Whether you love football, or you’re a Swiftie cheering on your girl’s boyfriend, you probably contributed to the fact that the 2024 Super Bowl became the most watched NFL championship (and close to the top watched event on TV) in history with about 123 million people tuning in. There was even a notable rise in female viewership for NFL games this season which proposed a new marketing opportunity for companies as target audiences widened to include this new demographic.
While viewership numbers are impressive, let’s dive into the fun part – the commercials. Super Bowl 2024 was stated to be the biggest ever for advertising in the US with brands spending over $650 million dollars on ads. We can speculate that brands hopped onto Super Bowl ads due to the bigger potential audience with Swifties now interested in the game. However, we know that having a commercial play during the Super Bowl, while impactful and viewed by several, is also very expensive coming in at around $7 million for just 30 seconds of airtime. Not to mention that this only covers the actual airtime, and companies still need to pay celebrity endorsements and production of the spot. The commercials spanned from emotional to hilarious and everything in between, but as always some didn’t rise to the occasion.
Commercial Recap
Every year there are commercials that out rank the competition while some completely miss the mark. It’s time to recap some of our favorites and least favorites of this year’s Super Bowl 2024 commercials.
The Best
DunKings
Dunkin’s 2024 Super Bowl Commercial pulled out all the stops this year on enlisting celebrities for their commercial including: Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, JLo, Tom Brady and Jack Harlow. Ben Affleck has become a spokesperson for Dunkin with this being his second Super Bowl commercial with them. This commercial was great as it not only played to the starpower and humor elements but it even tied back to the 2023 Super Bowl commercial in which Ben Affleck worked at a Dunkin for the day and JLo visited the drive-through. Moreover, Dunkin truly pulled out all the stops in a great campaign as they dropped not only the ad itself during the Super Bowl but they pre-cursed it with a teaser prior to the Super Bowl. After the Super Bowl Dunkin’ even dropped the song on spotify and allowed people to purchase a special menu item as well. To top it all off they even put the Dunkings tracksuits to purchase online and sold out within 20 minutes of being available for purchase.
Google Pixel
The Google Pixel commercial was a prime example of utilizing emotion to your advantage while also showing off your product. Google’s Javier in Frame commercial not only highlighted the new feature of Guided Frame by Google AI in a way that also shined a light on Google’s push to make their products more accessible for all consumers but also made the viewer feel something by embracing a different view that not everyone experiences on a daily basis.
Like A Good Neighbaaa
The State Farm Commercial took the humor route for this year’s Super Bowl ad, switching from their classic State Farm agent to a star studded cast of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito. Not only was it action packed but the ad itself was all about the iconic slogan. The State Farm chief marketing officer Kristyn Cook, stated that they were “striving to make it even more famous than what it is.” Having Schwarzenegger do retake after retake while struggling pronouncing the ‘r’ with his thick Austrian accent not only made it commercial but even more memorable.
The worst
Temu
To begin, not only were there not one but three commercials for Temu that played during the Super Bowl of 2024 but this Chinese e-commerce retailer solely utilized animation which was not well received. The animation was similar to mobile games and felt out of place as it did not pull on any emotions or provide any connection to the audience. Overall, the three Temu ads lacked content and feeling that the other ads provided. The one thing it did do was give everyone an ear-worm of the “ooh, ooh, Temu” refrain that they wanted to get out of their heads.
E-Trade
The babies were back again, e-trade placed the babies on a pickleball court this year. The question becomes where’s the innovation? Year after year we see E-trade put forth commercials of the babies discussing retirement savings in different situations. While they stay trendy by incorporating popular things such as pickleball this year, the premise remains the same.
Takeaways
Emotions are a powerful tool
Whether the commercials pulled on our heartstrings or made us laugh, the best commercials are the ones that make us feel something. These become memorable because they are able to pull something more out of us and make us think – even if it’s subconsciously.
Storytelling is key
Telling a story is important, it’s a way to connect to your audience and to share more than just the product, it’s a way to make a connection. We see this in the commercials we loved, Google showing someone’s life through photos he’s now able to capture, or Dunkin’ creating a storyline from previous years’ commercials to this year. Craft messages that resonate as stories, this is something that we saw throughout several Super Bowl ads in 2024 and continue to mention for any marketing campaign. Compelling stories help make audiences more invested in the products/services.
If you want to hear more about the 2024 Super Bowl, from more advertising talk to discussing the game itself and the halftime show – be sure to listen to our episode of Mission CTRL!
