It’s Not the Super Bowl Without Commercials

This past Sunday marked the 50th Super Bowl. That is an impressive fifty years of teams dueling it out for the title of champion and the coveted Lombardi trophy. If you aren’t a Broncos or Panthers fan, chances are you were probably looking forward to something other than the game itself, the commercials.

Companies spend millions every year to get screen time on one of the most watched sporting events of the year. It has now become sort of a contest. There are always fan favorite commercials and every year companies try to make their commercials hilariously memorable, or pull at your heartstrings. While not all commercials are memorable for good reasons, here’s looking at you puppy-monkey-baby, there are a few in recent years that have really told a narrative story. This is why they are memorable to fans even years later.

During Super Bowl 47 (2013) Oreo aired an extremely successful ad, “Whisper Fight.” In this ad a fight breaks out in the middle of a library about whether the cookie part of an Oreo is better, or the cream. Since they are in a library they are all whispering while doing things like hitting people over the head with chairs and knocking all of the bookshelves over. This ad is really targeted towards Oreo enthusiasts, and uses humor to make the ad stand out against all of the others. It is very clear that this is an Oreo commercial because the very first sentence is about Oreos.

In this ad it is difficult to pick out a definitive narrative story because they actually leave you guessing a little, and you really have to infer a lot on your own. The exposition is clear; they are in a library near or around today’s day and age. This can be inferred by the clothing they are wearing, the way they are speaking, and even the model of police car. The inciting incident is almost immediate, one guy says that the cream is the best part of the Oreo and the guy across from him says he’s crazy because the cookie is obviously the best part. This incident is followed by a montage of rising action, a chair being broken across someone’s back, shelves of books being pushed over, and windows and lamps being broken. This is really where this ad gets tricky. Towards the very end you see a police car crash through a brick wall and two officers get out and say, “You guys have to stop fighting, we’re the cops.” Then the ad is over. You are left wondering if the police were the climax and there to resolve the conflict or if maybe they were just a part of the continued rising action. The audience really has to create their own ending and I think that is part of the reason this ad was so memorable, people instinctually want to know how things end, and by denying people that it made the ad that much more memorable.

Another narratively strong Super Bowl ad is from Super Bowl 49 (2015) called “Lost Dog.” This ad from Budweiser features a puppy on a farm with his owner. He gets curious about a horse trailer and ends up getting locked in it accidentally and lost in a big city. Through the ad the sad farmer is looking for the puppy, and the puppy is making the long journey home to the farm. The puppy finally gets to a hill over looking his farm and his horse friends hear him bark, but a wolf appears from behind a tree. It looks like the puppy is going to get eaten but the horses finally get free of their stalls and chase the wolf away. The puppy is finally reunited with the farmer and the Budweiser horses saved the day.

This ad targets people over the age of 21 who like beer. A big reason this ad was so memorable to viewers is because it really pulled at people’s heartstrings and got them emotionally invested in the puppy’s story. The company, Budweiser, isn’t officially identified until the end of the ad, but most viewers knew it was a Budweiser ad anyway. Budweiser is famous for their Clydesdale horses and advertisements using farmers so even without being mentioned until the end most viewers probably knew what was being advertised.

This ad makes it very easy to pick out the narrative story because they don’t leave you guessing and really give you the entire story in forty seconds. The exposition is fairly clear, a farm. The inciting incident is the puppy accidentally getting locked in the horse trailer and getting lost in the big city. The rising action is the farmer looking for his lost puppy and the puppy making his way home. All of this comes to a climax when the puppy can finally see home but is about to be eaten by a wolf while the horses are trying to break out of their stalls. The horses end up saving the puppy from the wolf at the peak of the climax. There is falling action following this rescue when the puppy runs up to his house with the horses following behind. The resolution comes when the farmer looks up to see that his puppy has found his way home. There is a small denouement when the farmer is shown sitting down drinking a beer watching the horse and puppy play together.

These ads are very different, but they both tell a visually intriguing narrative. I think that the Budweiser ad has a stronger narrative only because they showed the entire narrative and the audience really got some closure with that story. In the Oreo ad they were left guessing. I think both ads are effective at catching viewers’ attention, but I think that the Oreo ad was a little better at keeping their attention. Since the audience was waiting for a conclusion to the story they watched the entire ad, but unbeknownst to them the ad left you with no definitive ending. In my opinion people are probably most likely to share the Budweiser ad simply because it was a heartwarming story. People love to share positive happy stories on social media, and the Budweiser ad was exactly that.

Super Bowl ads have been around for years and they are always a topic of conversation in the weeks following the game. If your company is in that conversation all of the money spent on the airtime will have been worth it. Especially in today’s age of social media, if people like your ad it will be shared across multiple platforms and will continue to be a topic of conversation even longer.