Super Bowl 50: Time to Reconsider Commercials

Guys, we need to talk. This… I mean, this is just embarrassing.

Of course, I’m talking about Super Bowl commercials. Specifically the ones that played during Super Bowl 50. You see, usually commercials are good or they’re bad. I understand, it happens. They can’t all be amazing. But this Super Bowl kicked it up a notch and added a new category:

Horrifying.

I have never wanted to shield my eyes and plug my ears during so many successive commercial breaks before. How is it that one of the most coveted television advertising spots has fallen to this?

The Usual Suspects

Let’s have a quick rundown of some Super Bowl 50 ads.

• We had not one, but two separate commercials about gastrointestinal distress
• T-Mobile riffed on the old, tired colored balls commercial, while Verzion ran that very same ad
• The NFL used football to promote conception while Doritos used their product to induce labor

…not to mention the Lovecraftian horror that was Mountain Dew’s PuppyMonkeyBaby.

Without exception, none of them are engaging, exciting, or enticing in any way. They’re some of the more egregious examples of poor advertising in a Super Bowl that was, frankly, full of it.

All Publicity is to Your Advantage

…except it’s not. It’s really not, and it’s past time we abandon that old axiom.

These ads are directionless, plain and simple. They want to capitalize on uniqueness, shock value, or recognizability, and in doing so they forget to make me care.

What does the animated colon help me learn about Xifaxan? How do colored balls help me choose a mobile carrier? What does PuppyMonkeyBaby do?

I’m sure an advertiser out there has answers, but I don’t care, and that simple fact means the battle is already lost. None of these ads show what the product can do for me, and so all the rationalization in the world couldn’t make me like them anymore.

A Milennial’s Approach to Marketing

So what do we do? Give up commercials? Stop advertising?

Honestly, I can’t say I’m against it. TV ads no longer even phase me, they’re noise to be ignored. The impact is destroyed by the sheer number of them. We can’t just stop making commercials, though. I’m not looking to usher in the collapse of modern television. However, if we can’t stop making them, we can at least start making them better.

Make me care. Give me something that matters to me. Enough with the shock value, enough with the weirdness, enough with the blatant stereotyping (lookin’ at you, Doritos).

The ads that hit me hardest were this PSA about domestic violence and this Budweiser ad about drunk driving. Engaging. Interesting. Emotional gut punches. Give me more of that. I want to pay attention because you’re doing something I like, not because you’re screaming in the street at two a.m. and wearing a fruit headdress.

Grab my interest, not my attention. In an age when I can watch all of the commercials on YouTube a week before the game, the old standard TV spot isn’t cutting it any more. Figure out why I should care instead of blindly taking shots at the sensationalism dartboard.

That means you too, Christopher Walken. You lovable scamp.