,” says Rachel Ferdinando, chief marketing officer of Frito-Lay North America, which bought Super Bowl ads for its Doritos and Cheetos brands. “Life feels a bit too deep. Here’s a moment where we can bring some joy to people’s lives. And so we believe that leveraging humor and joy and this feeling of a bit of escape from frankly a world that’s got a lot of tension in it. And gosh, does the world need joy more than ever.”

According to research conducted in early January by Oracle, of the 2,000 U.S. adults surveyed, 100% plan to watch the Super Bowl. Some 77% expect to watch from start to finish and 26% more excited to tune in than usual. Meanwhile, 53% said the Super Bowl “wouldn’t be the same” without ads, while 16% said they wouldn’t even watch the game without them. (Oracle also found that 25% were more excited for the ads than they’ve been in the past.)

During the peak of the Covid-19 crisis and throughout much of 2020, marketers grappled with how to balance business objectives while also creating advertising that strikes the right sentiment. In fact, a recent survey conducted by Lucid found that 69% of respondents expect Super Bowl commercials to include pandemic-related themes—such as social distancing or mask wearing, along with topics related to social justice—but 66% thought humor is the most appealing.

“If our brands did a very serious ad, I just don’t think it would be the right tone for us in the Super Bowl,” says PepsiCo Beverages CMO Greg Lyons.

Pepsi isn’t running a Super Bowl spot for its flagship product, but it will still be in the game with Mountain Dew and Rockstar Energy. While Rockstar’s commercial will star rapper Lil Baby, Mountain Dew is turning its ad featuring John Cena into an interactive game that promises a $1 million award to the first person to correctly tweet the total number of bottles that appear during the 30-second spot.

“It’ll be an escape,” Lyons says. “It’s a crazy different type of worlds with lots of major Mountain Dew bottles that people are going to want to watch over and over again…That’s not serious, that’s fun. And also something we haven’t done before. I think it’s going to be an enjoyable night for everyone.” 

Pepsi isn’t the only Super Bowl regular to sit on the sidelines this year. Coca-Cola is out, too, and Budweiser is skipping the game for the first time in 37 years, instead donating the money it would have spent on an ad to The Ad Council’s Covid-19 vaccine education efforts. Its parent company, Anheuser-Busch, will still have ads in the game for brands including Stella Artois, Michelob Ultra, Bud Light and Bud Light Seltzer, as well as one for Anheuser-Busch itself. 

According to Cait Lamberton, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, masks and somber scenes may be left out of ads, as they would soon appear dated and become harder for brands to use them elsewhere. Evergreen ads can get more play throughout the course of the year, and also don’t remind people of the current state of the world. Lamberton notes that “it’s not a focus on how bad 2020 was, it’s a focus on how good times were before and how we can get back to it.”

“This isn’t a time where people want ‘Morning In America,’” she says, referencing former U.S. president Ronald Reagan’s now iconic 1984 political ad. “They want to know they can be happy, they have been happy before, and they can be again even though times are tough.” 

The absence of some of these usual advertisers has made room for many newcomers: Fiverr, Uber Eats, Indeed and Robinhood, among others, will all appear in the Super Bowl for the first time. The ads—which cost on average $5.5 million for a 30-second spot—are both a chance for many startups to make their mark and giving people a taste of something different.

It’s refreshing to see so many new brands appearing in this year’s game, says Jeff Goodby, cofounder of advertising agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, which created Super Bowl LV ads for Sam Adams, Doritos and Cheetos. A renowned maker of iconic Super Bowl ads, Goodby says it’s going be a great year to advertise on the Super Bowl—even though some advertisers skipped.

“Companies that are new to the Super Bowl aren’t always the bravest, but let’s see what happens,” he say. “It’s scary to put yourself out there and do something on the Super Bowl. You’re really kind of hanging out a bit and there’s a certain fear of what that means and what it will do.”

E-commerce payments platform Klarna is one of the many making its debut with an ad starring Maya Rudolph that pitches the company’s “buy now, pay later” option. According to Klarna CMO David Sandstrom, 2021 is “perfect timing” for the Swedish firm and is “almost a celebration of the momentum we’re seeing in the U.S. market.” He says that while the company is “extremely mindful of the times we live in” and more “dialed down tonality” in other types of marketing, “there is a longing for entertainment, belonging.” 

“I do think when it comes to the Super Bowl, we owe it to people to celebrate that moment and be a bit more funny, be a bit more entertaining, and actually embrace the fact that this is the center stage of entertainment for that weekend,” he says. “We don’t to drag down that spirit.”

