The 2016 Super Bowl Ad That Stuck out Most to Me

I always look forward to watching the Super Bowl every year. By now, the classmates I have in the class I’m writing this blog for know that I’m a huge football fan. But I’m also a fan of visual media, and so when we were tasked with writing a description about a Super Bowl ad we enjoyed, I was super excited.

The ad that stuck out most to me was the Buick commercial with Cam Newton, which you can see here:

There’s a lot going on in it. I think that the main positioning that Buick wanted to take however, was to start shifting away from the demographic Buick is most associated with (which I would venture to guess is an older crowd), to a younger generation.

The ad’s main point is that Buick is no longer what you believed that it was. This is a younger, sleeker, more hip Buick for a new generation (and when you don’t believe it, the ad takes it to the extreme by changing people into other people to show you just how believable the unbelievable now is). The subtleties of the ad confirm this for me, as it’s literally at a pee-wee football field with kids and young parents. Having Cam Newton, essentially the face of the new and younger generation of football players and fans for those who don’t know, serve as the main celebrity in this also drove the point home. Furthermore, you have Miranda Kerr posing as the female representative for a younger generation of people who can afford a Buick to show that both boys and girls can now by the new line of Buick cars.

From a converged media standpoint, I saw a lot of paid and owned media, but not a lot of owned content. Buick didn’t really have any call to action that incentivized people to go to social media and give them organic marketing outside of the people who will re-post it.

Perhaps they approached their converged media strategy this way because they still wanted to market to the older audience that still has cable and will see the ad, while throwing in humor to hopefully get people to share from laughing at it. That’s the reason I got into it anyway. The extreme hyperbole of seeing a world-class athlete destroy some kids in a sports game is something that always makes me laugh and enjoy a commercial.

I hope that doesn’t make me a bad person.

-Jason