Now that the postseason has come to an end it’s time to pack up your pompoms and chips and dip sets until football returns at the end of summer. Like a classic high school drama, when the jocks are away, the nerds will play! Football is great but we all know that the real fun comes from analyzing the commercials (hey, we’ve already claimed to be nerds). What were the major themes of this year’s commercials? Why do we think won the Super Bowl commercial game? Who do we think needs to sit the next one out?
- Daddies and Girl Power - Toyota featured Amy Purdy being awesome, with an additional commercial featuring dads. Nissan had a “dad” theme as well, but we were ready for that commercial to end before it started. It was a good concept but we’ve seen it before. Play some Harry Chapin, it’ll make everyone cry. The daddy theme continued with Dove Men+Care, while girl power hit a high note with the #LikeAGirl commercial from Always. These commercials, for the most part, pulled at the heartstrings and were pretty inspiring.
- Avocados – This one surprised us! Who would have thought that avocados could be so entertaining? Avocados from Mexico delivered plenty of laughs with their Guacamole Diptator and First Draft spots.
- Wacky Humor–This is a personal favorite when it comes to categories. If all Super Bowl commercials could just be obnoxiously zany, the world would be a better place.
- Doritos
- T-Mobile
- Snickers
- NBC and Nascar
- Nationwide
- Mophie
- Esurance with Lindsay Lohan and Bryan Cranston (these take the cake in my book)
- Discover
- Oh GoDaddy – After pulling their puppy commercial (released online), GoDaddy took a different route this year. They chose, instead, to feature a busy small business owner who didn’t have time to watch the Super Bowl. We think this was a good concept, but it didn’t hit it’s mark. Obviously anyone watching this commercial during the Super Bowl wasn’t going to relate to the story being portrayed. Honestly? We’re ok with the weird Danica Patrick commercials becoming a thing of the past, but we would have preferred the puppy commercial (Budweiser needs some competition in that market). Everyone loves a little controversy.
- What are you doing here? – WeatherTech with its car mats, Loctite (who made the decision to spend their entire annual budget on this commercial) Super Glue, and Jublia Toenail Fungus were all commercials that we’re questioning. We’ll see how this helps their numbers for the year, but commercials like these give us the same disappointed feeling as when local commercial spots interrupt the good commercial action.
- Fear – Dang Weight Watchers, now you have our attention! The talent of Breaking Bad’s own Aaron Paul (Jesse Pinkman) voiced the commercial, using language that’s commonly employed to talk about drug addiction to describe the addiction that many have to unhealthy food. The realization of the aim of the commercial was startling, and may have caused more than a few of us to set down our bowl of cheese dust and corn syrup. We believe that the Weight Watchers Super Bowl commercial was very well executed. In the same “fear” category we also place Nationwide’s now infamous commercial. While it was a beautiful commercial, the line “Because I died…” will go down in history as a meme. Not the right time, place or line, Nationwide.
- Movies – A long list of movies were showcased in Super Bowl commercials this year. Most of these trailers had already debuted online, but some movies (like Ted 2) introduced different versions of their trailers that helped keep our interest. Movies featured in Super Bowl commercials this year included:
- Fast and Furious 7
- Minions
- The Divergent Series: Insurgent
- Ted 2 (this trailer included an appearance by Tom Brady of the Patriots… an interesting one at that!)
- Terminator: Genisys
- Hot Tub Time Machine 2
- Spongebob: Sponge out of Water
- Jurassic World
Overall, it’s our humble opinion that the funny commercials make the Super Bowl Our favorites? Esurance’s “Sorta” duo. Our least favorites fall in the “What are you doing here?” category, with the toenail fungus “winning” our vote for worst commercial of the 2015 Super Bowl.
What were your favorites? Which ones could you do without? Let us know in the comments!
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