Why weirdness won at Super Bowl 2016

SPOTTED: The insights behind the ads

A man jumps out of a plane on a bull; a baby prematurely leaps out of the womb to get his hands on his dad’s Doritos; Steve Tyler is presented with a singing Skittle portrait of Steve Tyler. Even Persil’s 15-second Super Bowl Sunday spot channels a little David Lynch à la Twin Peaks with its curtained background and tuxedoed host. Bizarre ads were a big deal this year.

This influx of oddities only seems even more odd at a time when our media diets are more likely to consist of reflections of cold, hard reality. Katniss Everdeen has replaced Harry Potter as a hero who wins with raw talent rather than make believe. Making a Murderer and Serial seduce us with real events that are even stranger than fiction. And the popularity of the likes of Furious 7 and Empire demonstrates that audiences desire as much diversity on-screen as off.

“We are saturated in facts,” opines columnist Catherine Shoard. “We’re in a news churn that makes us fidgety when faced with anything without obvious reference to our own experience. We just have to keep it real.” So what gives with these ads that are not only silly and in some cases sickening — see the aptly-named Mountain Dew abomination ‘puppymonkeybaby’ — but also a far throw from reality?

It’s about attention. “In media you buy human attention in packaged outputs,” says strategist and speaker Faris Yakob. “The industry is dependent on it.” And while the likes of warmth and humour are notoriously good at grabbing attention, there’s something to be said for weirdness, too. Witnessing the absurd can lead people to experience what Freud referred to as the ‘uncanny’ — something he described as “a thrilling state of arousal.” And what could be more memorable than that?

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Written by Lore Oxford, deputy commissioning editor at Canvas8