Let’s Ride with Our Favorite “Bad” Passengers
Yes, these colorful little guys from M&M’s are on the Super Bowl commercials again. Still, this is my favorite one among 2019’s Super Bowl commercials so far.
The “Bad Passengers” commercial for M&M’s new released product — chocolate bar was 30 seconds long in total and played during the 2019 Super Bowl first quarter commercial breaks. It starred with actress Christina Applegate in the ad.
The story was about how Christina Applegate deals with unruly backseat passengers on her drive back from the grocery store, nearly has to stop her car due to the bickering of her colorful passengers — who are stuck together in a new M&M’s Chocolate Bar. As always, this commercial engaged me and pulled me into its story naturally with its brand’s iconic “spokes candies”, they were cute and hilarious as always and M&M’s is always good on human featuring these little guys. Like their “Sexy and I know It” commercial from 2012’s Super Bowl is still one of my favorite and memorable out of all Super Bowl ads.
This commercial was funny but one thing that makes me regret is that it does not have a good opening because I feel it focused too much on Christina Applegate. The M&M’s “spokes candies” did not show up until the 20s second, which was too late to cut into and made the topic of the commercial a little bit confused at the beginning. I would really wish to see more shots of these “spokes candies”.
Even know Christina Applegate is famous, but since I’m wasn’t born and grow up in the US, so I think for me, personally, the M&M’s “spokes candies” are more representative for their brand. At the first 20 seconds, it made me feel like a car commercial rather than a commercial for M&M’s chocolate bar. In general, this commercial definitely fits the M&M’s overall brand image but lost a little bit of focus on marketing their chocolate bar and sending the message to the audience since they are debuting a new product during Super Bowl as the first time.
My suggestion is to have the M&M’s characters show first, Christina Applegate show up later, and point out their chocolate bar during the commercial. By this way, audience would recognize this is a commercial for M&M’s, and it’s still be funny that left people a memory point for M&M’s.
Far and away, the most-watched event on television each year, and an opportunity to advertise to the world, the cost of advertising this 30 second commercial on Super Bowl was about $5 million. This is the second consecutive year M&M’s has advertised during the annual football championship, following a three-year hiatus. However, M&M’s made it as one of the most popular ads on 2019’s event and ranked No.6 out of 58 on US Today Ad Meter. The content of this commercial was happy, relaxing, all age friendly, eye-catching and easy to understand, even children and seniors could understand the content, get the message and share with someone else. Every time now, I see the M&M’s chocolate, I think if these colorful passengers, and I grab one and put them into my basket.
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