Other brands are using their time to debut new products. To promote its first chicken sandwich, Jimmy John’s has created an ad starring comedian Brad Garrett, who plays a fictional character named Tony Bolognavich and represents “Big Sandwich.”

“The goal is how do we create an anti-hero that is affable and lovable?” says CMO Darin Dugan. “It’s sort of like Wile E. Coyote chasing the Road Runner. Eventually you want him to catch him, but you’re pulling for him a little bit. He often uses language around ‘This Jimmy John’s is coming onto my turf and take my sandwich business.’ There’s an affable nature to him where he’s not villainous. He’s a guy who’s trying to protect his own business and doesn’t quite see that we do things better.”

For its Super Bowl debut, Chipotle has a message about sustainability. According to CMO Chris Brandt, the company didn’t set out to make a Super Bowl spot when it began thinking about the concept for the commercial in the fall. Along with the ad—which features a kid talking about how Chipotle’s focus on sustainability helps the climate and food ecosystem—Chipotle is also committing $5 million to farmers over five years, along with a $1 donation to young farmers for every game-day order. 

“I think that’s why you’re seeing some advertisers sit it out because they’re worried about what that tone should be,” Brandt says. “And I think you don’t want to be too preachy. For our tone, we wanted to make sure it’s true to our brand. And we felt like if this is true to Chipotle—we’re serious about food integrity, but we also have a bit of a wink and a sense of humor about things—then we would be just fine no matter what.”

Not every ad is ignoring 2020. For its M&M’s ad, Mars Wrigley worked with Schitt’s Creek star Dan Levy to call out the things people don’t miss about “normal” life, such as crowded airplanes or gender reveal parties gone awry.

“We’ve sort of acknowledged those cultural moments, and we’re not necessarily leaning into the serious side of them,” says Mars Wrigley North America CMO Sarah Long. “We’re leaning in on acknowledging how it helps to find the humor. It is a year when people want to smile and find the lighter side of some of the things that went wrong while certainly not being dismissive.”

For E*Trade’s return to the Super Bowl, the company has a spot featuring a young boy doing workouts in his room, suggesting that, like with fitness, people can take finances into their own hands. (The spot also comes at a time of heightened interest—and heightened scrutiny—of retail investing after individual traders worked to inflate the prices of stocks like GameStop and AMC.) According to E*Trade CMO Andrea Zaretsy, almost half of the people surveyed during the company’s research said financial jargon inhibits their ability to invest.

“They have real trouble understanding the messaging from the financial services space,” Zaretsy says. “And last year, with this spot and beyond, we’re working hard to make sure we’re communicating easily and effectively and providing education and guidance—particularly to those emerging investors—so we can empower them to make good choices for themselves and to understand the market and how to take charge of their financial lives.”

Brands are going beyond the game itself to engage with viewers. Doritos is partnering with Snapchat to create an augmented reality experience where fans can get products from an AR vending machine and also a 2D lens that turns users into flat versions of themselves. And to promote its 5G capabilities, Verizon not only bought an ad, but also created a replica virtual 5G stadium inside of Fortnite Creative where players can compete and interact with NFL stars and other gamers. 

“We worked with the NFL players to design the games to make it very authentic to the gaming community and also the game of football,” says Verizon CMO Diego Scotti. 

There are, as always, some more earnest ads. For example, billionaire Jared Isaacman—who bought out the first all-civilian SpaceX flight—purchased an ad to promote fundraising for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital by asking people to donate in exchange for a chance to ride into space with him. Meanwhile, Ford is calling on Americans to “hold the line” and continue looking out for each other as the pandemic hopefully nears its end. Anheuser-Busch’s first cooperate ad uses a phrase that’s less heard these days—“let’s grab a beer”—to remind people to stand with each other, even during hard times.

Kelly Fredrickson, president of the agency MullenLowe U.S., which worked with E*Trade on its spot and also did the media-buying for Chipotle, says there seems to be a thread of essentialism running through many of the ads—one that challenges people to think about what matters in life. 

“Human nature takes a lot to shift, that shift toward essentialism,” Fredrickson says. “And consumers are paying attention to brands that will solve that problem.”

After all the sacrifices, commitments and hardships so many people have endured during the past year, one of the ads with a compelling example of that essentialism sentiment is Michelob Ultra’s, which asks, “what if we were wrong this whole time?

“What if joy is the whole game,” the narrator says, “and not just the end game? So ask yourself: Are you happy because you win, or do you win because you’re happy?”